Japanese novel quote?
October 20, 2020 9:42 PM Subscribe
I remember reading a contemporary Japanese novel, in the same vein as Oe or Murikami, about a single man living in an apartment complex (?) and he kinda had a fling with a lady. At one point he bonds with a gay man (?) trans woman (?) and muses to himself: “someone so sensitive to the warp in themselves must surely be so sympathetic so my own weirdness” Or something like that. I definitely remember “warp” being part of the line. What’s the quote, and what’s the book?
This is from "A Personal Matter" by Kenzaburo Oe.
I think the full quote is "I'd talk about all kinds of things, and the queen would take pains to pick up the seeds of everything that's threatening me, one by one he'd gather them in, and certainly he would understand. Because a youth who tries so hard to be faithful to the warp in himself that he ends up searching the street in drag for perverts, a young man like that must have eyes and ears and a heart exquisitely sensitive to the fear that roots in the backlands of the subconscious."
posted by AIBO at 11:04 AM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think the full quote is "I'd talk about all kinds of things, and the queen would take pains to pick up the seeds of everything that's threatening me, one by one he'd gather them in, and certainly he would understand. Because a youth who tries so hard to be faithful to the warp in himself that he ends up searching the street in drag for perverts, a young man like that must have eyes and ears and a heart exquisitely sensitive to the fear that roots in the backlands of the subconscious."
posted by AIBO at 11:04 AM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
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(The issues are the fact the main protagonist is female and Google Books has one entry for warp in a different context, although I guess there may be multiple translations).
posted by Hartster at 3:58 AM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]