Somehow I stumbled across a reference to No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai so I ordered it from the library. Interesting novel from 1948 Japan. The narrator has lost interest in humans, but still must make his way through the world… dissolute, his family gradually cuts ties… handsome, he finds women ready to enable his self-destructive alcoholism. Think Nicholas Cage Leaving Las Vegas but more picturesque and self-reflective? But at the end of the day, not that different. The real life author commits suicide. At the end of the day, we (the reader) don’t take away much more than “some of our fellow humans sure do go through this burden of life in depressive self-absorption made worse by their acute consciousness of how different they are… and their inability to change.”