Beyond the Curve [Import] [Paperback]

Kobo Abe (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Flamingo (December 31, 1994)
• ISBN-10: 0006544916
• ISBN-13: 978-0006544913
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Japan's greatest literary exports!, March 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Beyond the Curve (Hardcover)

Beyond the Curve by Kobo Abe is one of the best compilations of short stories I've read. His style is like a blend of Rod Serling, Stephen King and Salvador Dali. Each tale is strange and unique and tests the limits of your imagination. As much as I like his other books, this one is my favorite because it runs the gamut of his storytelling style from novels like Woman in the Dunes to the outrageously surreal Kangaroo Notebook. If you haven't read any of Abe's work, Beyond the Curve is a great introduction.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beyond realism, April 7, 2004

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Curve (Modern Japanese Writers Series) (Paperback)

This collection of short stories, translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter, is a surreal foray into the illogical and improbable. Kobo Abe is the kind of writer who reminds one of other writers. His Kafkaesque "An Irrelevant Death" places an unexplained corpse in the apartment of A- who must then decide how to dispose of it without suspicion. In another story that recalls Kafka, "Dendrocacalia," a man named Common experiences an unexpected metamorphosis into a rare and sought-after plant. But not all stories evoke Kafka. "The Life of a Poet" embraces the lyrical mythology of Latin American magic realism as a crone is accidentally made into thread and a deadly snow falls made of "crystalline dreams, souls, and desires." Lewis Carroll's convoluted logic surfaces in "The Bet" when an architect for a particular demanding advertising company discovers a world of small doors, head-shaking conversations, and stairs that lead not to an expected succession of floors but instead to places governed by a red light and adages. The bizarre building teaches the architect the logic of the illogical. When he designs "the path of the president's office as a mathematical function of the System," he resolves the story in an entirely fitting way.

Despite the derivative feel to these stories, they are distinctly Abe's. His Japanese sensibilities give them a different twist, for while Kafka chose to change his character into a cockroach, Abe chooses instead to transform his bewildered character into a scrubby plant that grows at high altitudes and which would be quite at home in a government funded hothouse. The author's confidence in the wildness of his imagination gives these stories an authority of voice, allowing for the needed suspension of disbelief. Abe's fictional realm is a difficult one to leave.

It took me a couple of stories to fully appreciate Abe's talents, but I'm glad I continued reading. Readers of Japanese and international fiction should most definitely take a look at Abe's work. Don't expect realism - or anything close to it - because Kobo Abe's fiction exists on another plane.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really good, December 2, 2003

By 

helianthaster "paul" (sitka, AK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Curve (Modern Japanese Writers Series) (Paperback)

I really recommend this book, although I only gave it four stars because the stories might be too similar to each other for my taste. I'd like just a little more variety in the range of emotions and plot twists. It is easy to say that Abe is good, of course, because he is such a widely recognized writer. I'd like to say, though, that he is so good that he can actually make a reader angry (many of his stories create a feeling of boxed-in, controlled frustration I never encountered in any other writer).