Define Books As The Box Man
Original Title: | 箱男 [Hako otoko] |
ISBN: | 0375726519 (ISBN13: 9780375726514) |
Edition Language: | English URL https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/197/the-box-man-by-kobo-abe/ |
Setting: | Japan |
Kōbō Abe
Paperback | Pages: 178 pages Rating: 3.66 | 4107 Users | 348 Reviews
Narration During Books The Box Man
Kobo Abe, the internationally acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes, combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett.In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity.
Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.
Present Appertaining To Books The Box Man
Title | : | The Box Man |
Author | : | Kōbō Abe |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 178 pages |
Published | : | 2001 by Vintage (first published 1973) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Japan. Asian Literature. Japanese Literature. Literature. Asia |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Box Man
Ratings: 3.66 From 4107 Users | 348 ReviewsComment On Appertaining To Books The Box Man
This novel messes with your head. Really.As far as Kobo goes, I prefered Woman in the Dunes for pure entertainment, but the Box Man goes into uncharted territory (whereas Woman in the Dunes grasps at fairly traditional existentialism, albeit from a unique perspective)Who is the Box Man? Is he one? Two? Three? Everyone? You could read this book a thousand times and still not unravel the mystery. I, of course, have my own opinion, but the beauty of this book is that you just can't stop trying toThis is possibly Abe's craziest book, which is really saying something. Not necessarily best, as book:Secret Rendezvous|10004] is crazy AND highly coherent, but the ways in which this is flirts with incoherency are extremely interesting. It's got the odd, broken time-frame diary format of Rendezvous but in actually a more ambiguous and complex manner, while the actual story has been stripped back to what first seems sheer bizarre simplicity, but then becomes an echo chamber of variations. There
Abe is a writer who takes one really odd, central conceit or image, in this case, that of a derelict who lives his life inside a cardboard box, and builds a dark, disorienting world out of it. There are bizarre shifts in time, identity and perspective as the box man sort of disintegrates and becomes whatever or whoever he sees around him. Much like 'Woman in the Dunes' which I thought was much better, Abe makes these absurd scenarios bleed outward and infect everything around them. Kind of like
A Strange, Dry, Inhuman Book: Just the Kind of Thing I Like[Note: these are brief notes. If you're intrigued by this book I have a longer essay, with information about the very rare catalog of Abe's own street photography, here: writingwithimages.com/4-6-kobo-abe-th...]"Box men" are homeless men who walk around inside cardboard boxes. The boxes are fitted out with viewing portholes, little shelves, hooks, and supplies. Several things make this book odd, as well as bitter, misogynistic, and
Good grief! If possible, I would have given this thing a negative rating ... What an atrociously boring book .. His "the woman in the dunes" was equally boring, but at least it had a story line that you could decipher in between the lines ... "The box man" has nothing ... If I ask you to write 170 pages of whatever comes to your mind about yourself wandering around with an oversized box on your head, you would probably write a far more entertaining book than this... I guess this is what Kobo Abe
Damn--J-Lit Binge #11: The Box Man by Kobo Abe.This is another masterpiece from Kobo Abe. In its sheer metafictional ingenuity, it probably surpasses Nabokov's Lolita, Danielewski's House of Leaves, and other tricksters of modernism.Damn.Seemingly, it's a story about a man wearing a cardboard box getting involved in a mysterious series of events involving a beautiful nurse he falls in love with, a fake doctor who wants to become the new box man, and a real doctor who is a drug addict and who is
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