The Miner

Fleeing Tokyo and a failed relationship, a young man has thoughts of suicide. Then he meets a mysterious stranger who asks him if he wants a job. For want of anything better to do he says yes, and ends up, after a long journey, going down a copper mine. An environment he is patently unsuited for so comes up again....And that's about it as far as plot goes. The novel is rather a long meditation, all in the young man’s mind, about identity and destiny and character. Strangely compelling, it has a distinct flavour of Beckett or even Kafka and I found it intriguing and more accessible than much Japanese literature. An interesting read.

This work was the only left for me to read from Sôseki and I have to admit that I am really impressed. The Japanese author is probably the most known Jap writter, after Murakami. Botchan and I am a cat are really popular. The Miner is an amazing classic, one of those that you don't find anymore. I trully recommend this.

This book is not exactly a novel, as often pointed out by the same protagonist of the story, more than anything else is a long stream of consciousness (with punctuation, thank God) that tells the thoughts and emotions of a young Japanese man who ran away from home, in the first years of the '900. Fled for a women's issue from the family of origin, the nineteen year old finds himself with no money to be hired to work in the mines, but he has not the "physique du role". Claustrophobic and not only the part of the story that's set in the mine, it almost seems that the protagonist is forced to constantly mulling in his own thoughts, brooding, and the feeling is overwhelming.

Questo libro non é propriamente un romanzo, come sottolinea spesso il protagonista stesso della storia, piú che altro é un lungo stream of consciousness (con la punteggiatura per fortuna) che racconta i pensieri e le emozioni di un giovane giapponese scappato di casa, ai primi del '900. Fuggito per una questione di donne dalla famiglia di origine, il diciannovenne si ritrova senza soldi ad essere assunto per lavorare in miniera, ma non ha proprio il physique du role, come dire. Claustrofobico e non solo la parte in miniera, sembra quasi che il protagonista sia costretto a rimuginare continuamente i suoi stessi pensieri e la sensazione è opprimente.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND GALLIC BOOKS FOR THE PREVIEW!

Written by Japanese author Netsuke Soseki this is the apparent story of a young Japanese man looking for direction in his life and going on a journey to find it. Understanding the nuances and subtleties of Japanese culture, their shame-based society and controlled behavior helps to see the point of this book. There is a lot more going in this book than can be known in one reading, and I would encourage returning to it again and again. Recommended reading.

Strangely compelling read - in fact also the preface and afterword by renown Japanese writers/critics are truly part of the reading experience. They both refer to an important mining tragedy just at the time the book was being written. And, one of the reviewers breathes a sign of relief that the author has not turned this into a recounting of that tragedy specifially - to add to the too-many naturalistic books out there. We are warned that there is no plot - the writer needed to warn readers who might have been thoroughly irritated (I think some were anyway) - but there is definitely a sequential drive in the plot - we want to see how he's going to take the appalling life underground in the miner. How is he drawn in (by a local hostelier who draws him into the work) - the hostelier offers him a job seeing as how he has run away from Tokyo in protest. Is this better than an end to it all he was contemplating - since he lived to tell the tale, and the mining experience was hellish, he did carry on. Written as a serialisation for a newspaper, it does read somewhat along those lines - slightly extended scenes at times But it is surely a masterpiece and utterly gripping.