"The Silent Cry" by Kenzaburo Oe

The Silent Cry by Kenzaburo Oe  (1967-trans 1974 by John Bester-274 pages)

A  year ago I am sad to say I had never heard of Kenzaburo Oe.   Now, after having read and posted on four of his novellas, five novels, a work of non-Fiction on Hiroshima survivors, and a collection of short works by atom bomb survivors selected and edited by Oe I consider him one of the great literary artists of the post WWII period.   I see him as creating   original wisdom, something I would say of very few writers or thinkers.  Samuel Johnson comes to mind here.    The wisdom of Oe is that of a world turned inside out on itself, that of Johnson is of a world sure of itself.   The best of Oe feels not so much written as discovered.    Oe (1935) won the Nobel Prize for literature in  1994.     He is a towering figure in contemporary Japanese literature.   In a revealing scene in Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami the lead character says his family owns a simple neighborhood book store that sells popular books, not "Tolstoy or Oe". 


The Silent Cry centers on two brothers who return after WWII to their ancestral home town  in a village in rural Japan.    The village is now dominated by a Korean businessman ironically called "The Emperor".     One of the brothers has a mentally handicapped son (this is a frequent theme in the work of Oe and is a large factor in his own life) and The Silent Cry shows how he deals with this.   This is the first of the works of Oe I have read in which we see the effects  the birth of a mentally handicapped child has on the wife who is depicted as now very promiscuous and a lover of whiskey.


One of the brothers tries to come to understand why a long time friend had killed himself.    The other brother tries to lead the local youths in a rebellion against the domination of the Korean.    There is a lot of violence in this work and graphic sexual scenes.   I recommend this book to anyone who has read some of the better known works of Oe and enjoyed them.    
To me the work of Oe is a great world class cultural treasure.


Mel u