屋根裏の散歩者 江戸川乱歩

よくできた推理小説。三郎が遠藤を殺害するに至る過程は手に取るように無理なく描かれている。伏線の張り方、殺害状況、心理描写も巧み。明智小五郎の推理、ボタンの使い方、天井から逆に三郎を観察するという手法も見事。

引っかかるところ。

１. 三郎が犯行に至るまでは細かく書かれているのに、明智の謎解きは余りにもはしょっていて、丁寧ではない。

2．明智は、どのようにして犯人の通路が天井だとわかったのかが説明不足。

3．下宿人は三郎の他に何人もいるのに、なぜ明智は三郎が犯人だとわかったのか。三郎が煙草をやめたことと、毒薬が煙草入れに流れていたことの関連で、犯人が三郎だとわかるのだろうか。

4．明智が「君のいわゆる『屋根裏の散歩』によって、下宿人の様子を探ることにした」と言っているが、明智はどのようにして『屋根裏の散歩』という表現を知ったのか。三郎は明智に「屋根裏を散歩している」と言ってはいないはずだが。

５．三郎が煙草をやめたのは「毒がこぼれたことまでちゃんと見ていた」ことが心理的に三郎を煙草嫌いにさせたと書いてあるが、そんな深層心理があるのだろうか。それこそ煙に巻かれたみたい。

江戸川乱歩は私の好きな小説家だ。以前、『押絵と旅する男』を読んだが、びっくりするほど見事な短編小説で感服した。美辞麗句を並べない、凝った文ではなく、素直な分かりやすい文体で書かれている。江戸川乱歩の文体を手本にしようと思っている。

杜子春 芥川龍之介

芥川龍之介の「杜子春」を読んだ。少年時代に読んだことがあるが、その時に鉄冠子の言っていることは矛盾していると思った。今回改めて読んで、その思いを強くした。

そもそも鉄冠子の意図が不可解である。鉄冠子は杜子春に「何が起こっても黙っていれば、お前を仙人にしてやろう」と言う。杜子春は瞑想して座っていると恐ろしい獣や悪魔や戦士が彼を殺そうとする。しかし杜子春は一言も口を利かない。ついには、地獄の鬼が杜子春の親を拷問にかける。たまりかねて杜子春は「おっかさん！」と叫ぶ。同時に彼は現実世界に戻ってしまう。鉄冠子は杜子春に「もしあの時、叫んでいなかったら、お前を殺していただろう」と言う。

鉄冠子は誠意がないではないか。もともと杜子春を仙人にするつもりはなかったのだ。もし杜子春が口を利いたら、仙人になれないし、黙っていたら殺されるのだ。黙っていようが、口をきこうが、どちらにしても仙人になれないのだ。ペテンではないか。鉄冠子は許せない。

芥川はこの話を唐の時代の「杜子春伝」を基にして書いている。原本の最後で杜子春は絶世の美女になり、子供を産む。子供が彼女（杜子春）の前で切り刻まれるのを見て、彼女は「やめて！」と叫ぶ。このため杜子春は仙人になれないし、道士も仙人になることはできない。

芥川は親孝行を重視するあまり、原本を無理に捻じ曲げて改悪している。芥川の「杜子春」は全然面白くない。

GLENN GOULD by Lydia Davis

The writer reveals how the protagonist leads her life: she likes to watch "Mary Tyer Moore Show," which both her friend, Mitich, and a musician Glenn Gould happen to like. She loves to enter another city in the show. She wants to “watch another half hour, and another and another” probably to escaping from the reality, where she and her husband have nothing particular to talk about together.

The story has given me a new perspective in writing fictions. This story does not have a plot but gives the reader the same feelings he or she gets after reading a good short story. It is a surprising discovery that a good fiction does not necessarily need a plot.

SYMBOLS AND SIGNS by Vladimir Nabokov

I was amazed at the excellent foreshadowing. An old couple visit a sanitarium where their son is hospitalized. The nurse says, “He has again attempted to take his life.” Not being able to meet their son, they return home disappointed. The writer reveals then how their son became mentally deranged.

At the end of the story, a telephone rings at night, “at an unusual hour for it to ring.” The wife replies, “You have a wrong number.” The telephone rings the second time. It is again a wrong number. But, just when the husband was about to eat fruit jellies, a birthday present for their son, the telephone rings. And the story ends.

The reader has to guess whether the nurse called them to inform them of their son’s suicide. The story abruptly ends by giving an impact to the reader.

CHILDREN ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS Truman Capote

　　This is a very entertaining story. Miss Bobbit, a ten-year-old, precocious, clever girl, attracts every boy, especially Billy Bob and Preacher, in the town. On the day she was leaving for Hollywood, a bus runs over her, finishing all the fuss around her suddenly.
　　This story entertains the reader with a lot of humorous episodes: fight over Miss Bobbit between Bob and Preacher; Sister Rosalba’s rescue, Manny Fox’s scam (The Fan Dancer without the Fan) followed by Miss Bobbit’s similar scheme to collect money to go to Hollywood.
　　The first sentence of the story makes the reader want to read to the last page where Miss Bobbit is run over by a bus. The reader is under a constant pressure because he or she wants to know when the girl will be run over. After all, she is killed at the end of the story. The last sentence of the story is almost the same with the first one, an excellent way to hook the reader. It goes: “Yesterday afternoon the six-o’clock bus ran over Miss Bobbit. (the first); That is when the six-o’clock bus ran over her.(the last)
　　The writing style of this fiction and that of “In Cold Blood” are quite different. The former is casual, light-hearted, humorous, but the latter is formal, rigid, newspaper reporting style with a lot of legal jargons. “In Cold Blood” gave me a strong impact because this is a non-fiction novel while “Children on Their Birthdays” is a fiction.
 

IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote 1966

   This is a non-fiction novel that deals with the murder of four members of the Clutters: Mr. Clutter, his wife, his daughter and son, that took place in the village in Kansa in 1959. The criminals, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, broke into Mr. Clutter’s house just because they had heard that there was a safe containing 10,000 dollars in the house. After they missed to find it, Perry cut the throat of Mr. Clutter and shot the four members. The motive for the crime is, as I understand from reading the book, no vengeance. It was only to steal money. But murdering four people for just 40 dollars was incomprehensible. The motive lay deep in their childhood memory. Especially Perry got an extreme abuse by his father. He grudged the happy people. He resented society. He was on the verge of mental disorder. They were executed by hanging in 1965. It took as long as six years till the execution from the verdict, guilty—death.
     I admire Capote’s hard, persistent, continuous, perseverant, and difficult work in collecting documents, in interviewing inumerous numbers of people related to the crime including criminals’ family members, policemen, jurors, village people, and reporters. It took him six years before he published the book. I saw the movie about how he had made research into the crime, frequently meeting the criminals in the prison. He even watched them being hanged.
     The whole story depresses you, but the ending is somewhat written forward-looking way that saves you from gloomy feeling: “And nice to have seen you, Sue [a girl victim, Nancy’s friend]. Good Luck,” he [Dewy, the policeman responsible for capturing the criminals] called after her as she disappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry, her smooth hair swinging, shining---just such a young woman as Nancy might have been.”

Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Nitobe Inazo

I don’t know any other book that is as rich as Bushido: The Soul of Japan. It is rich because Nitobe Inazo explains what Bushido is by referring to the words of historical figures and events from the East and the West, and from the ancient and today’s worlds. They cover almost all Eastern and Western cultures the peoples have accumulated: philosophies, religions, politics, literatures, poems, and music. He is so well versed in things past and present, one cannot read Bushido: The Soul of Japan without enough knowledge on many and various things that have taken place in the world history. Let me just give you some of the eminent persons that appear in the first 10 pages of the book (304 pages altogether): Edmund Burke, Dr. George Miller, Commodore Perry, Carl Marx, Minamoto Yoritomo, William the Conqueror, Julius Caesar, Cornelius Tacitus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Alphonse de Lamartine, Yagyu Munenori, Theodor Mommsen, Émile Boutmy, and Arther May Knapp.

The English language he uses is so difficult that I had to consult a dictionary several times in reading even a single page. I also had to read the same sentence several times to grasp its meaning. Honestly speaking, some vocabulary was new to me, who has taught English at a senior high school and have a highest grade in the proficiency examination conducted by the Society of Testing English Proficiency supported by the Ministry Education.

How could he have gained such vast and deep knowledge about the world and such proficiency in English? He must have studied hard in Tokyo Imperial University, Johns Hopkins University in the US, and in Halle University in Germany.

Bushido, in my understanding, consists of loyalty to one’s lord, spirit of self-sacrifice, and compassion for the weak. More than 100 years have passed since he published this book in 1900, the spirit of Bushido is still alive in the Japanese. Just a few years ago I remember Bushido: The Soul of Japan sold well. The spirit of Bushido still remains in the Japanese hearts as Nitobe predicted in the last page of the book: “Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; . . . . its light and its glory will long survive their ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich life.”