In fifty-one short sections, a writer looks back on his life: a mother lost to madness, bookshops, a failed love, marriage, illness and the earthquake. A bleak, fragmentary last confession, written shortly before his suicide.
Books mentioned in A Fool's Life (7)
The Confession of a Fool by August Strindberg: “Under a low lamp he began to read The Confession of a Fool, but before he had read two pages he was smiling wryly: Strindberg too, in letters to the countess who was his mistress, had written things little different from his own. [auto-translated]”
Candide by Voltaire: “He moved on to the eighteenth-century philosophers but did not approach Rousseau; he drew near to the philosopher of Candide, who matched his cold, intellectual side. [auto-translated]”
West-Eastern Divan by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “The West-Eastern Divan again tried to give him new strength. It was the Oriental Goethe he had not known. Seeing Goethe stand serenely beyond good and evil, he felt an envy close to despair. [auto-translated]”
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “Even Rousseau's Confessions was full of heroic lies. [auto-translated]”
A New Life by Shimazaki Tōson: “Even Rousseau's Confessions was full of heroic lies, and as for Shinsei, he had never met a more cunning hypocrite than its hero. [auto-translated]”
Poetry and Truth by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “The title Poetry and Truth struck him as fitting any autobiography. So he decided to write a brief Poetry and Truth of his own. [auto-translated]”
The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol: “He recalled the terracotta bust he had given his friend, the one of the author of The Inspector General, whom the friend loved. He thought of Gogol, who had also died mad. [auto-translated]”