The Flowers of Buffoonery
Description
The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba--the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age--is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.
While No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai's masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.
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About the Author
Sam Bett studied Japanese at UMass Amherst and Kwansei Gakuin University. Awarded Grand Prize in the 2016 JLPP International Translation Competition, he has translated fiction by Yoko Ogawa, Yukio Mishima, and NisiOisin. He also co-hosts Us&Them, a Brooklyn-based reading series showcasing the work of writers who translate. His translation of Yukio Mishima's Star (New Directions, 2019) won the 2019 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Together with David Boyd, he is the translator of Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs.
Reviews
What I despise about Dazai is that he exposes precisely those things in myself that I most want to hide.--Yukio Mishima
Dazai was an aristocratic tramp, a self-described delinquent, yet he wrote with the forbearance of a fasting scribe.--Patti Smith
Dazai's usual concerns in a lighter, more comic key, ... captures the sweetness under the pretended bravado of these baffled youth.--Andrew Martin "The New York Times"
