Like Akutagawa
What the hell kind of assignment is this anyway?! Write a short story like Akugatawa, she said. Like Akutagawa! I wish! Every time I try to write a sentence I feel like a clown trying to dance.
Listen to me: first I need to read 700 volumes of classical European literature, then learn Classical Chinese, then I’ll work feverishly for six months polishing every line of a single short story until all pieces in the scenario have a purpose and my mind breaks under migraines, hallucinations, and paranoia. Then I’ll have guilty affairs with three or four lovers and kill myself. And then I’ll have written a short story deserving the title “like Akutagawa”. Feh.
Wrote nonstop from 22:00 to 07:00, deadline was 08:00, ended up with something highly watakushi shousetsu. Write like Kerouac.
“He walks with a convict’s gait
a dream-ravaged, slip of a man
formally summoned to confess
before a suspicious audience […]
His throat burns so, he’s uncertain
how he might find a voice to utter
his strange sin to the huddled faces
attending his trial and to every move…”
(Liberation Song by Yahia Lababidi)
er, boa sorte, I mean.
with insanely painful effort, I managed to wrote 11 pages. it was supposed to be 2 pages. I’m the only one who don’t know this; everyone else wrote 2 pages. now everyone must hate me deeply for being forced to read 11 pages of my I-novel. I hate everything about this.