(no subject)
26/9/05 19:09Mishima Yukio is such a slog to get through. I bought this book, ah, 3 years ago, and I'm on page 30something. The man's vocabulary! Well, I am reading it precisely to improve my vocabulary, but it's irritating all the same.
Truth is, it's kind of hard to keep my Japanese from getting rusty when I have no interest in Japanese politics and get so annoyed with much Japanese literature that it makes me want to kill something. I don't like Mori Ogai, and I don't like Soseki, and--what can I expect when the first thing I ever wanted to read in Japanese was a Sailor Moon manga?
Some of the monogatari I had to read were kind of fun, but I'm not sure I can cope with Classical Japanese again.
It hit me suddenly today that the reason I don't write with as much élan and shameless fun as I used to is that I've told or outgrown my shameless id-stories. It was like I was dressing up dolls and playing with them before--my characters and ideas were things that existed in my head as absolute, unchangeable archetypes. And now I have to build my dolls and their clothes from scratch, and it's hard. No wonder it's not as fun and easy as it was before. But this means I can stop worrying about what's wrong with me, that I don't have as much enthusiasm anymore.
Truth is, it's kind of hard to keep my Japanese from getting rusty when I have no interest in Japanese politics and get so annoyed with much Japanese literature that it makes me want to kill something. I don't like Mori Ogai, and I don't like Soseki, and--what can I expect when the first thing I ever wanted to read in Japanese was a Sailor Moon manga?
Some of the monogatari I had to read were kind of fun, but I'm not sure I can cope with Classical Japanese again.
It hit me suddenly today that the reason I don't write with as much élan and shameless fun as I used to is that I've told or outgrown my shameless id-stories. It was like I was dressing up dolls and playing with them before--my characters and ideas were things that existed in my head as absolute, unchangeable archetypes. And now I have to build my dolls and their clothes from scratch, and it's hard. No wonder it's not as fun and easy as it was before. But this means I can stop worrying about what's wrong with me, that I don't have as much enthusiasm anymore.
(no subject)
27/9/05 10:55 (UTC)(no subject)
27/9/05 19:28 (UTC)