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Absurd Novels and the Human Predicament
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13702 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1988 |
1,280 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe is the subject of THE WORLD & I's book excerpt and commentary this month. There can be little doubt that Abe is both a popular and powerful writer whose absurdist novels appeal to the imagination. Yet why do such absurd plots capture our attention as fully and as forcefully as they do?
Absurdist, even surrealist, novels have a distinguished history of critical success. Franz Kafka's The Trial, The Castle, and The Metamorphosis marked the modern beginnings of the genre. The plays of Samuel Beckett heralded another stage in the absurdist literature. Abe, still an active novelist, occupies an important place in the absurdist pantheon.
We are often told that the reader can bring his own meaning to absurdist novels. For instance, some find in The Trial a foreshadowing of Nazi justice, in which guilt is not related to an offense but simply is a fact of life for the unlucky accused. But it is not unusual that a work of art can be interpreted in more than one way. Surely there are numerous competing interpretations of Hamlet. The role of the reader in interpretation can hardly be the distinguishing feature of the absurdist novel, even though there are fewer constraints on interpretation in such works. Moreover, the central image of The Ark Sakura--an ark that can go nowhere and escape nothing--an escape from nuclear holocaust, is merely the dressing for whatever message or lack of message the novel portends.
The Ark Sakura is clearly realistic in its descriptive detail. Consider Abe's detailed treatment of the eupcaccia. Yet we cannot find the essence of the genre in its endless realistic detail. Hardy and
... (1997 of 7343 Characters)
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