Sign-In
Cart
Self-Portraits: Stories
Paperback
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher Price: $15.95
ISBN13: 9780811232265
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: Feb 6 2024
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.20 Depth: 7.80
Language: English
Art dies the moment it acquires authority. So said Japan's quintessential rebel writer Osamu Dazai, who, disgusted with the hypocrisy of every kind of establishment, from the nation's obsolete aristocracy to its posturing, warmongering generals, went his own way, even when that meant his death--and the death of others. Faced with pressure to conform, he declared his individuality to the world--in all its self-involved, self-conscious, and self-hating glory. Art, he wrote, is 'I.'
In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai's life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing. And that has made him a hero to generations of readers who see laid bare, in his works, the painful, impossible contradictions inherent in the universal commandment of social life--fit in and do as you are told--as well as the possibility, however desperate, of defiance.
Long out of print, these stories will be a revelation to the legions of new fans of No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, and The Flowers of Buffoonery.
Also from
Dazai, Osamu
Run! Melos! 【Knowledge Graded Readers Level 2】: （English Edition）
Dazai, Osamu
Paperback
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Agee, Joel
Musil, Robert
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Paperback