Post by Mikauzoran on Jan 27, 2016 1:52:18 GMT
#Mikau reads too many books. ^.^;
So, continuing my journey through the entirety of Edogawa Ranpo's translated works, I read The Edogawa Rampo Reader, a collection of short stories and essays. I guess, like before, I'll just run through the stories and give brief summaries along with my impressions.
The Daydream The narrator wanders around the town in a bit of a stupor until he comes upon a crowd listening to middle-aged man speaking. The crowd jeers at the man whose wife has left him for another man, but the man emphatically claims that she didn't run away but rather that he's killed her and pickled her remains. This one was interesting, but I didn't really care for it.
The Martian Canals A man has a recurrent dream wherein he's lost in a dense forest. This time, he comes upon a large lake in a clearing, and he discovers that he has somehow transformed into a woman. This story was kind of weird, and I didn't particularly like it.
The Appearance of Osei Oh my gosh! This one was so good that it completely made up for the mediocrity of the first two! It was so sad, and touching! It really gave me the feels. I think this is one of my favorite Ranpo short stories. A middle-aged man has but a few months to live, and, on top of that, his wife has been cheating on him for some time now. He takes solace in their son, and he often plays with their son and his friends when they come over. One day, while playing hide and seek, the man climbs into an old chest in the back of his closet. Unfortunately, the trunk locks, and he can't get out. I won't spoil the rest, but it's really good! At first I thought that his wife would find him, and they'd be reconciled, but then--! Anyway, this one was seriously good. Very enjoyable, even though it was mean.
Poison Weeds This one was so-so. It was kind of a thought-provoking piece. A man is talking to his friend on the river bank and decides to show off how smart he is by sharing his knowledge about a certain weed that grows along the bank in abundance's medical uses. Apparently the weed, when prepared a certain way, causes painless miscarriages without complications. The men then get onto the topic of birth-control and abortion and the disparity between access for the poor and the rich. They then talk about the postman and his wife and how they're so poor they can't take care of the kids they have, but still they have another one on the way. The conversation is cut off when they notice the postman's wife sitting not too far from them and realize she's probably been there from the start and has overheard everything. Shortly thereafter, a rash of miscarriages occur in the neighborhood. So, like I said, this was a thought-provoking piece, but I found it most interesting as it was written in 1927, and I had always thought of the issues of abortion and birth-control as recent. I guess not.
The Stalker in the Attic This is another Akechi Kogoro short story. I liked it, but then I didn't because it followed around the criminal again. :/ This time, our main character and anti-hero is a bored young man just wandering through life until he meets Akechi Kogoro. He then becomes fascinated with mysteries and crime. Soon it's not enough just to read about them, and he begins to fantasize about committing a crime. Some time later, he discovers in the closet in his room in the boarding house that there is an entrance to the attic in the form of a little panel in the ceiling. He takes "attic walks" and begins to spy on the other inhabitants of the boarding house through the slits in the boards of the ceiling. He finds that one of the boarders that he doesn't really know but instinctively dislikes, sometimes sleeps directly under a knothole in one of the boards. He then begins to plot the other guy's murder by dripping poison from the ceiling into the other guy's mouth when he snores. So, this was very interesting, and I did enjoy it, but...at the same time, I don't like it when Ranpo-Sensei writes from the criminal's POV. :/ I get attached, even though the guy was a strange, bad person, and then, at the end, when things don't work out, I'm disappointed, because I, oddly enough, find myself rooting for the bad guy. -.-; Akechi-tantei, can't I follow you around? I guess it wouldn't be as interesting of a story, but...it's hard on me emotionally, sympathizing with the murderer.
The Air Raid Shelter I feel like all I ever say is "This was interesting"...but it was interesting. ^.^; Ranpo-Sensei is just such a neat author. His ideas are really out there and Twilight Zone-y, so...anyway, this one was interesting too. It's about the air raids during the War, and the descriptions are just fascinating. I find myself wondering, "Is that really what it was like? ...Wow...." This one kind of felt like the stories Grandpa used to tell me about his time in Japan during the War. They're completely different in content. I mean...my grandpa built airplanes, and this story was about air raids, pyrophilia, and impaired vision, but... If it makes any sense, this story and my grandpa's stories about the War have the same "feel" to them.
And now that I've said nothing about the actual story... ^.^; So, this one is about a factory worker who's fascinated by fire. There's an air raid one night (and the descriptions are just mesmerizing!), and, while running for cover, he loses his glasses. He hides in an air raid shelter on a deserted estate and runs into a woman also hiding out there. She's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, and he makes love to her. The next morning, she's gone, so he tries to find her again, but no one knows the beautiful young woman he met that night...because she was actually an old woman, and he couldn't tell because he'd lost his glasses. >.<
This idea actually comes from Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Spectacles. (The idea of not being able to tell an old woman from a young one because of not having glasses. Other than that, they're totally different, but...)
Doctor Mera's Mysterious Crimes Edogawa Ranpo visits the Ueno Zoo at dusk and runs into a strange young man in front of the monkey habitat who tells him a bizarre tale. There are two identical sky scrapers that face each other. One is abandoned while the other is an office building with apartments to rent on the top floor. On nights when the moon shines, renters of a certain room commit suicide by hanging themselves. I liked this story, but not exactly for the story itself. I find the premise dumb, but the idea of the story was kind of interesting. Really, I just liked it so much because the Ueno Zoo and the park around there is one of my favorite spots in Tokyo. ^.^; While reading the story, I was bouncing up and down, going, "Oh! Oh! I LOVE the monkey habitat! That one time, the zookeeper was throwing tangerine's to the monkeys and they would peel them, and it was so cool!" and "Oh! The lake! The lake by the Benzaiten shrine! Oh my gosh! I've been there! Sensei's been there too!? That's so cool!!!" It was basically just me being a silly fangirl. It's really cool for me when I read about places I've been and things I've seen because I feel a connection. I think you get what I'm talking about. Anyway, the story itself was okay, but I'm just not buying the "monkey see, monkey do" suicide thing. Sorry, Sensei.
The Dancing Dwarf I didn't like this one at all. It was kind of like Edgar Allan Poe's Hop Frog...which was only okay and only redeemed by the fact that it referenced that thing with nobles dressing up like gorillas and being chained together and set on fire. But I was talking about Ranpo, not Poe. ^.^; This story is about a circus troupe that is seriously cruel to the dwarf. And then the dwarf gets his revenge.
The Essays I won't go through these individually as there were ten of them, but they were all very good! It was like sitting down and having a conversation with this writer that I've come to admire so much, and it was seriously neat! ^o^ The essays are very autobiographical, even though the main themes are film and literature and the process of printing back in the old days. Ranpo shares facts about his life, how things were growing up, the War, culture, etcetera. I liked these essays more than most of the stories in this collection because they just gave such wonderful insight. I liked hearing him talk about the things he read, getting his first set of printing press letters and making prints, unique tricks used in murder mysteries, Dickens and Poe, his first love, his odd jobs before he got published, and his fears. It was just super fascinating to be able to hear his thoughts like that.
...Well, in short, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of stories and essays. ^.^
So, continuing my journey through the entirety of Edogawa Ranpo's translated works, I read The Edogawa Rampo Reader, a collection of short stories and essays. I guess, like before, I'll just run through the stories and give brief summaries along with my impressions.
The Daydream The narrator wanders around the town in a bit of a stupor until he comes upon a crowd listening to middle-aged man speaking. The crowd jeers at the man whose wife has left him for another man, but the man emphatically claims that she didn't run away but rather that he's killed her and pickled her remains. This one was interesting, but I didn't really care for it.
The Martian Canals A man has a recurrent dream wherein he's lost in a dense forest. This time, he comes upon a large lake in a clearing, and he discovers that he has somehow transformed into a woman. This story was kind of weird, and I didn't particularly like it.
The Appearance of Osei Oh my gosh! This one was so good that it completely made up for the mediocrity of the first two! It was so sad, and touching! It really gave me the feels. I think this is one of my favorite Ranpo short stories. A middle-aged man has but a few months to live, and, on top of that, his wife has been cheating on him for some time now. He takes solace in their son, and he often plays with their son and his friends when they come over. One day, while playing hide and seek, the man climbs into an old chest in the back of his closet. Unfortunately, the trunk locks, and he can't get out. I won't spoil the rest, but it's really good! At first I thought that his wife would find him, and they'd be reconciled, but then--! Anyway, this one was seriously good. Very enjoyable, even though it was mean.
Poison Weeds This one was so-so. It was kind of a thought-provoking piece. A man is talking to his friend on the river bank and decides to show off how smart he is by sharing his knowledge about a certain weed that grows along the bank in abundance's medical uses. Apparently the weed, when prepared a certain way, causes painless miscarriages without complications. The men then get onto the topic of birth-control and abortion and the disparity between access for the poor and the rich. They then talk about the postman and his wife and how they're so poor they can't take care of the kids they have, but still they have another one on the way. The conversation is cut off when they notice the postman's wife sitting not too far from them and realize she's probably been there from the start and has overheard everything. Shortly thereafter, a rash of miscarriages occur in the neighborhood. So, like I said, this was a thought-provoking piece, but I found it most interesting as it was written in 1927, and I had always thought of the issues of abortion and birth-control as recent. I guess not.
The Stalker in the Attic This is another Akechi Kogoro short story. I liked it, but then I didn't because it followed around the criminal again. :/ This time, our main character and anti-hero is a bored young man just wandering through life until he meets Akechi Kogoro. He then becomes fascinated with mysteries and crime. Soon it's not enough just to read about them, and he begins to fantasize about committing a crime. Some time later, he discovers in the closet in his room in the boarding house that there is an entrance to the attic in the form of a little panel in the ceiling. He takes "attic walks" and begins to spy on the other inhabitants of the boarding house through the slits in the boards of the ceiling. He finds that one of the boarders that he doesn't really know but instinctively dislikes, sometimes sleeps directly under a knothole in one of the boards. He then begins to plot the other guy's murder by dripping poison from the ceiling into the other guy's mouth when he snores. So, this was very interesting, and I did enjoy it, but...at the same time, I don't like it when Ranpo-Sensei writes from the criminal's POV. :/ I get attached, even though the guy was a strange, bad person, and then, at the end, when things don't work out, I'm disappointed, because I, oddly enough, find myself rooting for the bad guy. -.-; Akechi-tantei, can't I follow you around? I guess it wouldn't be as interesting of a story, but...it's hard on me emotionally, sympathizing with the murderer.
The Air Raid Shelter I feel like all I ever say is "This was interesting"...but it was interesting. ^.^; Ranpo-Sensei is just such a neat author. His ideas are really out there and Twilight Zone-y, so...anyway, this one was interesting too. It's about the air raids during the War, and the descriptions are just fascinating. I find myself wondering, "Is that really what it was like? ...Wow...." This one kind of felt like the stories Grandpa used to tell me about his time in Japan during the War. They're completely different in content. I mean...my grandpa built airplanes, and this story was about air raids, pyrophilia, and impaired vision, but... If it makes any sense, this story and my grandpa's stories about the War have the same "feel" to them.
And now that I've said nothing about the actual story... ^.^; So, this one is about a factory worker who's fascinated by fire. There's an air raid one night (and the descriptions are just mesmerizing!), and, while running for cover, he loses his glasses. He hides in an air raid shelter on a deserted estate and runs into a woman also hiding out there. She's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, and he makes love to her. The next morning, she's gone, so he tries to find her again, but no one knows the beautiful young woman he met that night...because she was actually an old woman, and he couldn't tell because he'd lost his glasses. >.<
This idea actually comes from Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Spectacles. (The idea of not being able to tell an old woman from a young one because of not having glasses. Other than that, they're totally different, but...)
Doctor Mera's Mysterious Crimes Edogawa Ranpo visits the Ueno Zoo at dusk and runs into a strange young man in front of the monkey habitat who tells him a bizarre tale. There are two identical sky scrapers that face each other. One is abandoned while the other is an office building with apartments to rent on the top floor. On nights when the moon shines, renters of a certain room commit suicide by hanging themselves. I liked this story, but not exactly for the story itself. I find the premise dumb, but the idea of the story was kind of interesting. Really, I just liked it so much because the Ueno Zoo and the park around there is one of my favorite spots in Tokyo. ^.^; While reading the story, I was bouncing up and down, going, "Oh! Oh! I LOVE the monkey habitat! That one time, the zookeeper was throwing tangerine's to the monkeys and they would peel them, and it was so cool!" and "Oh! The lake! The lake by the Benzaiten shrine! Oh my gosh! I've been there! Sensei's been there too!? That's so cool!!!" It was basically just me being a silly fangirl. It's really cool for me when I read about places I've been and things I've seen because I feel a connection. I think you get what I'm talking about. Anyway, the story itself was okay, but I'm just not buying the "monkey see, monkey do" suicide thing. Sorry, Sensei.
The Dancing Dwarf I didn't like this one at all. It was kind of like Edgar Allan Poe's Hop Frog...which was only okay and only redeemed by the fact that it referenced that thing with nobles dressing up like gorillas and being chained together and set on fire. But I was talking about Ranpo, not Poe. ^.^; This story is about a circus troupe that is seriously cruel to the dwarf. And then the dwarf gets his revenge.
The Essays I won't go through these individually as there were ten of them, but they were all very good! It was like sitting down and having a conversation with this writer that I've come to admire so much, and it was seriously neat! ^o^ The essays are very autobiographical, even though the main themes are film and literature and the process of printing back in the old days. Ranpo shares facts about his life, how things were growing up, the War, culture, etcetera. I liked these essays more than most of the stories in this collection because they just gave such wonderful insight. I liked hearing him talk about the things he read, getting his first set of printing press letters and making prints, unique tricks used in murder mysteries, Dickens and Poe, his first love, his odd jobs before he got published, and his fears. It was just super fascinating to be able to hear his thoughts like that.
...Well, in short, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of stories and essays. ^.^