Self Portraits
by Osamu Dazai
195 Members (4.48)
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""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 estab- lishment, 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 show more 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 Flowers of Buffoonery"-- show lessTags
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Japanese Literature
230 works; 40 members
Author Information
139+ Works 7,775 Members
Born into a near-aristocratic family whose declining world he depicts in The Setting Sun (1947), Dazai had the means to become an accomplished dilettante and rake. Around 1933 he began to think seriously about writing, but his life was complicated by drug addiction, a string of affairs, and two attempts at suicide. The end of the war brought a show more change in Dazai, and he produced his finest works, even though his own life was ending because of alcoholism and tuberculosis. The darkness of his works reveals his tortured existence, which he ended by suicide. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Self Portraits
- Original title
- Tanpenshu
- Original publication date
- 1991
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 895.6344 — Literature & rhetoric Asian Literature Literatures of East and Southeast Asia Japanese Japanese fiction Meiji/Taishō periods 1868–1945 1912–1945
- LCC
- PL825 .A8 .A25 — Language and Literature Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania Languages of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania Japanese language and literature Japanese literature Individual authors and works
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 195
- Popularity
- 167,344
- Rating
- (4.48)
- Languages
- Dutch, English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 2
