Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age
by
Strands from William Blake’s poetry run through Nobel Prize Laureate Kenzaburo Oe’s Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age, first published in Japan in 1983. In this beautiful and idiosyncratic autobiographical novel, about a highly cerebral author named “K” and his mentally disabled eldest son (Kenzaburo’s eldest son experienced irreversible brain-damage as a newborn), Blake’s poetry is a source of both solace and clarity for a father attempting to learn how to parent under circumstances he never anticipated, as his boy approaches manhood.
