Kenzaburō Ōe

[Paul]

Works (many are not translated, have included links where they are):

1957 奇妙な仕事 The Strange Work (short story)

1957 死者の奢り Lavish Are The Dead (short story)

1957 他人の足 Someone Else's Feet (short story)

1957 飼育 Prize Stock (short story) included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels and The Catch and Other War Stories

1958 見るまえに跳べ Leap before you look (short story)

1958 芽むしり仔撃ち Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (novel)

1961 セヴンティーン Seventeen (novella) included in Seventeen & J

1961 Death of a Political Youth (novella) - not since reprinted

1963 叫び声 Cry

1963 性的人間 Seiteki ningen The sexual man / "J" (short story) included in Seventeen & J

1964 空の怪物アグイー Aghwee the Sky Monster (short story) included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels

1964 個人的な体験 A Personal Matter (novel)

1965 厳粛な綱渡り The solemn rope-walking (non-fiction)

1965 ヒロシマ・ノート Hiroshima Notes (essay)

1967 万延元年のフットボール The Silent Cry (novel)

1968 持続する志 Continuous will (non-fiction)

1969 われらの狂気を生き延びる道を教えよ Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (novel) included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels

1970 壊れものとしての人間 Human being as a fragile article (non-fiction)

1970 核時代の想像力 Imagination of the atomic age (non-fiction)

1970 沖縄ノート Okinawa Notes (non-fiction) Okinawa Nōto (not-translated into English)

1972 鯨の死滅する日 The day whales vanish (non-fiction)

1972 みずから我が涙をぬぐいたまう日 The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away (short novel) - included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels

1973 同時代としての戦後 The post-war times as contemporaries (non-fiction)

1973 洪水はわが魂に及び The Waters Are Come in unto My Soul (novel) (not translated into English)

1976 ピンチランナー調書 The Pinch Runner Memorandum (novel)

1979 同時代ゲームContemporary Games (novel)

1980 現代 ゲーム Sometimes the Heart of the Turtle

1982 「雨の木」を聴く女たち Women listening to the "rain tree"

1983 新しい人よ眼ざめよ Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age! (novel)

1984 いかに木を殺すか How do we kill the tree?

1985 河馬に嚙まれる Bitten by the hippopotamus

1986 M/Tと森のフシギの物語 M/T To Mori No Fushigi No MonogatariM/T and the Narrative About the Marvels of the Forest (not translated into English)

1987 懐かしい年への手紙 Letters to My Sweet Bygone Years (novel)

1988 「最後の小説」The last novel (non-fiction)

1988 新しい文学のために For the new literature (non-fiction)

1988 キルプの軍団 The army of Quilp

1989 人生の親戚 An Echo of Heaven (novel)

1990 静かな生活 A Quiet Life (novel)

1991 治療塔惑星 The tower of treatment and the planet

1992 僕が本当に若かった頃 The time that I was really young

1993 「救い主」が殴られるまで (燃えあがる緑の木 第一 部) Until the Savior Gets Socked (The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy I) (novel)

1994 揺れ動く (燃えあがる緑の木 第二部) Vacillating (The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy II) (novel)

1995 大いなる日に ( 燃えあがる緑の木 第三部) On the Great Day (The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy III) (novel)

1995 曖昧な日本の私 Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures (non-fiction) (see also http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...)

1995 恢復する家族 A Healing Family (autobiography)

1999 宙返り Somersault (novel)

2000 取り替え子 (チェンジリング) The Changeling (novel)

2001 「自分の木」の下で Under the 'tree of mine' (non-fiction)

2002 憂い顔の童子 The Infant with a Melancholic Face (novel)

2003 「新しい人」の方へ Toward the 'new man' (non-fiction)

2003 二百年の子供 The children of 200 years (novel)

2005 さようなら、私の本よ! Farewell, My Books! (novel)

2007 臈たしアナベル・リイ　総毛立ちつ身まかりつ The beautiful Annabel Lee was chilled and killed (novel)

2009 水死 Death by Water (novel)

2013 晩年様式集（イン・レイト・スタイル) In Late Style (novel)

[Paul]

One of my all-time favourite authors and on this year's MBI longlist of course, although shamefully undertranslated into English.

Following are all sources I used (as well as the ubiquitous Wikipedia):

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005...

http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...

I need to tidy above up a little with proper book links, although the Goodreads list of books themselves also needs a visit from the librarian, and several works aren't on Goodreads at all.

[Trevor]

Thanks for adding this resource, Paul! I've never read anything by Kenzaburō Ōe, and you've given me some good direction. I do have Death by Water and, though perhaps not the best jumping in point, may jump in with it.

[Paul]

Not the perfect starting point given how heavily it references his previous works - the narrator himself having essentially written all the books Oe has written. Although it does bring out well the two key themes of his novels.

From the Paris Review: "He describes most of his fiction as an extrapolation of the themes explored in two novels: A Personal Matter (1964), which recounts a father’s attempt to come to terms with the birth of his handicapped child; and The Silent Cry (1967), which depicts the clash between village life and modern culture in postwar Japan. The former "are rooted in Oe’s personal experience of Hikari’s birth (the narrator is usually a writer), but the narrators often make decisions very different than the one Oe and his wife made." The latter novels "explore the folklore and mythology Oe heard from his mother and grandmother, and they typically feature a narrator who is forced to examine the self-deceptions he has created for the sake of living in a community. "

[Paul]

I'm now read all of his English-translated fiction (as of Sept 2016).

I'd rank them

1 The Silent Cry
2 Somersault
3 Death by Water
4 The Changeling
5 The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels
6 Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels
7 Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age!
8 A Quiet Life
9 A Personal Matter
10 Aghwee the Sky Monster included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels
11 Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
12 An Echo of Heaven
13 The Pinch Runner Memorandum
14 J/Sexual Human included in Seventeen & J
15 Seventeen included in Seventeen & J
16 Prize Stock included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels

and the top 2 are both far more stand alone and got rare 5 stars from me.

Silent Cry is the novel the Nobel Committee cited and Oe himself describes as his "most successful, faults and all".

And Somersault was his first major post Nobel novel and marks a significant change in style to a simpler form of prose (which incidentally I think put some people off Death by Water):

"At the age of sixty I started to think that my method could be wrong, my image of how to create could be wrong. I still elaborate until I cannot find any open space on the paper, but now there is a second stage: I rewrite a very simple, clear version of what I’ve written. I respect writers who can write in both styles—like Céline, who has a complicated style and a clear style."
from Paris Review.

[Tony]

I've only read four so far, plus one story:

1) The Silent Cry
2) Death by Water
3) A Personal Matter
4) Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
5) Prize Stock

Not that any have been bad, really - ranking is a terrible idea ;) However, 'The Silent Cry' is amazing and has the added bonus of showing where the inspiration for Murakami's entire career came from, virtually on the first page!

P.S. Funnily enough, I've seen some pretty negative reviews of both 'Somersault' and 'The Changeling'...

[Hugh, Active moderator]

Definitely looks like a writer worth reading - to me 4 sounds quite good, but I have never read any...

[Paul]

Tony wrote: "P.S. Funnily enough, I've seen some pretty negative reviews of both 'Somersault' and 'The Changeling'... "

They are definitely very different to the earlier works - but if you liked Death by Water (of which I have also seen some negative reviews), you would like Somersault.

Just started "Nip the Buds", then have "The Pinch Runner Memorandum" to read and I will then have exhausted the English language versions of his fiction and have to wait for the translators to catch up.

[Tony]

I have a copy of 'The Pinch Runner Memorandum' too, but it'll have to wait until I get some free reading time ;) Interesting that you've read so much Oe - for me it's Soseki that dominates the shelves (well, Murakami too...).

[Paul]

Tony wrote: Interesting that you've read so much Oe - for me it's Soseki that dominates the shelves (well, Murakami too...). "

Well I've read all the Murakami translated fiction as well - but Oe is in a different league, Murakami to me is a guilty pleasure. I lucked out with Oe by starting with The Silent Cry and have been hooked ever since.

Although it's actually this thread that inspired me to "finish-off" Oe.

Soseki though I'm afraid I've not read at all - what's his best?

[Tony]

Lots to enjoy :) His 'best' might be 'Kokoro', although his later psychological works such as 'Light and Dark' and 'Grass on the Wayside' are excellent. However, his work is varied and developed over his (short) career. The early books (e.g. 'I am a Cat', 'Botchan') are lighter and funnier, and I have a soft spot for some of those just after that (e.g. 'Kusamakura', 'Sanshiro'). Plenty of reviews on the blog, of course ;)

[Paul]

Thanks - having read your blog (and Michael O's reviews) it's a toss up between Sanshiro and Kokoro.

[Paul]

Incidentally on Oe, other thing I would add is that his fiction is so interconnected that the more one reads the more one appreciates:

"One of the most salient characteristics of Oe's major works is their interrelated nature: his themes continually recur, his characters reappear in several works under the same names, and episodes in works previously treated are referred to without explanation. The world of Ōe 's imagination is entirely holistic, which makes it impossible to discuss one particular work without touching upon another." from "The burning tree: the spatialized world of Kenzaburō Ōe ", Sanroku Yoshida

[Trevor]

That reminds me that we need a Soseki thread . . .

[Tony]

Trevor wrote: "That reminds me that we need a Soseki thread . . ."

Definitely :)

[Tony]

Paul wrote: "Thanks - having read your blog (and Michael O's reviews) it's a toss up between Sanshiro and Kokoro."

Although there's a lot to be said for starting at the beginning and seeing how his style develops and becomes more complex ;)

[Paul]

I've completed my mission to read all of Oe's fiction available in English. Updated rankings above.

One discovery was that I prefer his earlier work, Silent Cry particularly, and his later, more restrained novels.

Some of the stuff I hadn't read until recently, e.g. The Pinch Runner Memorandum, was a little too much: Rabelasian grotesque realism is the technical term, or over-the-top the less technical.

There's still an awful lot untranslated, and I hope someone picks up the more recent novels, in particular the series from which both Somersault and Death by Water are drawn.

[Trevor]

That's a great accomplishment, Paul! I hope more comes soon for you (and the rest of us).

[Paul]

Having run out of English language novels to read - please someone translate some more asap - I have read Yasuko Claremont's critical study:

see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

It gives some helpful context on how the translated novels and the yet-to-be-translated fit together. Although one worrying anecdote is that even the translator of one of his later lengthy masterpieces, Somersault, found it rather tedious and repetitive, which may be why he hasn't tackled the later novels!