Finished The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea and I'm looking for something similar.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and
Runaway Horses, with their young protagonists, have a similar vibe to
The Sailor. Gore Vidal was right that Mishima is good but he never grows out of his youthful enthusiasms. He read Nietzsche at 13/14 and he never left that worldview. He was disappointed Japan did not have a traditional system that was comparable to it. That makes him good at writing young characters, however. Few writers are able to do the same, who either just write adults or make children sickly sweet and full of wisdom.
Graham Greene's work is worth reading if you enjoyed Mishima. Short stories like 'The Fallen Idol' or 'The Destructors', or a novel like
Brighton Rock, all come to mind when thinking about
The Sailor. Both writers capture the mythical (of good and evil) qualities a child's new experience to the world brings, right before evil falls into banality and is assumed as par the course of living. In childhood, darkness lurks in the corner because it is still unknown, not yet felt within.
Now I'm reading Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and it's pretty cool. I like learning the 14th century sayings like "in good sadness" meaning in seriousness. It's very rich although I'm too low IQ to catch everything.
Marlowe, of all the great Renaissance poets and playwrights (England's greatest artistic period), is the most direct to follow. He should be taught in schools, building up to Shakespeare. Ben Jonson is the opposite for me. I still struggle with his plays, which is partly due to it to being mostly written in prose.
Shakespeare is allusive but Marlowe is the reverse. The man you read in his plays and poems is quite obvious. One can work out his interests and desires. Faustus, like Barabbas or the Duke of Guise, is the one type of character he writes well. There is a clear development in his thought from
Tamburlaine to
The Jew of Malta, but he never leaves his one idea of power seeking. I do not mean that as a criticism.
Marlowe's other plays (except
Dido) are worth reading, but his finest achievement is
Hero & Leander, his unfinished poem. If you know Tristan and Isolde, it is similar.
Let me recommend one tragedy:
A Yorkshire Tragedy by (assumedly) Thomas Middleton. It is short but powerful. Writers love to talk about the destructive elements of sexual desire, but the desire for money is just as bad.
