Ep 14 - The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea (Yukio Mishima)

Hardcore Literature

Benjamin McEvoy

Studyguide, Arts, Literature, Bookclub, Alevel, Courses, Bookreview, Books, Gcse, Education

4.8 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2020

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you're enjoying the Hardcore Literature Show, there are two ways you can show your support and ensure it continues:

1. Please leave a quick review on iTunes.

2. Join in the fun over at the Hardcore Literature Book Club: patreon.com/hardcoreliterature

Thank you so much. Happy listening and reading!

- Benjamin

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Warning. Today's show contains topics that some listeners may find distressing.
0:04.6	Topics include suicide, mental illness, and right-wing politics.
0:09.5	Okay, cool. Warning and disclaimer aside, let's talk about today's book, and the book is
0:13.9	The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yuki-O-Mishima. What a crazy title, and even
0:20.4	crazier is the life of this author. Now, I know I don't
0:23.3	do this often. I know I even actually deliberately stay away from talking about biography,
0:28.4	but Yuki-O-Mishima, the Japanese writer of this book and many other great books, and, you know,
0:34.5	spoiler alert, this was a great book. I considered it a masterpiece.
0:39.6	The life of this writer really is crazy, and I really want to tell you about him. I want to
0:44.1	tell you not only about his life, but I want to tell you how his life ended, because actually,
0:49.5	it really influences a lot of the stuff in the book. Like a lot of the things that he was
0:53.9	talking about in this book,
0:55.4	ritual suicide, masculinity, pre and post war Japan, old Japan versus New Japan, they all shaped
1:03.7	and continued to shape the direction of his life and where he ultimately landed. Okay, this all sounds
1:08.8	really confusing, but let's just dive into it. Okay, he was born in
1:11.6	1925 and he died in 1970. He was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, film director,
1:18.2	imperialist, nationalist, and bodybuilder. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in literature
1:23.6	in 1968, before his early death aged 45, but he was passed over and the award went to
1:30.9	another Japanese writer great one called Yasunari Kawabata who we will talk about as well
1:36.3	but Yasunari Kawabata had a very different life from Yukio Mishima. Mishima was a brilliant writer,
1:43.1	beautiful, gorgeous prose and I started reading this book,
1:45.7	The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, with no preconceptions about what I was going to read. I just thought it would be, I don't know, a romantic tale about a sailor. I didn't know anything about the book going in. I didn't know anything about Yukiomishima, although I had a feeling that he might be controversial, and I just really enjoyed the book.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin McEvoy, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin McEvoy and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.