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5/7/12 21:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI don't know why I haven't read Dazai Osamu before now.
Oh wait, I do! It's because he tried to commit suicide many times throughout his life, finally succeeding at the age of 38, and his most famous work deals with a character hurtling headlong towards self-destruction, all the while despairing of the seeming impossibility of changing the course of his life, and thus for some reason I expected his writing to be very depressing (and typically misogynistic for somebody who kept wrapping up women in his suicide plans).
But I'm reading his book Schoolgirl, which is a collection of short stories with first-person women narrators, and they're actually very interesting. They do reflect their own time and place, especially when it comes to attitudes towards sexuality, but the women are clever (if very emotional) and kind, and especially in the title story Dazai conveys well the kinds of pressures women are under to be perfectly self-sacrificing -- and, I think, how complicated and difficult it is to be a girl of 13 or 14 -- "I hate myself," "I hate everybody else," "I wish I could just love everything and be a good daughter," "Jeez, mom, I'm an adult already!" "I never want to grow up, I hope I die before I have to."
There is definitely self-loathing there but it's interesting self-loathing. I can deal with that.
Oh wait, I do! It's because he tried to commit suicide many times throughout his life, finally succeeding at the age of 38, and his most famous work deals with a character hurtling headlong towards self-destruction, all the while despairing of the seeming impossibility of changing the course of his life, and thus for some reason I expected his writing to be very depressing (and typically misogynistic for somebody who kept wrapping up women in his suicide plans).
But I'm reading his book Schoolgirl, which is a collection of short stories with first-person women narrators, and they're actually very interesting. They do reflect their own time and place, especially when it comes to attitudes towards sexuality, but the women are clever (if very emotional) and kind, and especially in the title story Dazai conveys well the kinds of pressures women are under to be perfectly self-sacrificing -- and, I think, how complicated and difficult it is to be a girl of 13 or 14 -- "I hate myself," "I hate everybody else," "I wish I could just love everything and be a good daughter," "Jeez, mom, I'm an adult already!" "I never want to grow up, I hope I die before I have to."
There is definitely self-loathing there but it's interesting self-loathing. I can deal with that.