![]() ![]() From Dazai, something erotic and personal. The epigraphs on the first page of Notes of a Crocodile are entirely made up, but they clearly indicate what gifts she wanted to receive from her literary forefathers who, in this case, are all giants of modern Japanese fiction. It lays out its own aesthetic blueprint, a constellation of writers and filmmakers of real spiritual conviction and of real artistic risk, a somewhat reserved school of thought which answers a work’s own call to necessity, knowing that whether it succeeds or fails, it all looks the same from above. Her prose reads like non-fiction, a genre which is, above all else, about cultivating a style. Qiu is what you’d call a writer’s writer, usually someone you read because you love to follow the motions of his or her voice. ![]() In this essay published years before her full-length publication of Notes of a Crocodile, translator Bonnie Huie wrote about Qiu’s style and, in particular, the first page: It’s a bold beginning to a novel that continues to surprise me. Let’s look at the initial scene, shall we? The narrator goes to pick up her university diploma and conjures the voices of a cast of notable (all-male) Japanese writers whom she no doubt read while at university: Osamu Dazai, Yukio Mishima, Haruki Murakami. Have you started Notes of a Crocodile yet?Įven from the very first page, it’s clear that Qiu Miaojin is up to something far more complex than merely telling a love story. ![]()
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