Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness - Kenzaburō Ōe

I first became aware of Kenzaburō Ōe in the 1980s when I purchased a collection of modern short stories translated from Japanese into English. I was especially impressed with Ōe's contribution to the collection - Aghwee the Sky Monster - the story of a young musical composer haunted by the ghost of his dead child. Like Ōe, the composer's child had been born with brain damage. 

Ōe's son Hikari would influence much of his writing.

After reading Aghwee the Sky Monster, those many years ago, I would go on to read two of Ōe's novels - A Personal Matter and The Silent Cry .

I recently discovered a website which allowed me to download several ebooks by Kenzaburō Ōe and one, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, was put in the queue for my Kindle. This work is a collection of four novellas (or short stories), one of which is Aghwee the Sky Monster.

Also included in the collection - The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away (the story of a man who lies in a hospital bed waiting to die of a liver cancer that he has probably imagined, wearing a pair of underwater goggles covered with dark cellophane), Prize Stock (the strange relationship between a Japanese boy and a captured black American pilot in a Japanese village), and Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (yet another father with a mentally defective son).

The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away is the longest story in the collection, taking up nearly 50% of the book. It's a difficult read that I had a hard time getting my head around. I found the last three stories less difficult (and more enjoyable) - finding Aghwee the Sky Monster even better than I remembered.

It's been about 40 years since I last read  A Personal Matter and The Silent Cry, so those two are due for a re-read. Most likely they'll make it into the June reading queue.