2022/03/31 English

I thought about what book I should read next, and chose "Collected Best Stories of Gunzo". This has three volumes of bunko (Japanese paperback) and contains various short stories from Yukio Mishima, Osamu Dazai to recent authors. TBH I have read this(these?) once but thought it must be interesting to read again. Also, I thought that I should read recent authors' novels. I am exactly influenced by Takashi Akutsu's journal. Recently I rarely read new and fresh authors. Watching great readers like Kenzaburo Oe read and praise new authors, I feel that I am not a true bookworm or booklover. For me, reading books is not any creative activity that enables me to see the new world.

I read Takashi Akutsu's journal "The Journal of Reading, Making The Book, Soup and Bread, and The Gravity of Rainbow". He reads the books he truly needs. There is no vulgarity in mounting someone else. Very straight and powerful reading he does, so I want to stand by him. I always carry a few books in my bag (of course, it's impossible to read all of them), but today I read only this journal concentrated. I enjoyed a rich time with this book, and the richness of 'I could be satisfied with this' is important as Shinji Miyadai says 'the intensity' of enjoying a marvelous time with reading. Reading is funny as any other activity. Kenichi Yoshida says so too.

I might have to follow Akutsu and read Thomas Pynchon, or follow a friend of mine and read Don Delillo's "Underworld"? I thought about these ideas. When I had watched several of Ernst Lubitsch's movies influenced by Mikio Shibayama, a person got surprised and said 'You watch Lubitsch!'. I never thought that I wanted to mount other people because I knew Lubitsch. Accidentally my life met Mikio Shibayama, and he let me watch Lubitsch. That's all. I learned about Lubitsch by chance and luck, so I don't want to stand upon somebody because of that fact.

'Mounting someone', or 'Immerse in a feeling of superiority’, or 'following what is/are cool'. Those topics remind me of Bret Easton Ellis's novel "American Psycho". Showing their senses of beauty even in the design of business cards, the characters show each other their sensitivity about who is the hippest person and get tired of that kind of competition. That game of mounting must show the fact that the person praises other people's taste in reading or their attitudes toward living their life honestly lesser. The person just looks at their self-loved sense of beauty. Just respond to them with a mechanical smile and say 'You're the boss! 😜', that's enough I believe.