A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe

"'You're right about this being limited to me, it's entirely a personal matter. But with some personal experiences that lead you way into a cave by yourself, you must eventually come to a side tunnel or something that opens on a truth that concerns not just yourself by everyone... But what I'm experiencing personally now is like digging a vertical mine shaft in isolation, it goes straight down to a hopless depth and never opens on anybody else's world"' (p. 155).

Bird dreams of Africa, a continent that he has always wanted to go to; however, the 27-year old Bird is now the head of a family, and a soon-to-be, first time father. Africa the continent is out of reach, but it manifests itself in the everyday of Bird's daily existence through metaphors and similes: "... Bird stared for an instant at the numberless antholes in the ebonite receiver" (p. 10); Africa seems to seep out of Bird's subjective experience.

Finally, the baby boy is born, but is born with a brain hernia, a monster with two heads. With this, a crisis forces its way into his life--what is he to do, confronted with this burden, this monster that is his son? Does he forego responsibility and wait for its eventual death? Does he surreptitiously speed it along? Does he fight bravely for the life of his son?

During this crisis, Bird finds an old drinking buddy, the widowed Himiko--her husband had taken his own life in their room. She thinks about pluralistic universes, a range of possible pasts, presents, and futures; in her pluralistic universes she is able to find consolation and run away from her present. In her he finds a sympathetic friend, and he waits for the news of the baby's death with her in her bed. Once the baby dies, the two escapees plan to travel together to Africa, cutting away their painful ties to Japan.

And then the moment of truth, after the baby, despite all probability, survives, and they send it away to a black market doctor, an infanticide without dirtying their hands: Bird, at a bar with Himiko, stares "dumbly into space" and thinks: "What was he trying to protect from that monster of a baby that he must run so hard and so shamelessly? What was it in himself he was so frantic to defend? The answer was horrifying--nothing! Zero!" (p. 209). Bird, only when confronted with the nothingness of existence then chooses to accept responsibility for the baby. (I feel that this can be expanded, wasn't sure what Oe was thinking here.)

Final off-topic note: the first few pages of the novel is amazing.

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