Chauvinist and Other Stories by Toshio Mori

Chauvinist and Other Stories Reviews

• 
  Amber Manning

  Most of the stories are really good but "The Chauvinist" is one of the best short stories I've encountered. I think I overuse the word "encountered" but I mean it here; I don't felt like I read or understood or analyzed that story; I think it brushed against me and something was exchanged.
  
  "The Chauvinist" is the story of a deaf man. I can't say a lot more about it because although the story performs a kind of philosophy of life it also performs a narrative that Mori perfectly controls and unravels. The writing is profound. We sit in paradox after paradox and each is unraveled and then re-raveled again and again. I was confused and overwhelmed. I was laughing and crying. All my laughing-crying was sad and joyous at the same time and it took me until the end of the story to realize that that was the encounter of the story. Mori lets us BE Takanoshin Sakoda.
  
  And the last sentence? Too beautiful to call perfect.
  
  Here's some of Mori's lovelier bits (I won't share the last sentence because the encounter with it shouldn't come here):
  
  “Truth without untruth, it’s false. By representing the truth in untruth and untruth in truth I may become someone I want to be” (20).
  
  “Did you ever have a time when you’d sit in a dark room and know every man in the world? Did you remember the time you’d have such a feeling? Was it when you were happy in a revelry or when you were alone and realized your friends had stayed away very long and you did not go out and seek them?” (23).