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A review by worm_food
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
2.0
I think the book offers a very apt summary of Mishima's headspace near its end: a paragraph where Noboru thinks, as he falls asleep in his - now - unlocked room: "Is there no way I can remain in the room and at the same time be out in the hall locking the door?"
I am not the first to say that this book is the work of a very self-punishing and conflicted man, but it's very very interesting to read and feel that repression be so palpable, so intense in every chapter. A man who is so intent on hanging on his ethical beliefs he ends up having to do all the heavy lifting for them, an ideology and conservativism for the sake of ideology itself, a mindset that becomes enslaving more than freeing that leads the artist and the romantic to his untimely death, and then insists over and over that it was not only noble but deserved. The way he writes has the erratic back and forth of a radicalised youth who is convinced that his extremist views are the only right way to think, and one that meets any version of outside influence as brainwashing without being able to tell you or to even consider why it's right or wrong. The unlocked door should be a good thing, but it's seen as an attempt to bribe and bait him - and yet he resented his mother and housekeepr for locking his door for their own reasons. The self imposed ideology of it all is mind boggling for its existence THRU its self awareness.
A curious mix of a DEEP existential dread that comes from the old heroic ideal that glory is only found in dying before you rot, and a machoism-y Andrew Tate adjacent mentality that places superiority in scorn of anything gentle and by extent, anything you deem beneath you. Fascinating to read albeit insufferable in its conclusions.
I am not the first to say that this book is the work of a very self-punishing and conflicted man, but it's very very interesting to read and feel that repression be so palpable, so intense in every chapter. A man who is so intent on hanging on his ethical beliefs he ends up having to do all the heavy lifting for them, an ideology and conservativism for the sake of ideology itself, a mindset that becomes enslaving more than freeing that leads the artist and the romantic to his untimely death, and then insists over and over that it was not only noble but deserved. The way he writes has the erratic back and forth of a radicalised youth who is convinced that his extremist views are the only right way to think, and one that meets any version of outside influence as brainwashing without being able to tell you or to even consider why it's right or wrong. The unlocked door should be a good thing, but it's seen as an attempt to bribe and bait him - and yet he resented his mother and housekeepr for locking his door for their own reasons. The self imposed ideology of it all is mind boggling for its existence THRU its self awareness.
A curious mix of a DEEP existential dread that comes from the old heroic ideal that glory is only found in dying before you rot, and a machoism-y Andrew Tate adjacent mentality that places superiority in scorn of anything gentle and by extent, anything you deem beneath you. Fascinating to read albeit insufferable in its conclusions.