A Shameful Life by Osamu Dazai is a novel framed within discovered journal entries meant for a previous lover of the character Yōzō, which describe his distance from society, his previous suicide attempts, and his drug/alcohol abuse. The story begins with Yōzō’s childhood where he realizes he needs to make everything he says a joke to disguise his disconnection from the world. From this, he meets a schoolmate, Takeichi, who gives him two predictions: that women will fall for him, and that he’ll be a great artist. He tests into a great higher school, though when he attends, he can’t seem to concentrate (he also meets one of his friends, Horiki, at this school who brings him into the Leftist party). Along the way, he meets a woman, Tsuneko, who decides to commit suicide with him, but Yōzō survives and she doesn’t. He’s kicked out of school for being part of someone’s suicide, and he goes to back to a friend’s house, Flounder’s, where he recovers and tries to pick up the pieces. This is when he starts to seriously draw his cartoons, which get picked up by Shizuko, his next girlfriend and a connection to large magazines. But even then, Yōzō drifts to another woman, Yoshiko, who is seen as innocent and virgin, so Yōzō decides to be with her. However, one night when he and Horiki are talking, they find Yoshiko with another man. Yōzō drinks so much and his health is deteriorating. He decides to kill himself with sleeping pills, but it doesn’t work. At the end he is taken to a mental hospital, and he charges himself with the question, “I’d never, not for a moment, gone mad. Ah, but I suppose that’s the sort of thing a lunatic would say.” At the end of his stay, he’s taken back to his brother’s place where he attempts suicide again, but the sleeping pills are replaced by laxatives.
It isn’t hard to see the parallels between Dazai’s life and Yōzō through the failed suicide attempts and the drug and alcohol abuse. It’s a novel that both feels confessional and reserved. Yōzō sees himself as different from society, and that he tries to disguise that through clowning around. And in part, some of Yōzō’s behavior may be explained through the slight references to his childhood servants doing bad things to him. The framing of the novel is also really interesting, with the journal entries being bookended by a random traveler looking for food. It’s a terribly sad novel, one that feels achingly close to Dazai’s life and for that reason, I found its portrayal of the human experience to be exacting. Final Rating: 4.5/5
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Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn is a memoir about a son whose father gets into trouble, becomes homeless, and their complicated father-son relationship. The father believes himself to be a great writer (though never publishes anything), goes to jail for forgery and robbing banks, and becomes homeless after bouts of drinking and threatening people. Flynn has his own struggles with drugs and alcohol, gets into drug dealing schemes, but is able to carry himself through tough times. Flynn eventually works at a homeless shelter in Boston, where inevitably his father appears. Not only is Flynn trying to distance himself from his father, but then his mother then commits suicide. Flynn reels from this loss and at one point, decides to create a documentary with all his mother’s past partners. It’s a strong foray into how a father-son relationship can be continually fraught, but also is kept alive.
The memoir takes on different forms, with one part being a script for a play about santas and daughters, another part listing facts his father tells him, and some meta-textual references at the end. It’s a heartbreaking story about relationships, drug/alcohol abuse, and how best to pick up the pieces. Final Rating: 4/5 Holy American Burnout! by Sean Enfield is a collection of essays ruminating and expanding upon being a middle school teacher at a Muslim school during the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. Enfield discusses his frustration and sadness of the inhumane treatment of Black people in America, police brutality, islamophobia, and where he fits into the whole mix. The collection experiments with form, in one essay structured as if a lesson plan, another structured in acts, and others bouncing between space/time and pop culture. I particularly enjoyed the essays ‘To Pimp a Mockingbird – Lesson Plan’, ‘Teacher, Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’, ‘All My Niggas Was white – Notes from the Color Line’, and ‘To Be (or not to be) in a Rage Almost All the Time – An Essay in Five Acts’. It’s a lovely and powerful collection and I am happy to have been part of the team to publish it.
4.5/5 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a novel about two video game makers, Sam and Sadie, as they navigate life through the creation of multiple video games. Sam had gotten into a car wreck where his mother died and his leg was terribly injured. Sadie’s sister was receiving treatment for cancer when Sadie meets Sam when they were kids. They play and get along until Sam finds out she is using him for community service. They distance themselves for years until college in Boston where they randomly find each other and Sam encourages Sadie to make a game, Ichigo, with him. They work together, with the aid of Marx, Sam’s roommate, and create a game which sells millions of copies. They continue to make games together through tumultuous times: Sadie’s abusive boyfriend and professor, Sam’s amputation surgery, badly reviewed games, Sadie and Marx’s relationship, and finally a gunman who fatally shoots Marx. Sadie and Sam split ways after Marx dies and, to win back Sadie, Sam creates a game only for her. By then, she has a child and is a professor herself. At the end, there’s hope that they’ll continue to make games together.
Zevin makes interesting choices in form and structure. For example, one chapter splits the narrative between Sadie and Sam, paralleling the story of their game Both Sides. She also has another chapter written from the perspective of Marx as an NPC in a game after he is shot. And a third chapter which tells the storyline of an in-game interaction between Sam and Sadie. The characters feel lived in and their motives are complicated and powerful. It threads in pop-culture references, historical events, and feels like a unique take on what game designers go through. I was a little annoyed at some of the explanations of games or their lingo, where, for example, Super Mario Bros. is described too in-depth. It reads as if it were written for an older generation where they don’t know basic aspects of video games. There was another moment where the events of 9/11 are discussed, which I think was meant to ground the reader in the time, but to me, it felt as if it were only added in to try and prove the novel’s own relevance. Additionally, some of the situations felt too easy, with payoffs happening quickly after problems arise. However, I generally enjoyed the way Sadie and Sam’s relationship is mulled over and it worked well within its universe. Final Rating: 3.5/5 |
AuthorMaxwell Suzuki is a writer, poet, and photographer based in Los Angeles. Archives
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