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An anthology of the greatest stories by modern Japanese masters
(including previously overlooked women writers)! Fourteen distinct
voices are assembled in this one-of-a-kind anthology tracing a
nation's changing social landscapes. Internationally renowned
writers like Yasunari Kawabata, Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Junichi
Watanabe are joined by three notable women writers whose works have
not yet received sufficient attention--Kanoko Okamoto, Fumiko
Hayashi and Yumiko Kurahashi. Highlights of this anthology include:
Kafu Nagai's bittersweet portrait of a privileged family's expiring
existence in "The Fox" Ango Sakaguchi's heartening celebration of
postwar chaos in "One Woman and the War" Fumiko Hayashi's unabashed
exploration of female sexuality in "Borneo Diamond" Junichi
Watanabe's chilling assessment of alienation and social dislocation
in "Invitation to Suicide" Gishu Nakayama's look at an out-of-place
prostitute recovering at a hot-spring resort in "Autumn Wind"
Through brilliant, highly-praised translations by Lane Dunlop, The
Best Japanese Short Stories offers fascinating glimpses of a
society embracing change while holding tenaciously onto the past. A
new foreword by Alan Tansman provides insightful back stories about
the authors and the literary backdrop against which they created
these great works of modern world literature.
."" . . And now, dear reader, for your intellectual toilet, here is
a little piece of soap. Well handled, we guarantee it will be
enough. Let us hold this magic stone.""
The poet Francis Ponge (1899-1988) occupied a significant and
unchallenged place in French letters for over fifty years,
attracting the attention and admiration of generations of leading
intellectuals, writers, and painters, a notable feat in France,
where reputations are periodically reassessed and undone with the
arrival of new literary and philosophical schools.
"Soap" occupies a crucial, pivotal position in Ponge's work. Begun
during the German occupation when he was in the Resistance, though
completed two decades later, it determined, according to Ponge, the
form of almost all his postwar writing. With this work, he began to
turn away from the small, perfect poem toward a much more open
form, a kind of prose poem which incorporates a laboratory or
workshop, recounting its own process of coming into being along
with the final result. The outcome is a new form of writing, which
one could call "processual poetry." Ponge's later work, from "Soap"
on, is a very important tool in the questioning and rethinking of
literary genres, of poetry and prose, of what is literature.
There is a blurring of boundaries between "Soap" and soap (which
was hard to come by during the Resistance and is also, of course,
metaphorical for a larger social restitution). "Soap" contains the
sum of Ponge's aesthetics and materialist ethics and his belief in
the supremacy of language as it becomes the object of the text. In
the words of Serge Gavronsky, "this work, perhaps one of the
longest running metaphors in literature, slowly unwinds, bubbles in
verbal inventions, and finally evaporates, leaving the water
slightly troubled, slightly darker, but the hands clean, really
clean. . . . Out of murky literary habits, Ponge has devised a way
of cleaning his text, and through it, man himself, his vocabulary,
and as a consequence, his way of being in the world."
Nagai Kafu was one of the most important Japanese writers of
fiction during the first half of the 20th century. These two works,
which appear in English for the first time, are superb examples of
the author's evocative descriptions of the moods and fancies of
Tokyo.
No modern Japanese writer was more idolized than Shiga Naoya.
"The Paper Door and Other Stories" showcases the concise, delicate
art of this writer who is often called "the god of the Japanese
short story." Doyen of Japanese letters Donald Keene ranks some of
Shiga's stories "among the most brilliant achievements in this
genre by any twentieth-century Japanese writer." Shiga's unique
style is concise and simple, with no unnecessary words. With the
subtlest of gestures, he evokes the fullness of experience.
Lane Dunlop's masterly translation of seventeen of Shiga's
finest stories has provided English readers their first overview of
the author's work. Now back in print, the book is augmented by
Donald Keene's new preface contextualizing Shiga's awesome literary
gifts. Dunlop has chosen stories that aptly represent Shiga's range
and virtuosity. With selections spanning forty years, from the
fable-like "The Little Girl and the Rapeseed Flower" to the
psychologically complex "A Gray Moon," this collection delineates
the development of Shiga's rare genius.
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Soap (Hardcover, New Ed)
Francis Ponge; Translated by Lane Dunlop
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R2,513
Discovery Miles 25 130
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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."" . . And now, dear reader, for your intellectual toilet, here is
a little piece of soap. Well handled, we guarantee it will be
enough. Let us hold this magic stone.""
The poet Francis Ponge (1899-1988) occupied a significant and
unchallenged place in French letters for over fifty years,
attracting the attention and admiration of generations of leading
intellectuals, writers, and painters, a notable feat in France,
where reputations are periodically reassessed and undone with the
arrival of new literary and philosophical schools.
"Soap" occupies a crucial, pivotal position in Ponge's work. Begun
during the German occupation when he was in the Resistance, though
completed two decades later, it determined, according to Ponge, the
form of almost all his postwar writing. With this work, he began to
turn away from the small, perfect poem toward a much more open
form, a kind of prose poem which incorporates a laboratory or
workshop, recounting its own process of coming into being along
with the final result. The outcome is a new form of writing, which
one could call "processual poetry." Ponge's later work, from "Soap"
on, is a very important tool in the questioning and rethinking of
literary genres, of poetry and prose, of what is literature.
There is a blurring of boundaries between "Soap" and soap (which
was hard to come by during the Resistance and is also, of course,
metaphorical for a larger social restitution). "Soap" contains the
sum of Ponge's aesthetics and materialist ethics and his belief in
the supremacy of language as it becomes the object of the text. In
the words of Serge Gavronsky, "this work, perhaps one of the
longest running metaphors in literature, slowly unwinds, bubbles in
verbal inventions, and finally evaporates, leaving the water
slightly troubled, slightly darker, but the hands clean, really
clean. . . . Out of murky literary habits, Ponge has devised a way
of cleaning his text, and through it, man himself, his vocabulary,
and as a consequence, his way of being in the world."
|
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