The Ruined Map: A Novel

Kobo Abe has become one of those authors whose entire work I feel I need to read. The Woman in the Dunes is a great piece of existentialist fiction – on par with anything by the major existentialist writers like Sartre or Camus or even Kafka, who seems closest to him. I read The Ruined Map next, and while there are some superficial similarities to TWITD, this novel is a good deal more disorienting – an almost plotless "detective" story that circles around itself endlessly, until ultimately both the protagonist and the reader lose all sense of what's going on.As usual, E Dale Saunders' English translation is beautiful, capturing Abe's occasionally meditative, occasionally aggressive and bizarre prose. The atmosphere is thick, but if you're looking for a page-turning thriller, you're probably going to be disappointed – the mystery here of a woman's missing husband is unimportant. Abe is fixated instead on the very nature of personal identity and personal connections. Fifty years later, this book still resonates with contemporary Japanese society, of which thousands of people simply "opt out" every year (whether they be hikikomorior johatsu...).There is no resolution in Abe's world. As with The Woman in the Dunes, The Ruined Map leaves you with a strange sense of emptiness, and fear. Who are you? Why are you living the life you're living, and is it possible to escape it? Is it possible to escape yourself? Abe doesn't give us the answers, but he makes us think the important questions.

I've become a real enthusiast for Kobo Abe's work - and The Ruined Map stokes that enthusiasm. At face value, a detective novel, with much of it written in that staccato style so familiar from detective movie scripts, but Abe's wonderful descriptive prose breaks through to vary the pace. "Her somehow childish body harmonized with the breasts that were neither too big nor too small, and she seemed quite suited to the latest style of dancing, with its violent contortions", or "their vulgar hairdos, teased by the blaze that spurted from the drum, were quite appropriate for a dirty mattress" - these capture the scenes perfectly. Also, the desolation of a scene - "I called out, first in a quite weak voice and then somewhat louder. The sound melted into the deserted blank scene and was absorbed by it; not even a deadened echo came back."The story has its twists and turns, a mysterious disappearance, a grim underworld, a murder, a suicide (seems no Japanese novel is complete without a suicide - although this one does have an unusual take). All very confusing as you are led along - but whose map (and who) are we following? "There was no mistake ... I thought I was following the husband's map, but I was following my own". A really intriguing work, with no great resolution. Some clarity in the end, but nothing is set out on a platter here, you form your own view (if you need one) as to the outcome - this no doubt frustrates some readers; others (me) revel in it.

What is like to read James Joyce's Ulysses or more so Finnegan Wake in Japanese if your Japanese? I don't know but I'll bet you lose a lot/ and more so if there is no annotated guide to help through the dream language of the two books. To start with I found it funny that almost all reviews of this novel either listed details of the story erroneously or avoided them out right. Could such a book work for the English reader that wants a baseline explanation of the trap set by it's fully Japanese author? Well I don't think this mild English translation (without any notes at all) helps Abe's Japanese surrealism and New Wave to bloom into any real full blown existential crisis. . at least the one he seems to be hoping for in 1968. So who am I? What I am? Where am i going. . through hell if your reading the English translation of this book. Abe apparently tries to lay the burden of "the crime" solving and surreal expedience on the reader right? And to make it worse the author and main character seemingly delight in giving you half details and half truths that are constantly shifting and changing .. not only through the various maps in the story but various situations that keep changing with each page. Is it fun to be mentally ill if only for the short span of this "playful" novel? Perhaps ...if imagined mentally illness is your cup of tea . . but if not then maybe your up for a light dose of . . amnesia? And of course I realize "in real life" we can't really . .really. . "know" anybody not even ourselves. . but lets pretend that we can figure it all out anyway. . you know at least "who i am" anyway. . but lets do it while having a light dose of Alzheimer's to go with our search in F-city and S- city. No real city name is ever mention in the book. . not even Tokyo is mentioned (one review said it was) . . but hey it could be Tokyo right. . with all the underground crime going on and sexuality? And if you have a chance to watch the Japanese movie made from this book. . without subtitles. . Hiroshi Teshigahara's called it (don't laugh). . The Man Without a Map ( instead of the Ruined Map) / and what little I was able to watch of that movie showed me right off. . the English translation here. . loses a lot .But if the full movie is anything like the English translation of this novel. . it must have been pure hell to set up a narrative .. for editing and such. . unless as I think it's an experimental film. . But I'd rather go for William Burroughs Cut Ups from the 1950s .. which I love. . but I don't try to make a story out of it. . . but I get it. . all of us in these modern times are having an identity crisis and an existential crack up. . . but could this novel be a little less confusing and a little more enjoyable while trying to prove that? Or maybe Abe is having the last laugh. . .The Japanese modern cultural crisis of the 1960's being translated into American western thought of the 2000s/. Look I really don't have the time to keep going back to see who said what and why and who they really are/ / and you know what. . it doesn't really matter cuz everything keeps changing like your on acid. . .so I stopped at page 120 and dropped some real acid.. and it turned out to be a lot easier than reading this book. . hahaha. sorry // Will wait for a better translation or explanation. . at best i give this 2 stars/

I Enjoyed thoroughly this remarkable story.The search for a missing person opens into a larger search and deeper to where people's lives may intrinsically be found or lost.

I have not read all of Abe's stuff. But I've read a few. The first was Secret Rendezvous. I loved the first half but didn't care for the second half. I didn't care for Woman in the Dunes. While it wasn't as clear-cut as Secret Rendezvous, it seemed that The Face of Another and Inter Ice Age 4 similarly divided into parts I loved and other parts I didn't. So imagine how delighted I was by The Ruined Map, in which Abe maintained the stellar quality all the way through the book. I knew he could do it! If your reviews of Abe's work are as "mixed" as mine were, try this book - it may be your Kobo Abe holy grail!

Warning> This is not a crime novel.This is Kobo Abe. Not his best work, but holy cow some people hating this so much! Classic Abe storyline dissolving into the identity crises, madness and everything what makes Abe so genius.