Just finished this short novel by Ryu Murakami, his first, and Akutagawa Prize-winning novel. The novel’s basically about a guy (named Ryu, just like the author. Well, probably technically Ryuu), aged twenty, who spends time getting wasted in a squalid apartment, shooting up heroin and taking all kinds of substances, hanging out with his dissipated friends (who are just as dissolute as he is, and some of them more violent), going to drug-fueled, bisexual orgies with members of the American military, and other somewhat monotonous activities. There isn’t much of a plot to the book, and aside from Ryu, who seems to have some kind of artistic gift or sensibility, the other characters are difficult to remember. Anyway, what makes the book stand out is the precision of the prose, which rises to beauty even when describing all kinds of disgusting things (I think if you took a shot of whatever your poison is every time a character vomits (described lovingly; this is not a book you want to read while eating), food is rotting, or there’s an act of violence, by the end you’d probably be an addict too); even in the translation, the originality of the prose comes through, and there are moments of great clarity. (In reviews, I see people comparing it to Burroughs and other counterculture writers. I haven’t read the Beats, but at one point, the narrator mentions Genet, and I definitely saw a resemblance.)