Andrew Shaffer "Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love"/ Nishimura Kenta "Kueki Ressha"

Reading Andrew Shaffer's "Great Philosophers who Failed at Love" has been a very amusing but slightly disturbing experience. This book makes it clear that those philosophers who have gain the epithet of "Great" have almost invariably put forward a series of unconventional ideas about romantic, as well as other, relationships. Of course, considering how strange and extraordinary their philosophical theories seem to an uninitiated observer, it may come as no surprise to learn that their views on love are also far from mundane. The Greek philosophy titan, Aristotle, thought that women were by nature inferior to men, that they were "monstrosities" of nature, while the German philosopher and Marx's sidekick, Friedrich Engels, claimed that monogamy was nothing but ludicrous. The British Nobel Prize laureate Bertrand Russell, who married four times in his life, acknowledged that an extramarital intercourse was no sin, whereas for the German esoteric philosopher Martin Heidegger, that he and his illegitimate lover Hanna Arendt were teacher and student was merely an inconvenience.

As the title of this book suggests, the philosophers dealt with here are only the ones who did not make a success in their romantic relationships. But if so, it might be shocking how many of the philosophers that enjoy tremendous fame today have been maladroit at loving and being loved. This book may help you mollify your sense of inferiority about being unwise by suggesting that sagacious people have almost always been incapable of doing what commonest people can easily do. Indeed, you may go so far as claiming that philosophy, or love of knowledge, which compels one to think inordinately about extremely trifling things, is nothing but an impediment to ordinary happiness. Well, It might be true. But for my part, even if it is true that the more you think, the further you are removed from what is called happiness, I cannot help but believe that the act of thinking gives more than it takes away, and that it is better to be an unsatisfied Socrates than to be a satisfied fool. After all, the humongous number of people who should have enjoyed so-called ordinary happiness are the ones about whom no book, or not even a passage, could be written by posterity.


After reading Niashimura Kenta's latest book "Kueki Ressha" many readers may wonder why it was able to win the Akutagawa award. It is true that this autobiographical novel doesn't seem to have anything special that differentiates it from other mediocre works, at least as far as its plot is concerned. But in my opinion it is not the plot but the style that sets this novel apart. Although it is generally held that one can draw a sharp line between form and content, and the belief is widespread that when it comes to literary works, content is far more important than form, the boundary that stands between these two realms is far more porous than is commonly supposed. The aim of the novelist is not just to say something special in an ordinary manner but also to say something ordinay in a special manner, and sometimes which of these a particular novel is doing is not so clear.
In some novels, the line is blurred.

Mr. Nishimura's style is iconoclastic but also promising. He explores the possibility of writing interminable sentences in Japanese, whose syntactic properties tend to defy long sentences, and to some extent succeeds in doing this. His sentences are often very long, but beautiful and very easy to read. He also uses some unfamiliar, rare words, like "hana" and "doude.” Thanks to these original characteristics of his style one can get an aesthetically stimulating experience from reading his works. Literature has as much to do with form as with content, and I think "Kueki Ressha" could not have won the award had it not been for its eccentric style.