The Beautiful and the Grotesque

I'll admit some of these aren't prime examples of the short story as a whole. However, many of them are which is saying something; and even when they're not the writing is so good they're still worthwhile reading. The things he mentions as one liners without any further explanation or exploration are better than many things people construct whole stories around. (You know who I'm talking about.) He has the sort of easiness with his writing that make short stories really captivating. The different eras and themes he covers are incredible. The perspective he gives in his writing is nothing short of exemplary if you are willing to try to understand his characters half as well as he has constructed them. Like a Japanese Chekhov but more dexterous. This is probably rambling too much, but the book is a truthful look at a society and you should read it.My only complaint is the last story. It drags a little and is unfinished. Still 5 stars.

As would be expected, this is an excellent collection of stories by the author of "Rashomon"; however, prospective buyers ought to be aware that this is a reissue of an older collection issued by Liveright entitled "Exotic Japanese Stories".

If you've read your Japanese Lit., you'll know that the time this author was active was one of great political and intellectual tumult.At the time the Japanese were wrestling with Western rationalism, technologies, politics and all other manner of East meets West perplexities. These conflicts were writ large upon the pages of written word and the stories/styles of story-telling from the period tend to have a certain texture that is familiar once one has read two or three authors of the time.This partly due to the fact that the authors are barely able to escape their pedantic tendencies as they set out to make their points through fiction; another part is, I suspect, that the art of story-telling was undergoing a transition that was directly affected by the introduction of Western ideas onto Eastern methods.This collection of stories makes for a surprisingly heavy labor of love. It is a book I started at home and took with me on a transcontinental aeroplane journey in the hope that it would make good in-flight fodder. I'm not sure what it says that I was unable to finish the book on either leg of the trip when I normally am finished with a book of this length in the allotted time.Let us say that this book is decidedly not a page-turner. It has its fascinations, to be sure, but I found myself both unwilling to skip parts of it and unwilling to read them. While I do like some of the author's ideas, I struggle with the language. This is doubtless partly the fault of the translator, whose rather plodding preface presages the difficult literary journey to come. It is also partly due to the style of this author's writing which likely does not lend itself well to a western translation.I recommend this book only because it has some stories in it that one should like to read; although I wonder if I will ever get to them all.

Great stories by an enigmatic writer.