The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima (Patron-Only Early Access)

Cliff, my man, I admire all your reviews—I often go back and watch them again after I’ve read or reread a book I know you’ve covered—but you are on a roll recently. Maybe you’ve achieved some kind of critical density (pun intended) that makes for maximum penetration in a short space. I recently commented that your Burgess review was one of your best. This was just as good, maybe better. I reread this one last year, and I couldn’t have distilled its essence better than you did here. I tip my professorial cap. Your skill in dealing with novels would embarrass most academics with their mandarin poststructuralist “critiques.” You do the real shit. Your work has greater civic value than you might realize. I have even used reviews of yours as teaching tools in one particular course I teach, precisely to illustrate the point that one can major in STEM or whatever one likes and *still* develop the critical thinking skills and aesthetic sensitivity of a genuinely cultured person—and that that experience need not emanate from any political or ideological pieties. Blast of fresh air, as always. I’ve been back in the gym lately myself, girding my aging yarbles. Really does make life better, doesn’t it? Especially if we skip the seppuku part. Cheers, brother.

Always ready for a BTF Mishima review. Excellent as always. I read the Sea of Fertility last January and it is something I still think about very regularly. Same with Sailor. I picked up a copy of Mishima’s Sword by Christopher Ross a few years back when I was really studying up on Mishima, it’s a nonfiction book about what happened to/trying to track down Mishima’s sword after his death. Really interesting shit. Cheers!

Also, I appreciate you mentioning that despite Mishima’s unflinching conviction at the end of his life, his ideals were not enough to stave off human error. The botched decapitation is something I always bring up when talking about him. It’s brutally poetic, brutally appropriate for the man he was.

As mentioned before, Sailor is probably my favorite Mishima novel, though I am working through his Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Every work of Mishima's feels to me, like some sort of cubist piece, another perspective on the same confluence of ideologies that he was obsessed with. Each one brings a new clarity on the man's project. Sailor is particularly enlightening, and staggeringly profound for how concise it is. I am writing this comment before actually finishing the review, so you may also mention this, but I was always struck by a bit at the end of the novel when the narration describes a train passing by in the distance--or something to that effect. Amidst his descriptions of nature and traditional Japanese architecture, the intrusion of an ugly metal machine feels almost horrific. Paired with what has just happened at the end, this culmination of colliding worlds and dying ideology, it's perfect. I'm far from done with Mishima's whole oeuvre, but this one will be hard to beat. This was a great way to start my morning. Thank you yet again for a great and insightful review of life-changing literature. You rock.

Also, can you link the podcast you mention around 12:00?

Would've sworn you've already reviewed this. It's a great book.