Welcome to Litsy!

This is one of the books I'll be thinking of often as I figure out how to be a man. The more the protagonist-narrator tries to conceal his cowardice and selfishness and hypocrisy and will-to-violence from himself in recursive coils of prose, the more the design of the coils reinscribes it for the readers to see. The more a mediocre man of habitual bad faith stares into himself, the less clearly he sees himself. It's brilliant.

"A swarm of shame, centipede-legged, streamed out, choosing the parts of me most subject to goose flesh—my armpits, my back, my sides."

""You don‘t need me. What you really need is a mirror. Because any stranger is for you simply a mirror in which to reflect yourself. I don‘t ever again want to return to such a desert of mirrors.""

"I was overcome by a paroxysm of nausea, as if I had had the inside of my throat painted with iodine."

"In the final analysis, jealousy itself is something like a pet cat that insists on its rights but does not accept its duties."

"Just thinking of what happened before this was apparently enough to make the worms of shame come wriggling out of all the pores of my body."

"When I took the mask off, the adhesive material, musty with sweat, gave off an odor like overheated grapes. At that very moment an unbearable fatigue flowed over me, eddying in my joints like syrupy tar."

"And was it also because I could feel the cigarette resting lightly in my fingers like a little dead bird?"
Today in odd similes.

"Shocked as if I had bitten on a firecracker, I stood stock still in my tracks, but the woman simply glanced up and hurried on as if nothing had happened."
Today in odd similes.

"Thus, for example, if you tried to reconstruct a whale, which has especially developed subcutaneous tissue and fatty layers, on the basis of the skeleton alone, you would get a monster not in the slightest like a whale—something between a dog and a seal."

"It was the desperate feeling of loneliness one sees in the eyes of a decrepit old cur on the verge of death. It was an emptiness like the sound of track construction deep in the night when the pinging sings down the rails."

"Suddenly you began to sob. It was an unnerving sound, like air escaping from a faucet when the water stops."

"If you suppose Bach to be balm for the soul, imagine it as nothing but a lump of clay, neither poison nor balm. It was meaningless and stupid; every phrase played seemed to me quite like a dusty, sticky lollipop."

"The girl‘s knees knocked together with such force under her skirt that they might well have fused."

"If covering our bodies with clothes represents a cultural step forward, there is no guarantee that in the future masks will not be taken equally for granted."

This is a fascinating story of a man wearing a mask who tells his story from both the point of view of himself without the mask and from that of the mask. It‘s astounding to read this!

I love works by this author! I‘m so happy to have gotten hold of this book. All of Abe‘s works are very strange, and I do love weird. I‘m at a part in this book where the Narrator is trying to make himself a new face! That‘s all I‘ll tell you now. 😃

Hi #litsians Have you read any of Kobe Abe? Years ago I stumbled across The Woman in the Dunes. It BLEW me away! It‘s a short book that quickly absorbs one in shock, awe, fear and wonder! I couldn‘t believe what I was reading and still today when I think of it I reel. The Box Man was another completely different story, as weird as TWITD was scary. Next up The Face of Another. I hope it also will take me to a world unimaginable. #litsy #reading

I'm a big fan of Japanese fiction but have never read anything by Kobo Abe. The writing/translation was wonderful. Abe can really turn a phrase. In this book, that's what kept me turning the pages. I have to say, the subject matter of the story was very odd. Can't say that I've really ever read anything quite like it. Not a bad read but not a great one either. I will reserve my opinion on Kobo Abe's writing until I read a few more books by him.

I simply adore Japanese literature. This is my first Kobo Abe book.