Bekenntnisse einer Maske

I really wanted to like this. But I couldn't. It has its moments, and is clearly “well written” (whatever the fuck that means). It just feels too forced. Mishima is constantly projecting his adult obssesive aesthete proto-fascism persona unto his younger self. He's basically yelling, “I'm a fascist gay pedophile and I want to kill myself in the most epic way for it” the whole book. It got really annoying after a while. Bro needs more cock and less Freud, stat.

Ideologically, an interesting example of self-hating fascist “entartete Kunst”. It exalts mindlessness, glamorizes death, proposes an ideal of life as “art”, but is itself “perverse”, “degenerate”. Per Susan Sontag: “Fascist aesthetics is based on the containment of vital forces; movements are confined, held tight, held in.” This repression is where Mishima draws his writing strength from. He truly is the Leni Riefenstahl of literature.