Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Box Man by Kobo Abe pages 1-90

This book is bizarre. This book is hard to follow as well. I'm not really sure what is happening at any given moment. The book began with a brief description of what a box man is, which is basically a man who lives in a large cardboard box and never leaves it. The next part of the book was a story of how a man, "Case A", became a box man, which was a very odd tale indeed. After those two stories were finished, I was introduced to the person writing the book, a box man himself. This box man who is narrating tells the reader a strange story about himself, a nurse, and a doctor who is also an imitation box man. That is where I am now. So far the box man has sold his box to the doctor for a large sum, and was told to destroy his box. He does not destroy his box, but tells the doctor and the nurse that he did, and now the doctor is going to become a real box man, not just a pretend one, and the nurse is going to get naked, something that the box man wants very much, but he also seems terrified by the prospect of it. At least that's what I think is happening, I'm not entirely sure, and I think if I talked to someone else who has read the book they would say something completely different. Although this book is very confusing, it's intensely interesting and I'm looking forward to reading what happens next.

1 comment:

Tara Andrews said...

"The box man" ha ha sounds epic.