🍃🌿🌱🐞 Stacy's Idea Garden 🐞🌱🌿🍃

This book was originally written in 1948, published for western audiences in 1973, amd them re-published as a bright-pink paperback in 2001 by New Directions Publishing. Thanks to it’s aesthetically interesting cover design, it became trendy on social media, so I read it while stuck in bed with COVID.

This book is really bad. It’s not boring, I definitely kept reading it, but the immaturity of the author is glaring. The male protagonist is laughably pathetic. He is rightfully shunned by society for taking advantage of every woman he’s ever met. He’s rightfully restricted by his guardians and carers because he shows such incredibly little care for all of the people around him. I have my faults, but could never imagine a person to have such a lack of introspection. It is unbelievable to me that it’s possible to make it into one’s 40s and still be as immature and stupid as the protagonist is.

I have nothing positive to say about neither the character nor the author. I hated reading reviews where young men were given this book by a young woman in their lives with the words “Yozo reminds me of you”. We should not glamourize modeling ourselves after destructive weakness like this.

For a similar exploration of being a social outcast and the way this effects you, or depression and depersonalization, I’d recommend any one of:

• The Bell Jar by Plath
• A Personal Matter by Oē
• Invisible Man by Ellison

Other reviewers describe this as being a “genuine portrayal of depression” and self-destructive behavior. Definitely not. I found the character to be somewhat like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, but without any drive or luxury or glamour. Yuza is a narcissist.

We don’t get to choose where we came from or what others do to us, but we always have some choice in the way we respond. I think that Yuza/Dazai both failed to respond adequately. At some point, a string of bad luck reveals a pattern of bad choices.

Review: 0/5 stars. Nothing about this story is worth telling. This isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read but it kind of comes close.