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The Pinch Runner Memorandum
This novel offers a contemporary and explosive picture of the nuclear family, which pivots on the bizarre odyssey of a Japanese father and son.
270 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Kenzaburō Ōe
207 books1,765 followersKenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎) was a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engages with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.
Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 2, 2013
"Isn't it possible that the fine dust particles of my words – which Mori can't grasp now – like the dust accumulated over the centuries in a secluded cellar, might spontaneously burst into flame one day?"
"and unless you see things with the compound eye of an insect, you novelists can never capture life in its entirety, can you?"
Compound eye! Ha! "The Pinch Runner Memorandum" is a new angle on those same stories and themes last glimpsed in, most obviously, "A Personal Matter", "The Silent Cry", "Rouse Up...", "A Quiet Life" and "The Changeling". Kenzaburo Oe's in here with us somewhere ... hiding ...just out of sight... flashing those little pulses we love so much: here's the boy with a cerebral haemorrhage who was selected for death by the doctors ... here's an angry cult of anarchic and disturbed young men. The extreme physical violence which somehow seems to cleanse ... the difficult relationships with alcohol ... the suicide of a loved one ... the Emperor and the A-bomb ... Kurt Vonnegut ... the Children's Crusade of 1212 ... a boy's erections ... the angry and lonely wives ... the anal sex ... What a man! What a life.
"I had resolved to insist with renewed conviction that we [a fictional Kenzaburo Oe and his fictional son] had been picked as a pinch runner for humankind. If I had to respond to stangers who smiled or whimpered at us, I'd just say, I never ask myself what qualifications made the Cosmic Will designate us as the pinch runner. Besides, if we were really a superior player we would've already been a regular in the rescue game for humankind. But we can't hesitate now, or lose our confidence. We've already been picked. We're on base, where we've always wanted to be; the Cosmic Coach has given us the sign, concentrate, be alert for the chance to run. What's more, we've got to rely on our own sixth sense to make that decision! GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO. "
Honest Mr Oe:
"In the meantime we noticed our children fidgeting as they raised their chins in silence with an urgent look on their faces, the look of being suspended in mid-air. When we took them to the bathroom, they stood at either side of the commode trying to urinate, but since they had held their piddle too long, their penises were now as erect as a cobra's head, the urine sprayed everywhere, wetting their thighs and our pants."
I was always urinating with an erection as a boy! I'd completely forgotten.
"Parents of our children often closely resemble one another. In my own lovemaking, I sometimes feel my wife and I are committing incest."
"'Have you let the hospital people know that after I defecate, my anal lining needs to be pushed back into my rectum with wet fingers?'"
"and unless you see things with the compound eye of an insect, you novelists can never capture life in its entirety, can you?"
Compound eye! Ha! "The Pinch Runner Memorandum" is a new angle on those same stories and themes last glimpsed in, most obviously, "A Personal Matter", "The Silent Cry", "Rouse Up...", "A Quiet Life" and "The Changeling". Kenzaburo Oe's in here with us somewhere ... hiding ...just out of sight... flashing those little pulses we love so much: here's the boy with a cerebral haemorrhage who was selected for death by the doctors ... here's an angry cult of anarchic and disturbed young men. The extreme physical violence which somehow seems to cleanse ... the difficult relationships with alcohol ... the suicide of a loved one ... the Emperor and the A-bomb ... Kurt Vonnegut ... the Children's Crusade of 1212 ... a boy's erections ... the angry and lonely wives ... the anal sex ... What a man! What a life.
"I had resolved to insist with renewed conviction that we [a fictional Kenzaburo Oe and his fictional son] had been picked as a pinch runner for humankind. If I had to respond to stangers who smiled or whimpered at us, I'd just say, I never ask myself what qualifications made the Cosmic Will designate us as the pinch runner. Besides, if we were really a superior player we would've already been a regular in the rescue game for humankind. But we can't hesitate now, or lose our confidence. We've already been picked. We're on base, where we've always wanted to be; the Cosmic Coach has given us the sign, concentrate, be alert for the chance to run. What's more, we've got to rely on our own sixth sense to make that decision! GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO. "
Honest Mr Oe:
"In the meantime we noticed our children fidgeting as they raised their chins in silence with an urgent look on their faces, the look of being suspended in mid-air. When we took them to the bathroom, they stood at either side of the commode trying to urinate, but since they had held their piddle too long, their penises were now as erect as a cobra's head, the urine sprayed everywhere, wetting their thighs and our pants."
I was always urinating with an erection as a boy! I'd completely forgotten.
"Parents of our children often closely resemble one another. In my own lovemaking, I sometimes feel my wife and I are committing incest."
"'Have you let the hospital people know that after I defecate, my anal lining needs to be pushed back into my rectum with wet fingers?'"
February 24, 2013
I didn't think Oe would ever write a straight up whacky story. His writing usually takes a very agitated and grave tone, which follows the equally serious theme of having a retarded son. I expected more of the same since the back of the book claims it picks up from "A Personal Matter."
My response: are you kidding?!
Yes, it loosely follows "A Personal Matter" in the sense that Oe and his son make a return. The story begins as if it's the expected continuation of the previous book then somehow gets twisted into a completely outlandish story about a different father and his retarded son. At first there's a sense of betrayal--"Hey, this isn't what I signed up for!"--then you get captured in the madness tornado.
The story is about a father, ex-nuclear researcher, who meets Oe at the school for retarded children. This eccentric man takes his son out of the school because he fails to convince the teachers and parents that the children should be trained in combat for when society inevitably decides to kill all the retarded children in Japan. Shortly after storming out, he contacts Oe through a series of letters and convinces him to ghostwrite the record of him and his son.
What follows is a experimentally written story based on the letters received and Oe's occasional reactions. Mori-father and Mori experience a metaphysical transformation that sets them on a divine mission concerning warring student political factions, an atomic bomb, terrorism, and a shadowy mastermind named Big Shot. Their adventure is absolutely absurd, a demented dark comedy. Yet Oe uses his profound ability to write with dire seriousness, which results in a total mind-fuck of a story.
The book is highly satirical, making a total mockery of the die-hard student movement in Japan along with eastern metaphysics. There's a subtle element of American pulp that works so good. Oe's cynical attitude does masterfully what Chuck Palahniuk constantly tries to achieve. This is one book that is definitely flying under the radar.
So far this is the only funny story I've read from Oe, which kills me because he's hilarious. It's as if he decided get silly just once to get over the urge. But this book isn't just chaos. Oe stay in control all the way to the climatic finish, which still gives me chills. Man, I wish he'd do follow-up to this underground bombshell.
My response: are you kidding?!
Yes, it loosely follows "A Personal Matter" in the sense that Oe and his son make a return. The story begins as if it's the expected continuation of the previous book then somehow gets twisted into a completely outlandish story about a different father and his retarded son. At first there's a sense of betrayal--"Hey, this isn't what I signed up for!"--then you get captured in the madness tornado.
The story is about a father, ex-nuclear researcher, who meets Oe at the school for retarded children. This eccentric man takes his son out of the school because he fails to convince the teachers and parents that the children should be trained in combat for when society inevitably decides to kill all the retarded children in Japan. Shortly after storming out, he contacts Oe through a series of letters and convinces him to ghostwrite the record of him and his son.
What follows is a experimentally written story based on the letters received and Oe's occasional reactions. Mori-father and Mori experience a metaphysical transformation that sets them on a divine mission concerning warring student political factions, an atomic bomb, terrorism, and a shadowy mastermind named Big Shot. Their adventure is absolutely absurd, a demented dark comedy. Yet Oe uses his profound ability to write with dire seriousness, which results in a total mind-fuck of a story.
The book is highly satirical, making a total mockery of the die-hard student movement in Japan along with eastern metaphysics. There's a subtle element of American pulp that works so good. Oe's cynical attitude does masterfully what Chuck Palahniuk constantly tries to achieve. This is one book that is definitely flying under the radar.
So far this is the only funny story I've read from Oe, which kills me because he's hilarious. It's as if he decided get silly just once to get over the urge. But this book isn't just chaos. Oe stay in control all the way to the climatic finish, which still gives me chills. Man, I wish he'd do follow-up to this underground bombshell.
February 8, 2014
What the hell did I just read? Father and son body swapping, underground revolutionary and counter-revolutionary groups, nukes... All held together by Oe's superb writing.
May 15, 2016
"You know for sure they were a Stranger's words because of your clear memory of the circumstances. Yet, you feel convinced that those same words had fushed forth straight from the deepest recesses of your soul. Assuming that words come to life only in the relationship of two human beings, there's no earthly reason why you should not insist that your own existence be the wellspring of the Stranger's words.
One day a former nuclear power plant engineer, a man with whom I was always at loggerheads, calculatedly adjusted the volume of his voice, just loud enough for me to hear, and said to himself,
- Nothing quite as terrifying, soul-stirring, as being picked as a pinch-runner!'"
Published in 1976, The Pinch Runner Memorandum marked the end of one cycle of Kenzaburō Ōe "idiot son" (his term) narratives which started with Aghwee the Sky Monster and A Personal Matter in 1964, following the birth of his own mentally handicapped son Hikari.
This English version was translated by Michiko Niikuni Wilson (author of a 1986 book on Ōe) and Michael K. Wilson, another pair in a long line of different translators, in part due to the rush to bring out Oe's novels in English after his 1994 Nobel Prize win.
The narrator has a son Hikari, suffering from a birth cranial defect, who attends the same school as another boy, Mori, aged 8, with a similar condition. Mori's father (known in the novel simply as Mori-father) is a "former nuclear power plant engineer".
The quote above, which opens the novel, is uttered by Mori-father) as, waiting to pick up "our children", they watch "children different from ours" playing baseball.
Mori-father is a former engineer as he suffered nuclear radiation poisoning, and everybody but him thinks that his son's abnormality is a result of the radiation being passed down in his genes. Indeed he encouraged his wife to think this.
Mori-father then asks, or more demands, that Hikari-father (an author, like the real-life Oe) become his "ghostwriter", bombarding him with letters:
"From now on I want a constant data feed into you, to influence every bit of output that comes from you. You'll finally get sick of me, I'm bound to affect your consciousness and body. I don't mean to offend you, but my information will do more than just harrass you. Who knows, it might, in the end, enthrall you. Once I integrate with you like this, it'll be like being my own ghostwriter.
Why do I need you as my ghostwriter? Because I need someone to creatively elaborate my actions and my thoughts, to record them beforehand in a 'memorandum'. I'm about to embark on a new adventure with Mori; without a chronicler, I feel that the adventure-to-come (and therefore Mori's and my life) with be nothing but a maddening illusion. I've got a premonition that our adventure will be a phantasmagoric event, and you know if my 'memorandum' ever ends up in the hands of the police, it would be considered drivel."
The story Mori-father tells through the narrator, is itself a tangled one, centering on a "switchover" that occurs, when he partly absorbs Mori's identity, de-ageing from thirty-eight to eighteen as the 8 year old Mori immediately ages to 28.
Mori and Mori-father then get involved in a rather over elaborate farce involving some anti-nuclear rebels and two different competing groups of radicals (the revs and the counterevs), each of them being manipulated by a businessman The Patron who, having survived Hiroshima, is influencing both groups to build a crude atomic bomb and threaten to detonate it in Tokyo to cause civil chaos. Except that the Patron's true goal seems to be to emerge as the apparent saviour of Japan by thwarting the groups just as their plan might come to fruition. And Mori-father is himself convinced that the switchover was ordained by a extra-terrestrial Cosmic Mind wanting he and Mori to save humankind from the Patron.
"I had resolved to insist with renewed conviction that the switched-over pair had been picked as a pinch-runner for humankind"
I can't help but feel that Ōe loses his way a little in this part of the novel. The 28 year old Mori has little to do with the initial theme of a mentally handicapped son, and Ōe's preoccupation instead emerges as his strong anti-nuclear views, which here seem to extend from nuclear weapons to nuclear power altogether.
And the style of the narration is very much Rabelasian Grotesque Realism (in Mikhail Bakhtin's term). “The writer’s job is the job of a clown,” Ōe has said, “the clown who also talks about sorrow” - but here there is a little too much clowning for my taste.
In the Paris Review in 2007 Ōe discussed his own style and how it had evolved:
"My style has become very difficult, very twisted, complicated. That was necessary for me to improve my work, to create a new perspective, but fifteen years ago I experienced profound doubt as to whether elaboration was the right method for a novelist ... At the age of sixty [i.e. c.1995] I started to think that my method could be wrong, my image of how to create could be wrong. I still elaborate until I cannot find any open space on the paper, but now there is a second stage: I rewrite a very simple, clear version of what I’ve written."
The wonderful Somersault, written in 1999 was one of the first novels written in this second style, and also features a messianic Patron, and is in my view far more effective.
One day a former nuclear power plant engineer, a man with whom I was always at loggerheads, calculatedly adjusted the volume of his voice, just loud enough for me to hear, and said to himself,
- Nothing quite as terrifying, soul-stirring, as being picked as a pinch-runner!'"
Published in 1976, The Pinch Runner Memorandum marked the end of one cycle of Kenzaburō Ōe "idiot son" (his term) narratives which started with Aghwee the Sky Monster and A Personal Matter in 1964, following the birth of his own mentally handicapped son Hikari.
This English version was translated by Michiko Niikuni Wilson (author of a 1986 book on Ōe) and Michael K. Wilson, another pair in a long line of different translators, in part due to the rush to bring out Oe's novels in English after his 1994 Nobel Prize win.
The narrator has a son Hikari, suffering from a birth cranial defect, who attends the same school as another boy, Mori, aged 8, with a similar condition. Mori's father (known in the novel simply as Mori-father) is a "former nuclear power plant engineer".
The quote above, which opens the novel, is uttered by Mori-father) as, waiting to pick up "our children", they watch "children different from ours" playing baseball.
Mori-father is a former engineer as he suffered nuclear radiation poisoning, and everybody but him thinks that his son's abnormality is a result of the radiation being passed down in his genes. Indeed he encouraged his wife to think this.
Mori-father then asks, or more demands, that Hikari-father (an author, like the real-life Oe) become his "ghostwriter", bombarding him with letters:
"From now on I want a constant data feed into you, to influence every bit of output that comes from you. You'll finally get sick of me, I'm bound to affect your consciousness and body. I don't mean to offend you, but my information will do more than just harrass you. Who knows, it might, in the end, enthrall you. Once I integrate with you like this, it'll be like being my own ghostwriter.
Why do I need you as my ghostwriter? Because I need someone to creatively elaborate my actions and my thoughts, to record them beforehand in a 'memorandum'. I'm about to embark on a new adventure with Mori; without a chronicler, I feel that the adventure-to-come (and therefore Mori's and my life) with be nothing but a maddening illusion. I've got a premonition that our adventure will be a phantasmagoric event, and you know if my 'memorandum' ever ends up in the hands of the police, it would be considered drivel."
The story Mori-father tells through the narrator, is itself a tangled one, centering on a "switchover" that occurs, when he partly absorbs Mori's identity, de-ageing from thirty-eight to eighteen as the 8 year old Mori immediately ages to 28.
Mori and Mori-father then get involved in a rather over elaborate farce involving some anti-nuclear rebels and two different competing groups of radicals (the revs and the counterevs), each of them being manipulated by a businessman The Patron who, having survived Hiroshima, is influencing both groups to build a crude atomic bomb and threaten to detonate it in Tokyo to cause civil chaos. Except that the Patron's true goal seems to be to emerge as the apparent saviour of Japan by thwarting the groups just as their plan might come to fruition. And Mori-father is himself convinced that the switchover was ordained by a extra-terrestrial Cosmic Mind wanting he and Mori to save humankind from the Patron.
"I had resolved to insist with renewed conviction that the switched-over pair had been picked as a pinch-runner for humankind"
I can't help but feel that Ōe loses his way a little in this part of the novel. The 28 year old Mori has little to do with the initial theme of a mentally handicapped son, and Ōe's preoccupation instead emerges as his strong anti-nuclear views, which here seem to extend from nuclear weapons to nuclear power altogether.
And the style of the narration is very much Rabelasian Grotesque Realism (in Mikhail Bakhtin's term). “The writer’s job is the job of a clown,” Ōe has said, “the clown who also talks about sorrow” - but here there is a little too much clowning for my taste.
In the Paris Review in 2007 Ōe discussed his own style and how it had evolved:
"My style has become very difficult, very twisted, complicated. That was necessary for me to improve my work, to create a new perspective, but fifteen years ago I experienced profound doubt as to whether elaboration was the right method for a novelist ... At the age of sixty [i.e. c.1995] I started to think that my method could be wrong, my image of how to create could be wrong. I still elaborate until I cannot find any open space on the paper, but now there is a second stage: I rewrite a very simple, clear version of what I’ve written."
The wonderful Somersault, written in 1999 was one of the first novels written in this second style, and also features a messianic Patron, and is in my view far more effective.
July 16, 2022
I love Oe but this kind of sucked ass... stylistically and diction-wise, Mori is pretty funny (I quite like his "ha, ha"). But his antics - and the confusing level of infighting politics and conspiracy in the plot - basically derail the story into being impossible to follow by about a 3rd of the way in. I gave up about halfway and skimmed the rest. It was interesting to see the name "Patron" pop up (which reappears in other works like Somersault), as well as the figure of a woman character with extreme political motivations (reminiscent of An echo of Heaven).
Before that, Hikari's Dad (stand-in for Oe), narrating his interactions with Mori and his taking upon the role of ghostwriter - are pretty interesting. Mori's absurdity is balanced out by the dad's observations and other style of humor.
This book's gimmick of Dad Mori switching places with Kid Mori reminds me of something that won the Kenzaburo Oe prize later - "Me" - a story where two men switch identities without being able to switch back (in the sense their new families believe them to be unchanged). It's this kind of confusing thought exercise, that for me at least, doesn't feel like it amounts to much experimentally...
Before that, Hikari's Dad (stand-in for Oe), narrating his interactions with Mori and his taking upon the role of ghostwriter - are pretty interesting. Mori's absurdity is balanced out by the dad's observations and other style of humor.
This book's gimmick of Dad Mori switching places with Kid Mori reminds me of something that won the Kenzaburo Oe prize later - "Me" - a story where two men switch identities without being able to switch back (in the sense their new families believe them to be unchanged). It's this kind of confusing thought exercise, that for me at least, doesn't feel like it amounts to much experimentally...
Read
February 9, 2010As soon as I began reading this book, I realized this was by the same writer who did "A Quiet Life." That book, while I read it back in 2008, has stayed with me. And I could not find the strength to read about the same family situation, though this time the emphasis would be on the father's relationship with his mentally disabled son, not the daughter's relationship with her brother. "A Quiet Life" was so very perfect as a small slice of life blown up under a powerful microscope to reveal all the intimate struggles of the sister as she tried to take care of her brother while her father was away. Just felt like it was too much for my brain to enter into that same overwhelming world of sadness again. Oe is indeed an amazing writer.
August 20, 2008
I got the distinct feeling of a time and place in Japan's modern history. A fine choice for someone who, for instance, enjoyed Ryu Murakami's "69" or who is interested in a modern Japanese author who mixes politics, the fantastic, history, and the mysteries of interpersonal relationships but who is not looking to read another Haruki Murakami novel.
I freakin' loved this book.
I freakin' loved this book.
March 1, 2021
For most of this book it felt like a conspiracy theorist was rattling off into my ear... Somehow I was under the illusion that it was going somewhere, but the ending left me feeling like I just got swindled really badly. I feel like I didn't even bother absorbing much of what was going on after the halfway point anymore. Not sure how I even managed to finish it.
Well, the first chapter was interesting, at least. The rest felt like it could have been written in a more pleasurable way, but maybe an English translation just doesn't give the same feeling as the original Japanese? I have no idea.
Well, the first chapter was interesting, at least. The rest felt like it could have been written in a more pleasurable way, but maybe an English translation just doesn't give the same feeling as the original Japanese? I have no idea.
July 28, 2021
Didn't manage to go over a few chapters, Oe writes super boring, the subjects (mostly baseball) are stupid and the whole story is just boring and doesn't go anywhere. This was the 4th (!!!) book i've stopped reading today (and maybe 6 in the last week), i don't think i ever had such a bad luck with books before
January 13, 2016
Ok, but not that good. Of the 3 Oe books I've read, I like this one the least.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews