I'm glad I picked up this collection of 4 stories by Kenzaburo Oe, but I think his writing just isn't for me - it's so raw that it's gruesome/vulgar and it's a bit past what I prefer to handle. But I DID really like discovering the themes embedded within Oe's writing: the parallel between the Japanese people realizing at the end of WWII that their god-like emperor was but human and a son realizing the same about his father, and how people warp reality to make life easier to deal with. I keep having to remind myself that just because someone's won the Nobel Prize for Literature doesn't mean you have to like 'em!
------
"And so began that comic and pathetic journey."