Imagination of Grotesque Realism

In his five works written between 1964 and 1976, Ōe consistently employs the image of a corpulent father and his idiot son setting out on a search for the world of “grotesque realism.” ¹ These five narratives are “Aghwee the Sky Monster” (Sora no kaibutsu aguwee, 1964, hereafter “Aghwee”), A Personal Matter (Kojinteki na taiken, 1964), “Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness” (hereafter “Teach Us”), The Waters Are Come in unto My Soul (Kō;zui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi, 1973, hereafter The Waters), and The Pinch-runner Memorandum (Pinchi rannaa chōsho, 1976, hereafter The Pinch-runner). We must not dismiss the presence of this “obsessive metaphor” of the father and the idiot son merely as a repetition of an old theme, but rather must consider the five works as one large narrative in progress. The pertinence of reciprocity between one work and another is well asserted by Todorov: “Just as the meaning of a part of the work is not exhausted in itself, but is revealed in its relation with other parts, a work in its entirety can never be read in a satisfactory and enlightening fashion if we do not put it in relation with other works, previous and contemporary.” ²