The Flowers of Buffoonery

Flowery imagery for a darkly humorous story.

This book serves as a prequel for Dazai’s “No Longer Human”, and creates a more light-hearted atmosphere for a situation that’s more dark in nature. My favorite thing about this novella was the way the narrator addresses the audience while telling his story in order to explain characters or motives within the story, but in doing so he makes himself into an unreliable narrator. In his own words, “my fear of being ridiculed is so intense I’d rather beat my critics to the punch.” The narrator succeeds in getting us to laugh with him first before we can make the decision ourselves, which I find makes this short novella an even more interesting read!