"What Yokoyama does in Six Four evokes — improbably —
the fastidious ethical parsings of a novel by Henry James,
all qualms and calibrations, and while that might not sound
like a good idea, he makes it work. He writes, fortunately,
in plain, declarative prose (ably translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies),
and because Mikami is such an ordinary man the mental gymnastics
he puts himself through are moving and sometimes deeply funny.
A Jamesian police procedural — 'The Wings of the Perp,' maybe?
Not exactly. But this novel is a real, out-of-the-blue original.*
I’ve never read anything like it."
— Terrence Rafferty in the online New York Times
on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017
Illustration from this journal on that date —
See also the previous post, "Six Four."
Update of 10 PM ET Feb. 23, 2017 —
A pathetic asterisk for, and by, Rafferty —
* A passage from Rafferty's essay
in The New York Times on July 27, 2003:
"… the message is clear: screenwriters are pathetic.
You can hear, clearly, the voice of Joe Gillis,
describing himself from beyond his watery grave:
'Nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with
a couple of B pictures to his credit. The poor dope.' "
See as well this journal on July 27, 2003.