SOURCE: Havel, Amy. Review of Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age, by Kenzaburō Ōe. Review of Contemporary Fiction 22, no. 3 (fall 2002): 145.

In the following review, Havel offers a positive assessment of Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age, praising the author's “gift for the portrayal of the inevitable emotional blunders of human beings.”

Fans of Oe's work will recognize the author's alter ego K and his disabled son Eeyore in this latest novel [Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age] by the Nobel Prize winner. The chronicling of the father-son relationship continues, but the latest developments seem more serious, as they pertain to Eeyore's onset of adulthood and his family beginning to see him as a physically intimidating person with a sexual identity. K's intellectual concerns are centered on his analysis of William Blake's poetry as it has influenced his life and...