Kwaidan: Ghost Stories and Strange Tales of Old Japan by Lafcadio Hearn, is a fascinating book, retold be an unusual man (Hearn's biograpy is less than conventional).
The style of these ghost stories and tales is delightfully odd; the set-up is broken, as if Hearn was creating a modernist text (but I am sure it is simply an accident, or the constraints of his style or even a lack of skill). There are simply good stories here; they tell a folk tales in a straightforward manner without undue and unnecessary embellishment, while still keeping their sense of otherness.
The end of the book is confounding. There are a string of mini-treatises about storytelling, some Welsh folk tales – all with no bearing on the Japanese material. Why is this in the book? Has anyone from Dover actually read this work recently?
Beside this odd addendum, these stories are just clean narrative fun.
The style of these ghost stories and tales is delightfully odd; the set-up is broken, as if Hearn was creating a modernist text (but I am sure it is simply an accident, or the constraints of his style or even a lack of skill). There are simply good stories here; they tell a folk tales in a straightforward manner without undue and unnecessary embellishment, while still keeping their sense of otherness.
The end of the book is confounding. There are a string of mini-treatises about storytelling, some Welsh folk tales – all with no bearing on the Japanese material. Why is this in the book? Has anyone from Dover actually read this work recently?
Beside this odd addendum, these stories are just clean narrative fun.
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