Abe, Kobo

New York. 1969. Grove Press. 1st American Printing. Very Good in Dustjacket. Translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene. 94 pages. hardcover. GP-580. Jacket photograph by Akihisa Kanai. keywords: Literature Translated Japan Asia Drama. FROM THE PUBLISHER - FRIENDS is a tense drama about the destruction of an individual. The play opens to a popular romantic song- 'Poor broken necklace, where is the breast that warmed you once? When did you leave it, where has it gone? Little lost beads, little lost beads.' A family then enters the apartment of a young man. Without invitation or introduction, they announce that they will save him from his loneliness by living with him and being his friends. This is their life, restringing all the 'little lost beads.' Shocked by this strange invasion, the young man at first tries to reason with them to persuade them to leave; but reason proves as useless against their cheerful madness as it is with the policemen he then calls. Slowly and effectively, the family deprives the young man of his reasons for living his fiancee, his self-esteem, and his interest in his work. They struggle to convince him, in the name of brotherhood and love, that his desire for privacy and the choice of companions is an aberration. The development of the play brings out the nature of the family's madness-which runs the gamut from thievery and homicide to sheer simplemindedness-as it is aided and abetted by modern society. An unusual variation on the Theater of the Absurd, Friends is more formal than its Western counterparts. inventory #402