book data
785 ratings,
3.99
average rating, 102 reviews
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published
January 13th 1982
(first published 1969)
by Grove Press
binding
Paperback, 165 pages
isbn
0802150616
(isbn13: 9780802150615)
description
Oe’s most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times “close to a perfect novel.” In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a ...more
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avg 3.99
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
People love this damn book but I wanted to climb inside the pages and tip our hero into a cement mixer so he could become part of the foundations of the new Tokyo and therefore perform the only useful act in his miserable life. Fantasy : Bird (the main guy here) meets Holden Caulfield and Kurt Cobain writes a song about it. Jeez.
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Anna by:
Shavit B.
I think one reason I love this book so much is because I really detested it when I started reading it. Like, I really really hated the main character. The book starts off with this 20-something college professor named Bird, who is wandering the streets after drinking in a bar. His wife is in the hospital having a child, and Bird is enjoying a mud bath of self-hatred. He thinks, I've wasted my life, I don't really want to be a father, I'm not as attractive to women as I used to be, blah blah ...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
serious readers
I had never read Oe, although I was aware that he had won the Nobel Prize. The blurbs on the cover report that this is his most popular book, published around the time I graduated from college in the late sixties. I didn't know what to expect, but was surprised to discover a Japanese existentialist, a student of twentieth century French extentialist literature. His writing style reflects the influence of Sartre, Camus, and Beckett. I had read considerable French existentialism during my col...more
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Read in April, 2007
Kenzaburo Oe, a resident of Tokyo, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. The father of a child with brain damage, A Personal Matter, appears somewhat autobiographical, as it tells the story of Bird, a man whose wife has just given birth to a baby with a severe brain injury. The novel, told from Bird's perspective, follows Bird through the ensuing days as he attempts to cope with the news and his feelings of inadequacy. He wrestles with whether to allow the doctors to operate, knowi...more
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Amazingly tight existentialist story about moral choices. Really my only complaint has to do with the last 3-4 pages, and it's hard to talk about those pages in any specific detail without giving away the book's ending. I was totally on board up to and including the moment in which Bird makes his choice, but I could have lived without the "flash forward" scene that came next, and revealed the repercussions of that choice. The choice itself seemed to be the thing that was important, a c...more
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Read in September, 2007
I know that it seems pretty cheesey but this book is very personal. The author does an excellent job of getting the reader to feel the complexities that the main character has to face and really feel for the decisions that the main character makes. I kept wondering with great angst why the main character continued to make the most harsh decisions and not feel remorseful. The author does a good job of creating a character that is real and makes decisions for himself that pull him away from real...more
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Financially, I felt cheated when I bought this. $3 is too much for a tattered, coffee-stained paperback, but I just decided to yield to the sharks that prey on college students, and unfolded a few bills. The topic alone assured me that it would be a good read, and I did want this book on my shelf as opposed to just a temporary loan. Oe's subject, that of a father dealing with his deformed son, intrigued me. One gets to a certain point in study where what's good and bad is easily distinguishable ...more
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On the one hand, I found this book often off-putting. On the other hand I found it to be fascinating.
To be very lazy and compare Oe to a different Japanese male novelist: I found Oe to be more interesting and more compelling than any of the Murakami I've read.
To be very lazy and compare Oe to a different Japanese male novelist: I found Oe to be more interesting and more compelling than any of the Murakami I've read.
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Yes, the main character is totally a wimp. I feel sorry for his wife, laying in the hospital not knowing what's going on.
The main character, Bird is immature. He's trying to escape from his problems through having an affair and alcohol. I sympathize more for his baby lying in the hospital fighting to survive while his father hopes he dies because he can't deal with the responsibility of a child with a physical deformity.
But these are the things that make this book good. It's about ho...more
The main character, Bird is immature. He's trying to escape from his problems through having an affair and alcohol. I sympathize more for his baby lying in the hospital fighting to survive while his father hopes he dies because he can't deal with the responsibility of a child with a physical deformity.
But these are the things that make this book good. It's about ho...more
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Read in March, 2009
I don't really give this book 2 stars. I give it "?" stars. I'm not sure whether I love it or I hate it, if it's postmodern, postwar brilliance or bullshit. The main character undergoes his character arc abruptly in the last several pages; not sure if that jives with me.
One thing I can say is (and I agree with you Lisa), the author has a way with words: Oe's descriptions of hangover and vomitting are impeccable, even after being translated from Japanese.
I don't thin...more
One thing I can say is (and I agree with you Lisa), the author has a way with words: Oe's descriptions of hangover and vomitting are impeccable, even after being translated from Japanese.
I don't thin...more
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Read in July, 2008
recommended to Julia by:
Nate Meltzer
This was about a young man whose wife has just given birth to a baby with a brain hernia, and how Bird - the father - reacts to this news in the opening days of his son's precarious life. The experience brings him back to his college girlfriend, who provides him comfort in some disturbing (to me) ways.
This is supposed to be some amazing novel or whatever, but I just didn't fall for it. As a narrative, it does the trick - the story is compelling and the writing isn't boring at any...more
This is supposed to be some amazing novel or whatever, but I just didn't fall for it. As a narrative, it does the trick - the story is compelling and the writing isn't boring at any...more
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05/09/08
Yulia
added it
Read in June, 2008
Update:
Ah, it's no use. On others' encouragement, I took the book out again and I tried it and was just as repelled by the knotty writing and overworled imagery as before. If it is a translation issue, I'll just have to wait for it to be redone. And as for learning about the challenges of having a disabled child, I'll just have to look at my own parents and other parents I know in similar circumstances. Yes, I'm trusting life and first-hand experience in this case. Goodbye, Oe. May ...more
Ah, it's no use. On others' encouragement, I took the book out again and I tried it and was just as repelled by the knotty writing and overworled imagery as before. If it is a translation issue, I'll just have to wait for it to be redone. And as for learning about the challenges of having a disabled child, I'll just have to look at my own parents and other parents I know in similar circumstances. Yes, I'm trusting life and first-hand experience in this case. Goodbye, Oe. May ...more
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10 comments
Read in November, 2007
It's as though Oe has collected all the selfish, ratty, whiny, dirty, horrible traits of everyone you know and used these scrapings to create a protagonist.
It was unpleasant reading, partly because all of the awfulness was at least partly recognizable as my own awfulness. Does that make sense?
I liked this part: "One day, Bird had approached his father with this question, he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a h...more
It was unpleasant reading, partly because all of the awfulness was at least partly recognizable as my own awfulness. Does that make sense?
I liked this part: "One day, Bird had approached his father with this question, he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a h...more
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Don't recommend this book to anyone who needs to like the main character. It's hard to imagine anyone less likable than Bird - within hours of learning that his newborn son has a brain injury and will either die or grow up severely handicapped, he's getting smashed with his high-school-buddy-turned-sometimes-mistress. Over the course of the next few days we follow Bird as he vaguely tries to pass off his problem to a succession of relatives, friends, and doctors, all of whom are hoping (with var...more
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If you've never read this one and you're looking for a shortish novel that rocked hard enough to win the dude the Nobel Prize, something you can read before the weekend ends, something with serious existential, historical, and cultural HEFT, but also relatively easy reading, here ya go. I taught this in a lit class last fall and several students said it was the best book they'd ever read. Easily in the top ten for me. When people talk about "perfect" novels, an idea I totally glower at...more
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Very much recommended - partially so someone I know will read it and I'll have someone to discuss the ending with. I so badly want to give this five stars, and it's nigh-impossible to discuss why I wouldn't without ruining the whole book. So, I'll just say this:
1. What a potent/chilling examination of the nature of guilt and responsibility - this is a relatively slim volume (sort of a more focused distillation of Crime and Punishment, in some ways), but it stuck with me for a few day...more
1. What a potent/chilling examination of the nature of guilt and responsibility - this is a relatively slim volume (sort of a more focused distillation of Crime and Punishment, in some ways), but it stuck with me for a few day...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in November, 2007
Right after I read Plum Wine, I read this book for my next book club meeting. The narrative takes place in the same era, mid-1960s Japan, this time in Tokyo.
It is a coming-of-age story, although the protagonist is in his late 20s when the book begins. Nicknamed Bird, he is an instructor in a cram-school and one of the least appealing protagonists I can recall in a modern novel, spending most of the narrative attempting to fly from the crises and failures of his life through a seamy ...more
It is a coming-of-age story, although the protagonist is in his late 20s when the book begins. Nicknamed Bird, he is an instructor in a cram-school and one of the least appealing protagonists I can recall in a modern novel, spending most of the narrative attempting to fly from the crises and failures of his life through a seamy ...more
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Read in November, 2007
From now on, every time I read a mediocre novel about an angry young man and his terribly shocking thoughts, I'm going to think about how much better this book is. The protagonist, Bird, starts with a bunch of highly typical slacker-boy issues: He's not happy in the confines of marriage, his job feels meaningless, he wants to run away to Africa. But the central problem in the novel isn't his fecklessness -- it's the birth of his brain-damaged child, which throws all the "I don't want to g...more
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Read in January, 2006
This exploration of one man's struggle with his unwanted child took my breathe away at least three times during the couse of reading the book. I highly recommend it. Not light fare, this delves into guilt, desire, and the escapist tendencies fostered (perhaps) by our modern society, where one's fate can appear to be a matter of choice.
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This is one book that I hated reading, and yet couldn't put down. I loathed the main character, and I think that reading the book was a little bit like watching a car wreck - it's horrible to watch and yet you are powerless to look away. I believe this is part of Kenzaburo Oe's power, he gets us to clue into our own morbid curiosity. His protagonist (and even calling him that may be a stretch) loathed himself as well, and so even though I was disgusted by him I pitied him too. There was anoth...more
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