Rating: 
Summary: Well Worth the Read
Review:
Bird is one of the most selfish characters I have encountered in a book. By the time his wife makes an appearance in chapter eight, she says what the reader already knows, that he never thinks of anyone but himself. Set in Japan in the aftermath of World War II, and under the ongoing preoccupation of the nuclear arms build up of the 1960s, A Personal Matter tells the story of Bird, a 20 something Japanese man who has spent his life running from problems, trying to avoid stress and dreaming of an easy life. A recovered alcoholic, he teaches university prep classes, dreams of exploring Africa, has an unsatisfying marriage and is faced with the birth of a deformed baby. The Personal Matter deals with whether the baby should be cared for and allowed to live, with the possibility that he could live a vegetable like existence or have a limited mentality-- thus interfering with Bird's quest for a life he does not have, or whether he should be quietly neglected and allowed to die in a hospital. Bird both agonizes and debates the matter, often in the arms of his lover, a former student who easily gives in to his selfishness while at the same time using it for her own ends.
I think the book is exceptional. The author writes with so much feeling that you get to know Bird and Himiko, his lover, closely enough that you are both repulsed by and feel for them throughout the story. The book deals with human limitations, agony, and the price of selfishness so well that the differences in culture, custom and language (not knowing Japanese I read a translated edition); become less important, and you find yourself reading about people that you could know, or know about, today. We might even see ourselves in the pages.
While I enjoyed the entire book, the final two chapters were worth its price. Compelling and well written they present a redemption so powerful, and a resolution so satisfying that when I finished I was left wanting more.
Rating: 
Summary: a beautifully vivid portrait of a man in crisis
Review: A Personal Matter is a powerful, engrossing read. The language (in English translation), the connections, the descriptions, and the characterizations are taut and satisfying. With the exception of a few scenes and transitions which are palpably less crisp than others, the story sparks with brilliance and urgency. Oe neither shades his protagonist from the blinding light of reality and human dilemma nor indulges in superfluous philosophizing. The narrative is blissfully clean and existential. Highly recommended; a tonic for almost any imaginable mood.
Rating:
Summary: OE, O Yeah! Emotions jumping out of print
Review: I have never seen any body writing emotions so vividly that it touches, holds and shakes the reader. It gives a snap shot of being human. Greed, Guilt, Temptation, Yeilding into temptation, Redemtption. It is all there.The hero is an intellect who loved his drinks once. His wife gives birth to an abnormal child. Every one including the Doctor, his Mother in Law wants him to let the child die. The whole saga is his journey into the decision. He meets people from his past (School friend, Father in Law) and from the future - his students, who influence the decision. You need to read it to live the author's words. Oe is brilliant. I vote with the guys who decide the Noble Prize
Rating:
Summary: The raw experience of an interesting Bird
Review: In A PERSONAL MATTER the two characters Himiko and Bird come startlingly to life through the writers artistry and the reader is driven on by wanting to know what is going to happen to them. The writing is so carefully wrought that we wish not to miss a word - eg, And hadn't the question seeped from a vault which had opened in his own brain, pickled in the vinegar of his grief and lack of sleep? p. 27 eg, He found himself caught in the claws of a formidable lobster of fatigue. p. 109 eg, She too was heading for the North Pole of disgruntlement. p 153. Structurally the events occur over a period of a few days and the story ends with a satisfactory resolution. It is a deeply satisfying read, and an artistic triumph. It evokes not only intellectually and morally challenging ideas, but splatters the work with a complex mosaic of feelings, including a weird eroticism as Bird and Himiko search for some kind of connection and meaning through physical congress, as well as revulsion, fear, horror, disgust ( a student kneels to smell Bird's vomit disgorged in a classroom to get evidence of Bird's irresponsibility towards his duty as a teacher) and many other feelings. Through a microscopic examination of one person in one highly charged crisis situation Mr Oe may be speaking for a post War world. A wonderful read.
Rating:
Summary: a great novel
Review: Japan has lost the power to connect the principle or theory and reality. I think literature's value is in making those connections. That's the mission of literature. Morals are significant. -Kenzaburo Oe Kenzaburo Oe is probably the most highly regarded of Japan's post-war novelists and A Personal Matter is certainly his best known book. It is the harrowing, semi-autobiographical story of a parent's worst nightmare and of a brutal moral dilemma. As the novel opens, the twenty-something protagonist, whose immaturity is reflected in the fact that he retains his boyhood nickname of Bird, anxiously awaits the birth of his first child, but dreams of escaping his mundane domestic life in Japan and traveling instead to Africa. When Bird's son is born with a herniated brain--one doctor nervously giggles that it looks like he has two heads--he faces a choice between starving the child to death or financing exorbitantly expensive surgery with little chance of success. Even a successful operation is likely to cause significant brain damage. Overwhelmed, Bird seeks to avoid his responsibilities by twittering--like his namesake--between alcohol, an old girlfriend and his African fantasies, avoiding his job, his wife, his child and most of all, the decisions which need to be made. Just hours after finally delivering the child to a back alley abortionist who will kill him and preparing to use the money he has saved up not on the prospective surgical procedures, but to run away to Africa with his girlfriend, Bird has an epiphany in a gay bar and, at last, determines to grow up and accept the mantle of responsibility that he has always sought to avoid. The story ends with the baby having been successfully operated on, though his future mental development remains in doubt, and with Bird's father-in-law telling him that his childish nickname is no longer appropriate because he is a changed man. It is an open secret that the Nobel Prize has become little more than a politically correct constituency plum in recent years, so the prospect of reading a novel by an eminent left-wing Japanese novelist honestly filled me with dread. I was totally unprepared for this fierce, beautiful passion play and was pleasantly surprised by the stark, noirish prose style of Oe's writing. The brutally direct sentences of this brief novel present an unforgettable portrait of a man wrestling with a stark moral choice, one that lies at the center of much of our own politics, but which is seldom faced honestly. The fact that Oe's own son was born with a herniated brain only serves to add another layer of tension to an already unbearably tense tale. When Bird chooses life and himself becomes a man it is truly one of the most moving and gratifying moments of spiritual triumph in all of literature. Bird emerges as a heroic but very human figure. I can't imagine any reader being unaffected by this book; in fact, I can easily imagine readers being haunted by it. This is a great novel. GRADE: A+
Rating:
Summary: A dark, deep, and superbly narrated existential story
Review: Kenzaburo Oe tells the story of Bird (name of the main character)living in modern Japan. The story is how Bird deals with the reality, of being the father of a brain damaged child. Oe takes us into a dark journey of how Bird deals with this new reality. Bird has to face the problem of "How do I Act?" in a modern society lacking moral or guiding principles. Many incidents in Bird's life had no meaning - drinking the entire summer or having sex. Faced with the new reality, Bird tries to escape from it. He doesn't want the child to become a permanent reality of his life. He faces the choice of either killing the newborn or risking an operation (which might not restore the brain damage). Whatever choice Bird makes, he has to deal with the responsibility of making the choice. Instead of running away from the problem - Bird finally accepts his responsibility of being father of brain-damaged child. A dark, deep, and superbly told existential story.
Rating:
Summary: Is moral responsibility important if you have no morality?
Review: Kenzaburo Oe was born in 1935, and so he lived through World War II as a child in Imperialist Japan. This puts him in a position that few Americans can truly understand. For 10 years, he was taught that the Emperor was God, and the gloy of the Empire was all that mattered. And suddenly, in the flash of two Atomic bombs, that ended. The entire moral system that a generation of people were raised on collapsed. He is to accept the fine, Liberal values of the West, but on what foundation do they rest? In short, his generation was robbed of it's ethical heritage. The Emperor was human. The morality of the West can only be seen in the eyes of someone who witnessed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Right and wrong never had any true meaning, and the post WWII generation had to search it out for itself. This ethical aimlessness manifests itself in Oe most important and widely read work, A Personal Matter. Bird, the Japanese everyman of the post-WWII generation, is the father of a new born infant who has a horrible birth defect. At great personal expense, he can allow the child to be operated upon, however, there is very little chance of success, and the child will most likely become severely retarded. Or else he can allow the child to starve on a diet of sugar water, under the doctor's watchful eyes. It is a moral question that a man without morality must answer. This leads Bird on a journey through terror and vice. In absence of any higher values to turn to, Bird finds solace in humiliating sex, booze, and dreams of escape to Africa. I really cannot stress how underrated this novel is in America. Frankly, I had never heard of it until I saw it at a used book store. Oe won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1994, an honor which is shamefully overlooked in America. A Personal Matter is an intensely powerful, philosophical journey that offers more to modern man bleak Nihilism. Oe, raised without morality, forced to discover the ethics of the world on his own, manages to provide use with a beautiful vision of hope for man.
Rating:
Summary: A Harrowing Tale About Personal Choices
Review: Nobel prize-winning novelist Kenzaburo Oe's best known book is a remarkable and intimate journey through the maze of ethics, fatherhood, and responsibility. The protagonist Bird is a dreamer; he dreams of going to Africa, of undemanding love, of a perfect son - none of which are within his grasp. His child is born with a herniated brain, and his wife's obstetrician is already talking excitedly about an autopsy as the baby, a boy, continues to live. This stubborn will to live, and Bird's responsibility to decide his son's fate, drives Bird deep into denial. If he doesn't do anything, then the baby might die naturally, and Bird will be free of the deformity that threatens to reflect ill on him as a man and husband. But his wife wants their child to survive; she wants to name him, to love him. And Bird begins to question his first inclinations. His touching relationship with his mistress Himiko only reinforces his sense of inadequacy and cowardice - until, that is, he begins to accept life as it is. This stark, haunting novel leaves the reader with a deep sense of both loss and hope, although the latter is more, in Bird's mind, "forbearance." Oe's honest treatment of this difficult subject matter is sensitive and skilled, understated in a way that emphasizes the magnitude of what Bird faces. John Nathan's translation provides smooth, beautifully-rendered prose. The subject matter may be too depressing for some readers but should appeal to those interested in quality literature. The issues Oe tackles are significant, and his characters, deeply human. A PERSONAL MATTER is an unforgettable novel not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: A Harrowing Tale About Personal Choices
Review: Nobel prize-winning novelist Kenzaburo Oe's best known book is a remarkable and intimate journey through the maze of ethics, fatherhood, and responsibility. The protagonist Bird is a dreamer; he dreams of going to Africa, of undemanding love, of a perfect son - none of which are within his grasp. His child is born with a herniated brain, and his wife's obstetrician is already talking excitedly about an autopsy as the baby, a boy, continues to live. This stubborn will to live, and Bird's responsibility to decide his son's fate, drives Bird deep into denial. If he doesn't do anything, then the baby might die naturally, and Bird will be free of the deformity that threatens to reflect ill on him as a man and husband. But his wife wants their child to survive; she wants to name him, to love him. And Bird begins to question his first inclinations. His touching relationship with his mistress Himiko only reinforces his sense of inadequacy and cowardice - until, that is, he begins to accept life as it is. This stark, haunting novel leaves the reader with a deep sense of both loss and hope, although the latter is more, in Bird's mind, "forbearance." Oe's honest treatment of this difficult subject matter is sensitive and skilled, understated in a way that emphasizes the magnitude of what Bird faces. John Nathan's translation provides smooth, beautifully-rendered prose. The subject matter may be too depressing for some readers but should appeal to those interested in quality literature. The issues Oe tackles are significant, and his characters, deeply human. A PERSONAL MATTER is an unforgettable novel not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: *thump*
Review: Oh my, but this book is not light reading. Don't let its deceptive slimness fool you - every page is somewhat similar to being smashed in the head with a shovel. After reading Oe's description of Tokyo, you will no longer be afraid of Hell. Were this book converted into a movie, every single set of this movie would be coloured in dark shades of brown, and it would be raining in every single scene. This hellish vision makes the perfect setting for the hellish torment of Bird, the hapless protagonist. It is made all the worse because Bird is truly a man alone - out of all the characters in the entire book, he is the only one who could, under more fortunate circumstances, be capable of love. (Not even Himiko, the true woman of his life, is capable of love, which makes the desperate screaming need for her that Bird has all the more poignant.) The ending, like many have already commented, is indeed very abrupt and seems like an overly glib and easy solution to the painstakingly drawn emotional struggle that almost kills Bird. However, when you think about it, you see that this solution "solved" nothing - am I to believe that life with a hateful wife, a domineering mother-in-law, a condescending father-in-law and an invalid infant are in any way "good"? No, in a situation like Bird's there really is no way out. And that is precisely what the book is about - in some situations, there just -isn't- a way out, and the only difference between people when they receive such blows from life lies in how they take them.
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