longer.blue

Books 1 - Hell Screen by Ryunosuke Akutagawa Based on the Uji Shui Monogatari this work is recent rework of the 13th century's story. I read this book using the 2019's translation by Jay Rubin. If I had something about the book is two things: The first thing is the narrator. While in most cases the narrator is active or passive in the story, here we have a narrator that denies the reality of it. Constantly saying things that *someone else* told or that he didn't see at first, this uncertainty finish at the end of the story where even though we know as readers the narrator was in the scene, the narrator tries to deny a reality he saw. The second point I want to make is the main plot. While artist in art have been portrayed in many ways, the obsessed artist is my favorite and this story does it well, we have an artist that progress in the story being reveled as cruel, perverse and lost in his works. Nothing would convince him out of the limits in art and he takes all steps needed to succeed in what he found authentic. While I don't think an obsessed artist is something unheard of in literature, the shortness and ambiguous reality of the tale made my imagination going wild, trying to decipher what was real and what was just the narrator playing with the gossip of other people. Good story, you can read it completely in less than an hour, I wish it gets more popular than now, it deserves it.