Thomas Disch's LJ (RSS Feed)
12-21-2007, 04:54 PM
Am I spelling it right? When I was a teenager or not much later Donald Keene published his translations of Chikamatsu's plays for the puppet theater. The man was more Shakespeare than Henson, but his themes were small-scale domestic tragedies, ending like Romeo and Juliet with an ennobling double suicide. As I recall there was a kind of series: The Love Suicides of. . . [your hometown here]. Early on I aspired to write my own--Love-Suicides of San Diego Bay. Grandiosity and self-pity side by side: Who could ask for more drama than that?
Anyhow what brings it to mind is not just the time of year, winter solstice and all, but the news that Britney's pregnant sister's boy friend and the father of the foetus may be tried for statutory rape, tho a teen himself, and sent away for a few years. Some might think abortion a practical solution, but may I suggest a traditional Japanese love-suicide? If I were facing twenty years, or even ten, at age 19, I couldn't think of a better way to flip the bird to a cruel world than to go down in flames with my sweetheart beside me. Read Chikamatsu and you'll agree.
(Original Post) (http://tomsdisch.livejournal.com/167632.html)
Anyhow what brings it to mind is not just the time of year, winter solstice and all, but the news that Britney's pregnant sister's boy friend and the father of the foetus may be tried for statutory rape, tho a teen himself, and sent away for a few years. Some might think abortion a practical solution, but may I suggest a traditional Japanese love-suicide? If I were facing twenty years, or even ten, at age 19, I couldn't think of a better way to flip the bird to a cruel world than to go down in flames with my sweetheart beside me. Read Chikamatsu and you'll agree.
(Original Post) (http://tomsdisch.livejournal.com/167632.html)