![]() ![]() Last of all, cut the remaining wire into one-, two-, four-, and six-inch lengths, bending back both ends, and prepare them as hooks for hanging things on the wall.” - Indeed, the most important aspect in being a box man is viewing the world through your slit in your box. The greatest care must be taken when making the observation window. “To construct your box there is no particular procedure to follow. He goes on to provide advice on the ways one can deal with useful objects within one's box - thermos, flashlight, towel, pens, change of clothing. “The most important reason to use the standardized form is that it is hard to distinguish one box from another.” - Here the box man shares a key concept for others who might consider becoming box men: if you want to shed individual identity, go all the way become a box man who cannot in any way be distinguished from other box man become as indistinguishable as humanly possible. I agree completely with Jerome Charyn's statement from his 1974 New York Times review: "The action of the novel seems to take place inside the box, which has become a kind of labyrinth for the box man, a porous, breathing skin." A cardboard box that reaches just to my hips when I put it on over my head.” - The narrator of the tale is a writer who sheds his past identity to become a box man. So, keeping within the spirit of existentialism, I will refrain from generalizations and zero in on specific passages of Kōbō Abe's 1974 one-of-a-kind novel. The core of existentialism is the opposite of abstract theory rather, artists and writers of the existential school tend to focus on a particular individual facing the very human dilemma of living in a world frequently absurd and alienating, a world where two men wait for Godot or a teacher walks the streets of a French town with a sense of nausea. If you are up for existentialism of the oddball variety, The Box Man may count among your all-time favorite novels. Reading this Kōbō Abe novel, I had the feeling I was floating six feet off the ground - reader as artist of the floating world. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977.Īre you up for some weird fiction? I mean REALLY weird fiction. ![]() In 1973, he founded an acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed plays. In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in the film adaptations of The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim. He was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei shishu ("Poems of an unknown poet") and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street"), which established his reputation. He never practised however, giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology.Ībe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities. ![]() He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University. Kōbō Abe (安部 公房 Abe Kōbō), pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer, and inventor. ![]()
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