"A Personal Matter" by Oe Kenzaburo

Knowing that Oe has a brain-damaged son himself, I thought "A Personal Matter" would, as the title and the cover suggests, be a recall of his personal experience and internal struggles in bringing up a child with disability before flipping the first page of the book. Quite the contrary, despite of the bibliographical references, it is a true fiction that features an antihero who wants to escape from his responsibility as the father of his newly-born son diagnosed with brain hernia, and to a larger extent, the responsibilities that comes with being a grown man. This is not a tale about the interaction between disabled baby, but rather, a harsh revelation of human weaknesses and an exploration of the psychological shadows cast by our own selfishness.

A heavy alcoholic with a less than satisfactory marriage and a job that he has no interest in, Bird, the protagonist, is hardly a likable character; his dream to set foot on the African soil is a mere reflex of his inability to adopt to the real world. Before the "grotesque baby" was born, Bird has hitherto been fleeing away in situations that require him to step up and it was no exception this time. He pleaded the doctor to let his baby die, and resort to the sexual comfort that his ex-girlfriend provided while his wife was still in the hospital. Yet, for all his faults, I can't help but to sympathize his cowardliness, his does-not-give-a-damn attitude towards his job, his decision to numb all senses in whiskey and sex, as if everything can be reduced to its most simplest form of existence and that we can ignore all the ugly manifest of reality in the distorted world created by these toxic reliefs. Towards the end of the book, Bird has come to some sort of enlightenment which dragged him back from the abyss of self-denial and self-pity - He decided to save the life of his child, of which a successful operation was later executed. The ending is somewhat of an anti-climax and does not come off as a complete close to me. I felt genuinely sorry for Bird's lover, who seemed to become so consumed with the idea of escaping to Africa with Bird and the belief that they have leaped through a mere sexual relationship to the highland of spiritual interactions. She too, has to deal with the traumatic psychological aftermath of her husband's suicide and has dwindled away in reckless sexual experiences. She deserves better than being left behind in shatters.

"What was he trying to protect from that monster of a baby that he must run so hard and so shamelessly? What was it in himself he was so frantic to defend? The answer was horrifying - nothing! Zero!" This sentence strikes me as the harshest denouncement of Bird's character and had me look hard at myself on whether I, too, have been fleeing away from my responsibilities with the oh-so-noble excuse of acquiring further education? And what exactly am I trying to nourish in me that I absolutely can't do with my current state? Is it just wishful thinking on my part that everything will be alright once I return to school? On a more positive note, if it is not for the arrival of the monster baby, there will be no hope to restore any substance in Bird. So something, anything, needs to happen if we want to move out from the stagnant state of hopelessness.


I feel that I didn't spend as much time as I should on this book where many parts within this relatively straightforward story require much deeper thinking on my part and yet, I was almost rushing through to the end so I can finally say I have read Oe. Shame on me. That said, I can still say that this is truly a powerful work that analyzes our emotion traits in different layers when human beings are in strained conditions. I think I will read Oe more later on as this is definitiely my kind of books.