About this title: Oe's most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times "close to a perfect novel." In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child? Bird, the protagonist, is a young man of 27 with antisocial tendencies who more than once in his life, when confronted with a critical problem, has "cast himself adrift on a sea of whisky like a besotted Robinson Crusoe." But he has never faced a crisis as personal or grave as the prospect of life imprisonment in the cage of his newborn ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Book of the Month Club
Description: Very Good. B000NWHP44 **Softcover**--Exactly as pictured--EXACT ISBN MATCH--cover has shelf wear at tips of corners and minor cover crease or curl, minor Spine Creasing, No personalizations, No marks in the text at all. Tight and well bound. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780802150615ISBN:0802150616
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. A former library book with the usual identifiers. -, Trade PaperBack, Very Good / read more
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: C. E. Tuttle, Tokyo
Date Published: 1969
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Text in English, Japanese. 214 p. 19 cm. Good plus condition. No hand-writing or marks inside. Remainder mark on bottom of book. Average wear to covers and spine including scratches, one crease, bumped corners. Nice copy. Translation of: Kojinteki na taiken. read more
Description: As New. 1995 Book-Of-the-month Club. New and evidently unread, square and solid, cover clean and shiny, all-around perfect shape--you'll shimmy merrily when this book gets to you! ! ! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780802150615ISBN:0802150616
Description: Near-Fine. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Near-fine condition. NO remainder marks or clippings. Tight spine, bright pages. NO writing, marks or tears inside book. 165 pages. Winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. Synopsis Oe's most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times close to a perfect novel. In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child? Bird, the protagonist ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 1994-01-13
ISBN-13:9780802150615ISBN:0802150616
Description: Very Good. Very Good Condition. Binding tight, pages clean. Slight wear to cover. Different cover (all white, with black picture and writing). Lovely copy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"Yes, the main character is totally a wimp. I feel sorry for his wife, laying in the hospital not knowing what's going on. The main character, Bird is immature. He's trying to escape from his problems through having an affair and alcohol. I sympathize more for his baby lying in the hospital fighting to survive while his father hopes he dies because he can't deal with the responsibility of a child with a physical deformity. But these are the things that make this book good. It's about how this boy becomes closer to being a man. The ending comes too quick, too neatly, but other than that it's a brilliant look at a troubled and flawed character."
"Don't recommend this book to anyone who needs to like the main character. It's hard to imagine anyone less likable than Bird - within hours of learning that his newborn son has a brain injury and will either die or grow up severely handicapped, he's getting smashed with his high-school-buddy-turned-sometimes-mistress. Over the course of the next few days we follow Bird as he vaguely tries to pass off his problem to a succession of relatives, friends, and doctors, all of whom are hoping (with various degrees of secrecy) for an easy resolution in which the baby withers away on its own.
The more I get acquainted with Oe, the more I like him. He's one of the few writers I know who can actually do unflinching honesty."
"Amazingly tight existentialist story about moral choices. Really my only complaint has to do with the last 3-4 pages, and it's hard to talk about those pages in any specific detail without giving away the book's ending. I was totally on board up to and including the moment in which Bird makes his choice, but I could have lived without the "flash forward" scene that came next, and revealed the repercussions of that choice. The choice itself seemed to be the thing that was important, a choice made under the full weight of its possible implications. So I would've preferred to see the story end at that moment of action. I can see how certain readers would find that unsatisfying, as if the story's ultimate outcome had been left hanging, but I felt like that ultimate outcome was sort of beside the point, really. Stylistically, too, those last 3-4 pages felt a bit like one of those summing-things-up movie moments (the final graveyard scene of 'Saving Private Ryan,' for instance).
But that's a relatively small quibble over a book that was otherwise completely satisfying. In a lot of books where the protagonist faces a tough existentialist choice, it's all too obvious what choice that protagonist will make, but here the tension over his decision was sustained right up until that final moment of action.
I might even teach this book at some point in the future, since I think it would give students a lot to mull over and discuss, both in the story's structure and its meaning."
"This exploration of one man's struggle with his unwanted child took my breathe away at least three times during the couse of reading the book. I highly recommend it. Not light fare, this delves into guilt, desire, and the escapist tendencies fostered (perhaps) by our modern society, where one's fate can appear to be a matter of choice."
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