Stained Glass Elegies: Stories (Revived Modern Classic)

Rating:
Summary: As eloquent and powerful as anthing you'll ever read.
Review: This is a collection of short stories spanning a twenty year period from the late 50's to the late 70's, and in these stories we come across most of Endo's favourite themes - martyrs of Christianity in Japan, the stories of those who apostatized (gave up their religion for fear of torture and persecution), Endo's own prolonged illness and his fear of suffering, and his own religious uncertainty.These themes sound altogether pretty depressing, and yet when you read his writing, the crisp, clear style seems so effortless that you might think,like I did, that you could gladly read anything he wrote, on any topic no matter how turgid. His ability to contrast the depth of one person's belief with the weakness and uncertainty of another's is genuinely masterly. I think he manages to do this so well because he is able to comprehend both types perfectly, and he clearly does not favour one over the other. His message is ultimately humanist - that we are none of us perfect, n! either those who seek perfection nor those who give up, knowing perfection cannot be achieved, neither those who face fear and suffering nor those who run from it, and furthermore that the idea of sin should not be used by one person to chastise another, but rather to help guide each of us in our own lives. Endo is able to conjure up powerful emotion in only a few pages, as he does recounting his own feelings of guilt towards his mother in one story, or his joy at a reunion with some childhood friends, or the ambiguous guilt of the 'kakure' apostates on a small island off Kyushu. Though I cringe to admit it, I honestly thought on reading these stories 'If only I could write like this!'