/lit/ - Literature

>>22124220
embarrassing tweet. No one living in the real world is worried about what either a man or a woman is. That's chronic internet faggot stuff.

people are having fun out there anon. come join us lol

>>22002529
one of the passages of A Man With No Talents that stuck with me was about the author speaking with a korean expat co-laborer about not having kids or a wife and the co-worker told him that this is an incredibly embarassing thing to admit, that he thinks less of him now, and that no man of his age should feel satisfied in life without a family. I think about this passage a lot especially in the context of those antinatalist spam threads that get everyone worked up. I don't think I want a family myself but I often think of what peoples true opinions would be on the subject were the societal status implications removed from the idea of family and having offspring. There's definitely a shrinking level of "peer-pressure" to do the traditional thing these days, but I think its still a significant contributor to why people who do end up getting married and having children do it, I'm sure moreso in foreign cultures like korea.

>>22006288
If someone asks you to go do something, go even if you're not that into it. I hate parties to this day but the experiences and connections I made at all those gay college parties and events turned me from an alienating shut-in autist to an employable relatable Real Human Being™.

Why did he do it lads?

>be a Japanese salaryman in the 90s
>worked in offices for around two decades
>get sick of the rat race
>resign and live in a rooming house with poor dayworkers
>earn minimal pay in construction and other odd-jobs
>only private space is a bunkbed in a room with other men
>write a brief memoir of your time there as a lark and send it to a major competition pseudonymously
>it wins
>refuse to show up to the award ceremony
>inform the judging panel that you have since left that rooming house and now live on the streets

I've not come across a book quite like this.

Any books similar to A Man With No Talents?

It is quite a unique book: an account of a man in his 40s (iirc) who, after working in a corporate environment for a long time, decides he can no longer function in that environment and essentially drops out of society. He lives in a boarding house for borderline-homeless bachelors and works odd-jobs for minimum wage. The book won a prize in Japan, but the pseudonymous author refused to show up for the event and only informed the judges that he had since left the boarding house and was now homeless.

Anyone read this?

Genuinely one of the most interesting books I've read recently, written by a voluntarily homeless Japanese man.

Let's get this going:

1. Book you like but never / rarely see posted here

2. Brief synopsis

_____

>A Man With No Talents

>Short non-fictional account of a middle-aged man who dropped out of the corporate rat race in Japan and lived in a boarding house working off-jobs when needed. Humorous and insightful perspective on his inability to make it in the corporate world or even in society itself, and the lifestyle of a near-vagrant in 80s/90s Urban Japan.

>"San'ya, Tokyo's largest day-laborer quarter and the only one with lodgings, had been Oyama Shiro's home for twelve years when he took up his pen and began writing about his life as a resident of Tokyo's most notorious neighborhood. After completing a university education, Oyama entered the business workforce and appeared destined to walk the same path as many a "salaryman." A singular temperament and a deep loathing of conformity, however, altered his career trajectory dramatically. Oyama left his job and moved to Osaka, where he lived for three years. Later he returned to the corporate world but fell out of it again, this time for good. After spending a short time on the streets around Shinjuku, home to Tokyo's bustling entertainment district, he moved to San'ya in 1987, at the age of forty."

>"Oyama acknowledges his eccentricity and his inability to adapt to corporate life. Spectacularly unsuccessful as a salaryman yet uncomfortable in his new surroundings, he portrays himself as an outsider both from mainstream society and from his adopted home. It is precisely this outsider stance, however, at once dispassionate yet deeply engaged, that caught the eye of Japanese readers. The book was published in Japan in 2000 after Oyama had submitted his manuscript—on a lark, he confesses—for one of Japan's top literary awards, the Kaiko Takeshi Prize. Although he was astounded actually to win the award, Oyama remained in character and elected to preserve the anonymity that has freed him from all social bonds and obligations. The Cornell edition contains a new afterword by Oyama regarding his career since his inadvertent brush with fame."

I recommend this book. A middle-aged man tired of corporate Japan drops out and lives in a boarding house working odd-jobs and then eventually lives homeless.