i didn't see any posts out there for accompanying texts one might read when reading subahibi, which is somewhat dense with literary allusion and philosophy 101 and also a guy and a desk get it on. this is definitely a "want to, not have to" situation; the text is pretty self-contained. if reading allusive materials is fun for you, let's go! some things definitely went over my head, so if you caught something i didn't, leave a comment.
If you're going to read only one thing:
- read Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand. it's a play, so it's quick to read, and it's a romp. hell, see a production. it's got the themes. it's so good.
if you're going to read two things:
- technically the most referenced and discussed work within the text is Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but!!! but. it's dense. philosophy is a technical language built on previous authors, and i'm not going to recommend you take a philosophy course to see a guy fuck a desk. if you read it, try to make friends with it. treat it like it's in a foreign language, and puzzle around it. play with it. and put it down and go think about it in the shower or something because Wittgenstein's dead and you aren't.
wait alyssa why didn't you say any Lewis Carroll it's in the title:
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass give the work much of its structure and title names! i honestly think cyrano is more important, the TLP circumscribes the game's philosophical game. i honestly didn't feel deep structural rhyme between those stories and this novel. that said, it's been a minute for me.
other works referenced more than in passing, from like most to lease consequential:
- a variety of poems that are quoted in full in the text, so, you'll read them there. my gal Emily Dickinson especially :)
- uh, Lucky Star
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms attributed to Luo Guanzhong
- Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa
- On Learned Ignorance by Nicolas Cusanus
- Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
- works by Gianni Rodari
- Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Squirrel-Cage by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. mostly just to make a pussy joke.
- A treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
- and a variety of eroge and pop culture references that went over my head.
also:
- while Boku no Natsuyasumi isn't technically referenced i don't thiiink, in part of the story it was really helpful for me to have watched Tim Rogers' review twice, helping me understand a bit about the way the inaka lives in Japanese literary culture.