Includes bibliographical references (pages [303-308]).
Contents:
After the thread, before the thread -- Hell screens -- Repetition -- Jack the Ripper's bedroom -- A twice-told tale -- The yellow Christ -- After the war, before the war -- The exorcists -- After the disaster, before the disaster -- "Saint Kappa" -- The spectres of Christ -- After the fact, before the fact -- Bare bones.
Summary:
Haunting and evocative, brutal and surreal, these twelve connected tales evoke the life of the Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), whose short story "In the Grove" served as an inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's famous film Rashōmon, and whose narrative use of multiple perspectives and different versions of a single event influenced generations of storytellers. Writing out of his own obsession with Akutagawa, David Peace delves into the known facts and events of the writer's life and inner world--birth to a mother who was mentally ill and a father who died shortly thereafter; his own battles with mental illness; his complicated reaction to the beginnings of modernization and Westernization of Japan; his short but prolific writing career; his suicide at the age of thirty-five--and creates a stunningly atmospheric and deeply moving fiction that tells its own story of a singularly brilliant mind.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.