Literary theorist and critic Takayuki Tatsumi's new book, "Full Metal Apache," is both good and bad. As it is often in such cases, the bad is spread evenly throughout, making it difficult to appreciate the good with which it is mixed. Tatsumi, however, has done us the service of quarantining the twaddle largely -- but not entirely -- in his first section. That this section is entitled "Theory" will give ammunition to the theory-phobes out there, and this is regrettable.
It's not that theorizing about literature and culture is a worthless enterprise; it's just that here Tatsumi doesn't do it well. However, once one has made it through the opening pages, there is, in "Full Metal Apache," a great deal of insight and useful information.
Before one gets to that insight and information, though, one must endure the author tarting up the obvious with flashy language as when he tells us: "It was the capitalist passage from the postproductionist 1960s through the hyperconsumerist 1980s that had a disfigurative impact upon the literary status of Adolf Hitler." Putting that through the descrambler, one comes up with: "Literary interpretations of Hitler have changed as the societies in which they have been produced have changed," and sees that the observation is thunderously banal.