epub pdf スキャンダル [Sukyandaru]Author Shūsaku Endō – Publitags.co

Involves A Famous Catholic Writer Whose Comfortable Life Is Shattered When A Drunken Woman Crashes A Reception In His Honor, Claiming That He Frequents The Red Light District Of Tokyo And That His Portrait Is Exhibited In A Gallery There The Result His Reputation As A Writer, His Marriage, And His Sense Of Identity All Are Placed At Risk A Psychological Thriller And A Literary Work Of Art Which, As It Subtly Peels Off Layers Of The Dark Side Of Human Nature, Grips And Propels The Reader

10 thoughts on “スキャンダル [Sukyandaru]

  1. says:

    One of the main themes of this book is that of the doppelganger or double, a long standing theme in great literature We ve seen it in Dostoevsky and Jose Saramago in books called The Double It s in Conrad s The Secret Sharer and in Nabokov s Despair Even Henry James got in on it in his relatively little known novel, The Jolly Corner In Scandal, our main character is a very famous Japanese novelist who, being Catholic, writes on moral and religious themes Much like the author himself, author of Silence, who is considered a Catholic novelist and sometimes called the Graham Greene of Japan The novelist starts to hear rumors that he has been seen hanging out with prostitutes in the red light district of Tokyo Not only that, but some of his supposed actions may have involved under aged girls, a SM crowd, semi strangulation fantasies and orgies At a literary award presentation he is confronted by a prostitute who claims she recognizes him from the district A sleazy journalist is on his tail trying to get a compromising picture of him that he could use for blackmail or for a career making story for the journalist that would ruin the novelist s reputation Sex is the second major theme In his career of writing novels, the main character has never written about sex He and his life long spouse have a very proper, old fashioned relationship and they have never even talked about sex Suddenly the novelist feels that he s missed out on something important all his life and left it out of his novels It s as if he starts to believe I m a novelist A novelist who has to dirty his hands in the deepest recesses of the human heart I have to thrust my hands in, even if I find something in there that God could never bless He also asks What s the lesson that this realm of filth is trying to teach me He starts hanging out in the red light district looking for his double He meets a woman who was a friend of a prostitute who killed herself in a self inflicted SM fantasy He and the woman start meeting for lunch and exchanging letters to discuss sex in which she shares her single bizarre horrifying sexual fantasy with him He finds himself thinking too much about a college age woman his wife hired to clean his office By the way, he s 65, a bit late for male mid life crisis by American standards, but, hey, this is Japan, so maybe things are different In fact, he s old enough that he and his old friends play the who s going to go next game when they meet The novelist thinks When one of us novelists passes the age of fifty, we may be impressed by what our old friends write, but we are no longer influenced by their work Back to the double is it simply someone who happens to look almost identical to the novelist Is it the novelist secretly leading a double life and pulling the unreliable narrator trick on us Is it all a hallucination Stay tuned A good read and it kept my attention all the way through Tokyo s red light district from dreamstime.comPhoto of the author from Goodreads

  2. says:

    There s a wonderful moment in Vladimir Nabokov s Strong Opinions It s part of a transcript from an interview conducted sometime in the mid 1970s.Q Would you care to comment on how the Doppelg nger motif has been both used and abused from Poe, Hoffman, Andersen Which Doppelg nger fictions would you single out for praise VN The Doppelg nger subject is a frightful bore.If only Shusako Endo had felt the same way His penultimate novel, Scandal, is so tightly woven around the concept that it hamstrings itself Here s the story, roughly A mid 20th century Japanese Christian writer, not unlike Endo himself, whose novels are highly popular investigations of sin in modern man, is close to death when he realizes that he has neglected an entire aspect of human nature That is, the dark, selfish, often cruel impulses that can overtake us in the midst of passion, desire, erotic pursuit Author Suguro has so thoroughly expunged such darkness from his life and works that his critics say he is missing something elemental in his work.But Suguro has paid a price for such deep Christian piety So much so that his dark, carnal side has split off in a Jekyll and Hyde manner to go roving unchecked through Tokyo s pleasure districts Suguro for most of the novel views this double as an imposter, someone who chance has happened to give the same physical appearance and voice as himself And granted, in this day of faux Rockefellers grifting entire affluent communities, it s believable Through blameless association with a number of simultaneously depraved and compassionate individuals paradoxes in Suguro s view he is able to run his double to earth Only when he does so, when he witnesses himself sexually abusing a young servant, does he acknowledge the terrible split rending his psyche.The passages in which Endo considers human eroticism and kinkiness in light of Christian virtue are not without interest Sadly, however, self forgiveness is something that Suguro seems incapable of, thus his suffering There s something terribly sad about this For nowhere in Surguro s self conception, so overwhelmed by his b te noire, sin, is there room for self forgiveness All Suguro can think of is how tainted he is, how he has failed morally, how he is in the end just like all the other human filth There are frequent passages of interest such as when Suguro considers certain Buddhist and Freudian precepts that closely align with his Christian views But he can never see the forest for the trees He is too self involved He cannot for the life of him understand how God can love beings simultaneously both so wretched and so beautiful That is his failing, and in the end he seems ready to take it to the grave Recommended with reservations.

  3. says:

    Antiquated concepts of sexuality and psychology on full display, though not very interesting Is this the Asian Graham Greene Let us pray not 12.1.17 Read the impressive Deep River instead Way better novel.

  4. says:

    Liked the novel Did not lead me to love it But that can not be taken as a minus It is a great book dealing with a great theme.The Theme Every man has a Mr Hyde hiding inside his own personality The man every man woman is a combination of both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde In common man s language the human being is a combination of both good and bad Spiritually speaking we can say that every saint has a sinner residing in himself herself.Seemingly a simple theme But it is presented in an interesting manner to last a 250 pages book without any element of boring or preaching In fact lot of psychology is thrown in the novel But it moved smoothly along the plot of the novel.Reasons for not giving the extra star I am a bit skeptical of psychoanalysis and anything related to psychology This novel bases itself on a finding of psychoanalysis and the entire plot is skillfully woven around it Also the other element of psychoanalysis libido gets an extra dash in the whole novel That in a way put me off But the novel as such was racy and thoroughly likable.Extra Information This is also a novel about the Christian concept of sin and grace.

  5. says:

    Ogata K rin , Mind games .

  6. says:

    Hi there, My name is Ophelia But there s something else about me that I d like you to know You see there s a story why I exist, and I m not talking about natural birth here Mia s too shy to tell you this story And since I m the bitch one, I guess it s a pleasure heheMia was born in a modest family, I didn t say her family is economically challenged because they re not but hey how much do you think a Protestant priest earns Certainly not that much The fact that her father decided to serve in nearly isolated regions meant she and her family were isolated from schools as well and her parents then sent her to live with an aunt.She s the eldest in her own family, but the youngest in her auntie s She s quite spoiled by her uncle and cousins and when she s back to her family she felt like a stranger And it s not until the adolescent that she s aware of burdens as a Priest daughter If you re a Priest daughter Thou shall attend the church service every Sunday no matter what values you take regarding your personal relationship with God You were expected to recognise every church elders and gives salute as you saw them across the street Thou shall not wear anything inappropriate any time you re in the public Mia once told it s not appropriate for a Priest daughter to wear a short though she was actually buying eggs and vegetables for lunch omg Thou shall be a good girl, never swearing at people, always smiling and oh darn it basically you re expected to be an Angel Thou shall not skip classes or else your teachers will swiftly notify your Priest father Thou shall not inquire anything that related to sexuality, especially when one of your distance cousin who is a gay expelled from the Church because of his sexual preference Thou shall not put excessive make up or you ll end up gossiped by the whole community as a mischief daughter.I guess all those burdens were too much for the overprotected and sweety Mia That s when I, Ophelia, was born Everything she s limited into, I fought no boundaries Don t get me wrong, she s aware of my existence and she accepted me long long time ago Why you think she s comfortable with her physical body now It s because of me ME Schizophrenia, split personality, unconscious mind You name it You can spend lots of money to consult psychologist, psychiatric, Priests, Monks, Muslim Clerics and others but I believe there are than one soul in each body The bad and the good The bitch the angel The child the adult Mia accepted me, you dare to accept your other half regards,Ophelia

  7. says:

    Noah Cross John Huston in Chinatown I don t blame myself You see Mr Gitts sic , most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and at the right place they re capable of anything I have a weird habit of avoiding Shusaku Endo I m always finding his Samurai in used bookshops and never buying it But that will all change now because I really enjoyed this.Aged Catholic writer nobody say the Japanese Graham Greene is haunted by a lascivious doppelg nger This doppelg nger is taking his leery face and old man genitals to all of Tokyo s naughtiest BDSM nightspots Our aged Catholic writer is, as you d expect, gaining a nasty reputation What does it mean Can he discover the truth before the slimy reporter Interesting questions, interesting ending Fun times in Tokyo.

  8. says:

    An aging Japanese Catholic novelist with a dark side writes a novel about an aging Japanese Catholic novelist confronting his dark side An interesting psychological plot with several promising characters ultimately diffuses in simplistic Catholic guilt Plot spoiler the Doppelganger did it.

  9. says:

    Might have been cutting edge in 1986 kinda stale and dated now There is a lot of tortured, extra repressed pearl clutching regarding sex and eroticism, as, I suppose, befits the kind of devout Christian Suguro, Endo s aging writer protagonist, is It takes the narrative some time to develop, with the second half rapidly becoming and confused Endo doesn t seem to make any substantial distinction between SM as a niche form of sexual expression, and sadomasochism as an inherent grain of evil within human nature Which, apparently, it is Because Freud Like I said, probably edgier in 86 though props for the way Endo handles bisexuality.Anyway Gilles de Rais and Countess Bathory also get referenced as part an increasingly and ridiculous buildup to the entirely predictable climax What I should have done, is make a drinking game out of every time Suguro is carried away by his instincts of a writer that might have improved on the material Seriously, every two pages, there was poor, repressed, tormented Suguro carrying the cross of Writer Instincts through the morass of humanity, all without the slightest hint of irony Yes, I get Suguro s self involvement is intentionally positioned the way it is within the narrative, but in order for it to work, it also to generate interest And it doesn t In conclusion, the whole thing felt like the literary equivalent of the welcome to my twisted mind meme, with a deliberately repulsive climactic scene added in for extra shock and symbolic value Overall well written, if not especially compelling Similar themes, but Christianity free and aided by sophisticated handling, occur in Toddler Hunting Other Stories Go read that instead.

  10. says:

    Roman al lui Shusaku Endo pe care New York Times il caracterizeaza ca fiind de neuitat , Scandalul aduce o poveste captivanta ce se tese in jurul unui scriitor ajuns la varsta de saizeci si cinci de ani, laureat al unui important premiu personajul principal da, insa, ocazia unei meditatii provocatoare si pasionante asupra unor problematici din domeniul psihologiei, psihanalizei, dar si religiei Naratiunea are forta, este, pe alocuri, socanta, prin maniera directa de a infatisa, fara perdea, imagini de care ne ascundem sau pe care le ascundem in noi insine De aceea, probabil, anumite episoade mi au amintit de Fight Club, fara ca acest fapt sa ma dezamageasca din contra, scrierea ramane originala, povestea e alta Cred ca apropierea se datoreaza si unei stiinte a crearii imaginilor si secventelor dialogate, incat acestea dau, uneori, senzatia derularii unor diapozitive.Dincolo de anumite scene mai greu sau mai usor digerabile, interesant mi a parut modul in care se face legatura intre aspectele ce privesc natura identitatii umane si arta, fie ca e ea literatura sau pictura Pe de o parte e prezentata arta ca propovaduitor al unor idei si artistul ca misionar, iar pe de alta parte, arta ca floare a raului si artistul ca estet al uratului Scandalul e titlul unei carti nescrise.