The Box Man (book) by Kobo Abe

The Box Man was one of my library checkouts. It was originally published in Japan in 1973. The English translation was published in 1974.

I'm not sure what to call this. Surrealist fiction? It's very much not the sort of thing I usually read.

Synopsis:

How do you write a synopsis for something like this? Not much actually happens, and it's unclear whether any events that happen are real or just figments of the narrator's imagination. The same goes for the characters.

Here are the characters as I understand them. Some (or all?) of these characters may be the same person.

• The Box Man, a man who has chosen, for the past few years, to live with a box over his head. The box reaches just to his hips. I don't think he ever leaves it. The average person might call him a homeless man, but he sees himself as different from other homeless people, because of the box he has chosen to live inside. He used to be a photographer, before he became a box man.
• A man who has shot a box man (the Box Man? or perhaps the shooter is the Box Man?) with an air rifle. He was offended by the box man's presence near his window, so offended that he shot at him in order to frighten him away. However, he may have unintentionally wounded him. Something about the experience prompted him to become a box man himself.
• The doctor. He cares for the wounded Box Man, but then finds himself wishing to become a box man himself, to the point that he pretends to be one. He proposes to switch places with the Box Man and even offers the Box Man 50,000 yen to dispose of his box. To sweeten the deal, he also offers the use of the nurse's apprentice. It's unclear whether she cares what either man decides to do with her.
• The nurse's apprentice. Her legs hold great allure for the Box Man. She was an art student who went to the doctor for an abortion. She couldn't afford the abortion, so she asked the doctor if she could work for him in order to pay him back. She and the doctor became lovers, which displeased the current nurse, who also happened to be the doctor's wife.
• The nurse's true husband, who became a drug addict, and whose identity the doctor assumed.

Review:

My first reaction, after I finished this: What did I just read?

I like the books I read to make some sort of sense, even if it's only at the end that everything comes together. The Box Man felt like it was composed of pieces that would eventually form some kind of bizarre whole...except then they didn't. Or at least that's how I felt. This is the kind of book that reminds me why I so rarely venture outside of reading genre fiction.