Kenzaburo Oe on Writing, Activism, and the First-Person Narrative

I've cultivated the first-person style as opposed to the third person. It's a problem. A really good novelist is able to write in the third person, but I have never been able to write well in the third person.

Kenzaburo Oe has devoted his life to taking certain subjects seriously—victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the struggles of the people of Okinawa, the challenges of the disabled, the discipline of the scholarly life—while not appearing to take himself seriously at all.

Unfailingly modest and lighthearted, he dresses in sport shirts, fidgets a great deal, and smiles easily.