Customer Reviews

Secret Rendezvous

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From the very start of this short, but densely labyrinthine and surreally intense novel, you know that you're in strange territory. An ambulance comes unbidden in the middle of the night, spirits away a man's perfectly healthy wife, and he's left to begin a Kafkaesque search to find out what's become of her in a hospital whose nightmarish bureaucracy is concealing a bizarre and ominous program of sex research.

Abe has the rare talent of making even the most outlandish situations seem perfectly plausible and that's what lends *Secret Rendezvous* its riveting sense of psychological truth and subjective terror. Like a powerful myth, there's something more *real* than real about the protagonist's endlessly frustrating search, his alternating states of inexplicable omnipotence and paralyzing impotence, his longing to find his missing wife and his fear of doing so.

Like Robbe-Grillet, Abe is a master of moody erotic dread and the hint of horrors forever just out of view. Unlike Robbe-Grillet, Abe's storyline, though fractured, is not obsessively repetitive; though detailed, it's not frozen in time--events move forward towards a conclusion that, although ambiguous, nevertheless seems eerily inevitable.

Explicit, often shocking, never purely prurient, and, at times, even surprisingly funny, *Secret Rendezvous* is a disturbing and thought-provoking novel by a writer who strikes me as one of the most under-appreciated of the 20th century. His sexually-charged themes and dark insights into psychological dilemmas flatly without resolution make a point about the problematic nature of the human condition that is not easily assimilated to a culture that still believes in solutions...in fact, that still believes in the concept of `humanity' at all.

Perhaps, that makes Abe more relevant now than ever.

Surrealism exemplified some of the most famous works by Kobo Abe (1924-1993), earning him comparisons to Franz Kafka. Surrealism as a 20th-century literary and artistic movement attempted to express the workings of the subconscious.

His work Mikkai (Secret Rendezvous) is worth a read for its use of fantastic imagery and the incongruous juxtaposition of scientific data with bizarre nightmare-like scenarios. Secret Rendezvous is relevant in its description of the trappings of an increasingly technological society and its critique of a hospital system gone haywire. Each patient requires a secret agent to penetrate the bureaucratic system, and each person also appears to be under surveillance, mimicking the modern-day question, "Is Big Brother watching you?"

This book is a favorite- if you like Kafka's books and Cronenberg's (or Lynch's) movies, you'll love this book. If I had to pick a genre, I'd call this existential sci-fi horror; it reminds me of some of the underground/alt sci-fi/fantasy of the 70s, and the "eru-goro" (erotic-grotesque) comics of Mauro and others.

There's a lot of powerful grotesque sexual imagery (especially "body horror") and existentialism; even as the main character gets more and more drawn into the story, he becomes more and more detached. It's not a pleasant read, but it's totally engrossing.

Through the meticulous detail and persistent narrative rhythm of "Woman in the Dunes," Kobo Abe masterfully creates an emotional experience of visceral intensity, inculcated word by word like so many grains of sand, ever encroaching. "Secret Rendezvous" is marked by the same ability to convey vivid viscerality thru the use of detail, narrative rhythm, and the careful cultivation of image, but in some important ways this book fails to bring its sense of confusion beyond much more than muddled mystery.

This book invokes a claustrophobic sense of bureaucratic ambivalence, existential bewilderment and ethical ambiguity, all complicated by veiled and bizarre sexual depravity. This is a dark and increasingly surreal book. If it fails to be deeply disturbing, it seems only because certain elements and characters are not presented with enough clarity to give their confusions full resonance. Despite this, the novel is effective in exploring the mind's capacity for self-deception, and finds a certain manic comedy in our capacity to shape reality according to our delusions.

I find this to be a psychological novel of warped vision, insightful but difficult to read. Once in the concrete corridor of my apartment building, I found a praying mantis, apparently lost. I tried to escort him out a window, but he retreated and I was forced to leave him be. Weeks later, amongst a tangle of dust and hair, I saw the mantis' stiffened carcass, and when I tried to imagine the last weeks of his life, wandering in that empty concrete hollow, I was vividly reminded of this book...

This was the first Kobe Abe book I've read. It a short quick read, but rather crazy. I'm not sure what really happened or why. A lot of things are so random and therefore entertaining. I would recommend this book to those who like well written books with great imagery and that are thought-provoking, but ultimately lack the usual plot structure and conclusion of a story.

The hospital is a labyrinth of human depravity. A man wanders through it searching for his wife, constantly assaulted by odd and insane sights, sounds, and people. Written with mind piercing clarity and description.

Having read Abe's "Woman in the Dunes" (a masterpiece) already, I was expecting a strange story filled with odd characters and challenging situations. However, I felt that the book wasn't as tightly written as I expected. He changes perspective and has some characters that meld together which are confusing. There didn't seem to be a satisfactory explanation of the character's motivation or actions. There is also a bizarre sexual element that doesn't seem to pay-off. The book is an interesting read, but I would recommend that you read "Women in the Dunes" as it is a far better novel.