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A review by booknooknorth
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
5.0
TW: Suicide, Depression, and A LOT OF SHIT.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
The last book this guy wrote was a foreshadowing of his own death. My god.
I don't care if this guy seemed overrated or the equivalent of hating a classic, but this book...If you have autism, depression, anxiety, social anxiety, fucking hate capitalism, this is...
...a truly mind fuck of a book. It needs to be read.
I can't begin to describe what this book means to me.
To feel seen of how much I dislike humanity, where I don't understand humanity and feeling like the world is just truly caving in on me.
Oh, but to even understand what Dazai went through you have to understand that back then, mental health wasn't even a fucking concept. You were seen as being dramatic, written off as a lunatic when all you want is a drop of solace. Of relief. To be understood.
Yet, he couldn't get any of that and ended up taking his and his lover's life. Leaving behind a widow and several children.
It took me so long after I read this book to come out of a suicidal spiral as I too have everything that Dazai probably had.
Because this is a classic, you might be tempted to not read this book because the prose might be clunky AF like a lot of writers of this time. For some reason, Dazai has an approachable and conversational prose that it's easy to digest.
...A little too easy to digest depression but hey-
The best thing about this book is the prose and dialogue.
This isn't a worldbuilding, plot, type of book. It's a deep dive into Dazai's semi-autobiographical book. His last spilling of his soul, through the ugliness of himself and the people around him.
To appreciate this book, you have to understand that Dazai, with his undiagnosed autism(?), did not understand people much and thus, he did not treat them properly at times because he did not understand how to treat himself correctly at all. This is not to excuse him of his shit, but this is one of the few people that actually spills his sins against himself and others, beautiful and ugly. He didn't discriminate what went into this work, he just told you what it was. You're not supposed to sympathize with everything he did but you get to understand the simple truth:
We are human.
Dazai couldn't understand people so he felt he was no longer human.
But in fact....he was one of the most human of us all.
5/5
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
The last book this guy wrote was a foreshadowing of his own death. My god.
I don't care if this guy seemed overrated or the equivalent of hating a classic, but this book...If you have autism, depression, anxiety, social anxiety, fucking hate capitalism, this is...
...a truly mind fuck of a book. It needs to be read.
I can't begin to describe what this book means to me.
To feel seen of how much I dislike humanity, where I don't understand humanity and feeling like the world is just truly caving in on me.
Oh, but to even understand what Dazai went through you have to understand that back then, mental health wasn't even a fucking concept. You were seen as being dramatic, written off as a lunatic when all you want is a drop of solace. Of relief. To be understood.
Yet, he couldn't get any of that and ended up taking his and his lover's life. Leaving behind a widow and several children.
It took me so long after I read this book to come out of a suicidal spiral as I too have everything that Dazai probably had.
Because this is a classic, you might be tempted to not read this book because the prose might be clunky AF like a lot of writers of this time. For some reason, Dazai has an approachable and conversational prose that it's easy to digest.
...A little too easy to digest depression but hey-
The best thing about this book is the prose and dialogue.
This isn't a worldbuilding, plot, type of book. It's a deep dive into Dazai's semi-autobiographical book. His last spilling of his soul, through the ugliness of himself and the people around him.
To appreciate this book, you have to understand that Dazai, with his undiagnosed autism(?), did not understand people much and thus, he did not treat them properly at times because he did not understand how to treat himself correctly at all. This is not to excuse him of his shit, but this is one of the few people that actually spills his sins against himself and others, beautiful and ugly. He didn't discriminate what went into this work, he just told you what it was. You're not supposed to sympathize with everything he did but you get to understand the simple truth:
We are human.
Dazai couldn't understand people so he felt he was no longer human.
But in fact....he was one of the most human of us all.
5/5