books @ cc.

by Kenzaburo Oe (1964)

Bird, the anti-hero protagonist of this book, is the archetypal frustrated, alienated youth, resenting the burdens of responsibility that age and marriage has caged him in from reaching his utopian dream of travelling to Africa. Casting his life adrift, never bothering for (if not resentin) any purpose, never facing his problems, Bird is forced to face his newly-born baby, the final obligation that “may clang the door shut”: a deformed, vegetable infant.