Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger

The first 120 or so pages of Shutting Out the Sun (2006) are fascinating, and indeed, Zielenziger’s portrayal of a number of Japanese hikikomori (shut-ins), their families, and those working the help bring them back out into the public world, manages to be very thoughtful and compassionate, and even, at times, moving. Later chapters are less […]

Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein, and a Question About the Depiction and Significance of Racism in Characterization

T.E.D. Klein is one of those writers whose disappearance baffles many lovers of weird fiction. After his celebrated novel The Ceremonies (which I have not yet read) and his collection of novellas titled Dark Gods, he seemed to go mostly off the radar, and to stay there (unless one was reading the right magazines, I […]