> I simply don't believe these lists of great or near-great books
> that supposedly had determining influnce on the poster. The
> _really_ influential books were books probably forgotten by the
> writers, the books that, so to speak, _shoe-horned_ them into those
> great books they now see as so influential.
>
> By far the most influential books in my life were 50 to 100 books,
> not one of which I remember, that I read when I was seven or eight,
> the books through which I discovered that I was a reader. In
> comparison to those books _The Winters Tale_, _War and Peace_,
> _Capital_ etc. are so much trivia. From the years under 12 I
> remember only two texts the content of which influenced me, and
> which continue to serve to this day as powerful metaphors. One was
> the last page of an episode of _The Human Torch_ (a comic book of
> the early '40s) and the story of a man with a wagonload of coconuts
> in my third-grade Elson-Gray reader.
There is a popular picture book for children in Japan, titled Naita Aka Oni (The Red Ogre Who Cried).
The story goes like this:
Once upon a time, there were two ogres. One was red, and the other was blue. The red ogre wanted to become friends with children in a village nearby. So, the red ogre put up a sign in front of his house:
Home of a Gentle Ogre All Are Welcome Tea and Tasty Cakes Available
But no one showed up, and the red ogre grew puzzled and then sad. "I'm such a kind ogre -- why nobody would come and play with me?" Moved by his friend's melancholy, the blue ogre said, "Look, I have a plan."
The blue ogre's plan was for him to pretend to terrorize children and then have the red ogre chase him off, "rescuing" them from him. The plan went without a hitch, and the red ogre became the most popular creature among the children, and all came to play with him.
After a happy day of enjoying the children's company, the red ogre found a letter from the blue ogre. The letter said, "My Dear Red Ogre, if people find out that you are a friend of the Bad Blue Ogre's, they will not let the children come to you any more. So, I'm leaving. Please live happily with the children. Goodbye. Blue Ogre."
The red ogre cried out, "Blue Ogre is gone! A dear friend of mine! He is gone!" And he wept.
The red ogre and the blue ogre were never to see each other again.
It's a great story about costs of assimilation.
The story was written by Hamada Hirosuke, who wrote many other children's stories. It was first published in 1933. I read it first (or rather my parents read it to me) when I was a child, and later I wondered if the author was gay, if he was a leftist, or if he had read Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant." I never found out.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>