I think the death here is more metaphorical. Well, the man is implied to die at the end, and he has cuts on his legs where his 'radish sprouts' were (which supports the whole reality/dream interwoven narratives). between that and the songs at the end about children hunting down kidnappers, there's a general tone of 'adults manipulating children'. The stuff at the end with the girl and the train station and the 'circus' not coming also felt like something in favor of the pedophile interpretation, the girl lamenting about the 'circus not coming'. My guess on the children's choir is probably related to his tendencies, being attracted to events in which children are being publicly consumed (e.g. ![]() ![]() The stuff he sees in the dream world are usually related to fixations or things in his life - the Daikoku book and his father, the department store, an encounter with Americans obsessed with "population control". Maybe he feels guilty or maybe he's sincerely just pathetic enough to still long for this girl (I'm vouching for the latter because the protagonist doesn't demonstrate any self awareness about his views towards young girls), but in any case, his nurse reminds him of the girl, and he sees the girl multiple times during his dream-trip to a hot springs in 'hell'. But I get the sense that the protagonist is probably a pedophile of some sort, who manipulated (but not to the point of any touching) a girl. I don't really know what gets the protagonist into the hospital in the first place (One could say that maybe the sequence mentioning the kangaroo notebook is a hallucination or recollection of the protagonist's job). In this case, a dream-like world formed from the protagonists memories, entered and explored via a near-death state. I think that there's a throughline with previous Abe books in that this book is about the disorientation/dissolution of identity of a protagonist, but in this case, the space in which the protagonist undergoes that (e.g., the dunes in Woman in the Dunes, the hospital in Secret Rendezvous, the city in Ruined Map, mines in Ark Sakura) - is not a physical space, but a mental one. You can see other reviews for plot summaries, but to me the gist is that this book weaves between two worlds - the fugue/hallucination/dream state of the protagonist, and less frequently, a sick ward at a hospital. The man says the 1920s were "way before I was born", and his parents died around 5 years, ago, so my guess is the protagonist is nearing retirement age (since the book is set at least past 1987 according to the Pink Floyd references). The novel follows a man (curiously I think the fact it's a man is only confirmed by the implied death article at the end of the book). In the same way that a Japanese reader pointed out that Abe's sex hospital catastrophe novel "Secret Rendezvous" sounds like Yosuke Yamashita Trio's "Arashi" (1977), I think much of Kangaroo Notebook is meant to have the score of "It's a Small World (but worse)", outside of the Pink Floyd references. I imagine instrumentation would be something like the grating hellscape of the "It's a Small World!" ride at Disneyworld. The first 6 notes on each line are staccato, the last note is held for the quarter note. ![]() It goes:Ĥ/4, C Major, one note per syllable. While reading this book I wrote a jingle to go along with the "help me! club"'s jingle. "Help me help me help me please, please please won't you help me please." A group of child-demons, part of the Help Me! Club, sings this a bunch over the novel. Review published Kangaroo Notebook by Kōbō Abe Kobo Abe - Kangaroo Notebook (1991)/Ruined Map (1967)/Secret Rendezvous (1977)
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