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Restless Incarnation

Like most novelists, Mishima writes principally about himself. In each volume of his Sea of Fertility tetralogy, which shines ever more obviously as one of the great works of… More

Through Western Eyes

Mishima was a very strange Japanese. His ritual suicide, his final call to cast off Western influences and return to traditional Japanese values, including veneration of the emperor, has… More

Life and Deaths

ALAN ADELSON: In Regions of the Great Heresy, Jerzy Ficowski gives us this eloquent description of Bruno Schulz’s last days:The foreboding that had haunted Schulz his entire life was… More

Omniscient Omnivore

Gertrude Stein was well aware of all of this. She was a scientist of language and of thought and music—harmony and melody—in an uncanny way. Words like omniscient and… More

Performance Art

Here’s a theory—or elements of a theory—of the comic. In this theory, the comic contains or embraces six elements. The first is the quality of deadpan, of impassivity; for… More

Being in Her

That’s what’s so wonderful when you immerse yourself in the tide of this novel. It’s somewhat like listening to a piece of music by Philip Glass or John Adams… More

Deranged Punctilio

“I lay inert on the bed and it took three women to put on my trousers. They didn’t seem to take much interest in my private parts, which to… More

With Fire and Bare Hands

How do we speak to you who is our voice and still now. Too patient to laugh at us but smiling yes yes and the glass in your hand your steepled knee that elegant rag of… More