Review of The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai

Dazai stays in character with this autobiographical short novel about a sad author attempting to reconnect with his lost youth by hanging out with (or harassing) schoolboys.

By sharing in their game, he attempts to recapture the sense of adventure and perhaps the inspiration he has lost in his dissolute middle age. The main character (named Dazai) feels old at thirty-two. His life has come to nothing but squandered potential. In most of his stories, the author laments about the fleeting qualities of life, how quickly it rushes past, and his characters, like himself, try to grasp at the shore as they are carried by the current of vice, aging, and hard-luck.

While it is a short and easily digested narrative, it is a poignant evocation of that utter helplessness of the old man observing the carefree attitudes of the young. He cannot even keep up with the conversation, and at the first opportunity, he falls prey to his vices, though the amused kids he’s chosen to spend time with resist the urge to step over the edge of propriety.

In the first part of the novella, the author rants about the twisted publishing industry he must participate in to make a meager living. His own poverty and bad habits are a lodestone around his neck, attracting nothing but hardship to his feeble body. It takes every effort to avoid offing himself at every step. This pathetic figure—Dazai’s go-to narrator, eventually reveals hidden depths and intellectual riches by exposing himself to the reader and casting himself in all of his agony into the company of ordinary men.

Was he a true artist or a mere con-artist, milking his dismal life for all the sympathy it was worth? Judging by the way I keep returning to his bitter tales, I must admit to enjoying his daring approach to storytelling.