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A Personal Matter
Bookseller Information
- Bookseller: Muses Books
 (US)
- Seller Inventory #: 007438
Bibliographic Details
- Format: Paperback
- Book condition: Very Good
- Jacket condition: No Jacket as Issued
- Edition: Reprint Edition
- Binding: Paperback
- ISBN 10: 0802150616
- ISBN 13: 9780802150615
- Publisher: Grove Press
- Place: New York, New York
- Date published: 1969
- Size: 5.25 x 8.25 x 0.5 inches
- Weight: 0.4 pounds
- Subjects:
FICTION / General;
Book Description
New York, New York: Grove Press, 1969. Reprint Edition. Trade Paperback. Very Good/No Jacket as Issued. Book shows general light rubbing and edge wear. No marks to pages. Description: Oe’s most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times "close to a perfect novel." In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child? Bird, the protagonist, is a young man of 27 with antisocial tendencies who more than once in his life, when confronted with a critical problem, has "cast himself adrift on a sea of whisky like a besotted Robinson Crusoe." But he has never faced a crisis as personal or grave as the prospect of life imprisonment in the cage of his newborn infant-monster. Should he keep it? Dare he kill it? Before he makes his final decision, Bird’s entire past seems to rise up before him, revealing itself to be a nightmare of self-deceit. The relentless honesty with which Oe portrays his hero - or antihero - makes Bird one of the most unforgettable characters in recent fiction. ISBN: 0-8021-5061-6.
Book summary
Oe wrote this highly autobiographical novel after the birth of his brain-damaged son, Hikari, in 1963, and it is about a father who does his best to deal with just such an event.
Media Reviews
"It owes obvious debts to Kierkegaard: the search for - and confrontation with - the self."
-- James Toback, New York Times Book Review
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