Funnily, I've recently been reading some Dazai as well, most relevantly The Flowers of Buffoonery, which is (for those who haven't read it) a short novel about Yozo Oba as he recovers from the same lover's suicide described in that excerpt from No Longer Human. It's worth checking out; in certain ways it features as much trust as I've seen an author show his audience, and himself.
As far as I know it's just those two, but obviously there's a lot of his fiction that hasn't been translated yet. It's set over the course of two days (I think) as he recovers after being fished out of the water after the lover's suicide; most of the action consists of his friends trying to cheer him up while he pretends not to be alienated from them. It feels like a kind of sketch of a few of the themes for the longer and more substantial No Longer Human.
It's most obvious difference from No Longer Human is that the narration is not performed by Yozo, but handled by Dazai writing in his own voice, periodically halting the action to bemoan what a poor job he's doing of writing it up and to commit himself to improving before the novel is finished. Somehow the ironic mode of the narration and the sincere pathos of the events narrated don't end up at cross purposes; it's a very impressive piece of writing.
Funnily, I've recently been reading some Dazai as well, most relevantly The Flowers of Buffoonery, which is (for those who haven't read it) a short novel about Yozo Oba as he recovers from the same lover's suicide described in that excerpt from No Longer Human. It's worth checking out; in certain ways it features as much trust as I've seen an author show his audience, and himself.
Huh! I didn’t even know there were other Yozo novels. I’ll have to check that one out
As far as I know it's just those two, but obviously there's a lot of his fiction that hasn't been translated yet. It's set over the course of two days (I think) as he recovers after being fished out of the water after the lover's suicide; most of the action consists of his friends trying to cheer him up while he pretends not to be alienated from them. It feels like a kind of sketch of a few of the themes for the longer and more substantial No Longer Human.
It's most obvious difference from No Longer Human is that the narration is not performed by Yozo, but handled by Dazai writing in his own voice, periodically halting the action to bemoan what a poor job he's doing of writing it up and to commit himself to improving before the novel is finished. Somehow the ironic mode of the narration and the sincere pathos of the events narrated don't end up at cross purposes; it's a very impressive piece of writing.