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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2451 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 10, 2026

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Read the four years ago, like many enjoyed the first most. Mishima--I tell someone I've read a good deal of Mishima--and they sit up, impressed. If I say I've read a dozen Murakami novels they shrug. What I have to then admit is that I read in translation, in English. Mishima's kanji and word choice is apparently miles away from Murakami's more accessible prose, and to read Mishima in Japanese suggests a strong command of the language. Like comparing say Thomas Pynchon and Stephen King as an English reader. I say all this not knowing if you're reading in Japanese, English, or German.

I am glad I read the books, though, without spoiling, I will say they did get weird. Then again Mishima was, by my reckoning, a pretty big nutter, and I use that term in the Commonwealth sense of "fucking nuts." I do enjoy much of his writing though. I recently lent a friend a copy of Ai no kawaki or Thirst for Love and I believe his response was "Wtf did I just read?"

I wonder if Mishima had Italian and German (so post-Axis) contemporaries, with the same sort of experiences and talents as he had.

I feel like Mishima's particular form of narcissistic suicidal homosexuality would be difficult to percolate anywhere.

I'm reading an english translation. Much as I enjoy reading works in their original language, I stop short of learning new languages entirely just to read a handful of books.

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