Chapter 31 third quarter

Water shield may be a preview of a chance encounter. We went downstairs to the family bathroom that the owner had told us about.Due to economic considerations, we stayed in a room without a bathroom.One of the two bathrooms was occupied and the other was empty. Refreshing, I stopped by to browse the bookshelves in the hallway on my way back to my room. In addition to comics and novels, there are also learning magazines for elementary school students.Probably the children in this homestay watched it.There are also travel and sports magazines.Almost all of them are new books, but among them there is also a rare volume from Kaide Shobo's "Modern Japanese Novels".

Looking at the catalog of the complete works makes me lose track of time.While browsing which works of which authors have been selected, while thinking about which one would be selected and recorded by myself, this kind of brainstorming process is very interesting.From this point of view, it is best to find out who selected the books for each volume.For the complete works of literature, there is usually an editorial board member on the table, but basically the editorial department should be in charge.However, to put it bluntly, choosing a work is actually a matter of personality compatibility, which is an expression of love.

For example, the first volume of "New Wave Japanese Literature".It is "Mori Ogai" edited by Takehiko Fukunaga.When I first read the commentary, I thought it was just a normal article.But then came the words "This is a very short story with the wonderful taste of 'Ten Raku Tofu'" and "Even the short story "Ten Raku Tofu" is an unremarkable article that most people would exclude from Ogai's anthology" Comment.I am secretly surprised that this way of writing is not like the commentary attached to the work, but it seems that the work must be read in parallel with the commentary.It can be fully seen that the book selectors have carefully selected each article with courage and self-confidence.This is exactly the case with Fukunaga, who wrote: "The work of editing this anthology is entrusted to me. I can choose or reject the achievements of my beloved literati (this achievement is a word invented by Ogai) according to my own preferences. If Let me presume, it's really a pleasure to work." And he explained in detail the process of selecting works.

To make a digression, on the way, I also quoted a line from Ogai's "Chasing the Beach" that I like very much: "I conclude with my thoughts at night that I can write anything I want to do with novels." Then, he made a surprising speech from three long novels: "According to the wise decision to cut off the love of "Youth", I selected "Gan" and "Ash." Finally, he said "The three essays are very short, so after editing So I just asked the publisher to add it. These three articles and "Delusion" can be said to be unprecedented articles by Owai." The three essays selected by Fukunaga are "Crocus", "Empty Car", and "Compartment".

In other words, this book is not only the "Selected Works of Mori Ogai", but also the work of Takehiko Fukunaga himself. If every volume of the complete literature works can reach this level, I don't know how wonderful it would be.However, from the standpoint of a book seller, when looking at books from the perspective of commodity value, it is certainly not happy to see well-known masterpieces excluded.Thinking of this, Fukunaga's approach may be difficult to implement in the so-called complete works of literature.