Autumn has well and truly arrived

This afternoon, I was wearing all black and riding my shiny black bicycle (with flash red panniers) when I felt autumn arrive. As I came around the corner on Annette Street by my favourite coffee shop, I was caught in a rainstorm that didn't exclusively comprise rain; manically swirling yellow leaves were at least as abundant as the cold water running down the back of my hoodie. It was lovely, not to mention slippery. After a month of relatively endless ("relatively" because, after all, the sun is setting before 8pm these days) sunshine and sandals and bare legs, summer has finally moved on. And you know what that means: Bookphilia has come back inside and has some blogging to do.

I have been reading steadily, of course, as well as physically covering a great deal of ground, both on foot and on wheel. And I've been busy with other "life" things (don't ask me what those scare quotes imply, for I can't quite recall at the moment), but the fact is, a persistent and slow-burning internet disaster has been afflicting Bookphilia Castle. I am writing this post on a laptop that is from the Stone Age of Computing, i.e., it's about 8 years old. It takes 5-10 minutes to load pictures to Blogger (and given that this post contains 3 images, let's just say that I'm in the process of developing a Zen-like state of calm and disconnection (double entendre fully intended)). The real computer, the newish computer, the fast computer can't be reliably used these days because it breaks up with the wireless connection approximately every 45 minutes; it's behaving like a fussy and dramatic 14-year old boyfriend I once had (we were both 14, relax).

This problem began well over a month ago and my dear husband, Master of Computery Things, has been unable to fix it. So I've been stuck. When I was spending almost every minute of every day outside, this clearly wasn't a big problem; now, however, that we are all quickly becoming dead leaf- and rain-bound, things have reached a crisis point. There may be a duel, but I'm not yet sure who I'll have to challenge.

But yes, I've been reading. And now I am sitting cozily and happily ready to discuss. Several weeks ago, I finished a mad romp by Nick Harkaway called The Gone Away World. Part sci-fi, part action adventure, part slapstick, part surprisingly touching coming of age story, this novel was simply over-stuffed; Harkaway tried to pack too much into his first novel. But here's the thing: it was still really good and it still worked. My initial concerns that Harkaway didn't have complete control over his own narrative enthusiasm have, for the most part, proven to have been rather too prim and worried of me. Given how the whole thing ties up, he clearly knew from the beginning where he was going.

And while, yes, he did pack a lot in, which created an appearance of literary chaos, the fact is, there were a whole packet of connecting clues I failed to pick up on. Why? The danger of the good romp is that you're too busy enjoying yourself bouncing around in the apparent chaos to get down to analyzing. That's one possibility. It could also have been residual coffee withdrawal, which I think (after two months) I am now finally free of.

It may also have been the writing. I don't know how else to describe the energy of Harkaway's writing except to say that I think it entirely possible that every day when he sat down to write, he roared, in the spirit of that living genius Maurice Sendak, "LET THE WILD RUMPUS START!" I don't think it necessary that Harkaway wore a monster onesie in order to channel the Sendak God, but I do imagine he regularly pounded his chest while belting out this ageless, good-time battle cry.

It doesn't matter why I missed all those damned connections; The Gone Away World is a bloody good, if not perfect, novel; I can't wait to see what Harkaway does next.

In an attempt to circle stealthily back towards my Victorian Lit project and my unappetizing copy of Thackeray's The History of Henry Esmond, I picked up Honoré de Balzac's Lost Illusions. This seemed like a safe bet, given how completely I loved my first Balzac novel, Père Goriot; alas, this latest foray into the father of French realism's vast oeuvre was not entirely satisfying.

I think it should have been, though. Balzac's writing was just as stellar, as penetrating, as incisively cynical and condemnatory, as strangely compassionate of extreme and ridiculous human failing as it was in Père Goriot; which may have been the problem, actually—Lost Illusions didn't seem sufficiently distinct from this other novel. Indeed, I'm fairly certain that in a year's time, I won't be able to distinguish the two in my memory except in very broad and fuzzy outline. As with Père Goriot, Lost Illusions features a naive provincial man-boy moving to Paris to be corrupted and to ruin those who believe in and adore him. The temptations Eugène and Lucien face are similarly shallow, fleeting, and amorphous, having entirely to do with succeeding in "Society." Because of this, Balzac's moral scalpel-wielding seemed less convincing overall, and that makes me incredibly sad.

Of course, I will read more of Balzac's work; I still think he was likely a genius of a very high (and well caffeinated order) and so I am more than willing to eat the above expressions of disappointment if further reading shows them to have been premature. Also, I have a lovely little reading copy of Cousin Bette sitting patiently but persistently on my shelf...

Meanwhile, my frustrated love affair with Haruki Murakami has reached a new low. I recently finished After Dark, the last novel published before this month's (well, this month in English) hysterically anticipated 1Q84. Don't get me wrong, After Dark contains some very, very good bits, but of all the Murakami novels I've thus far read, it makes the least overall sense.

Murakami has with this novel made explicit something that I've always unconsciously believed—his works read best around 3 am, preferably when accompanied by a hard dose of insomnia. The dark and quiet whispered life of reading alone after midnight is his fiction's proper milieu. In the middle of the night (not when I've read most of the Murakami I've read, but when I've enjoyed it most), it doesn't seem problematic that much of his narrative makes no recognizable human sense (the lovely Norwegian Wood excluded, of course); indeed, it seems appropriate. As I still have several of his major works left to me, I almost miss the heyday of my grad school insomnia/Murakami renaissance.

Even knowing that Murakami belongs in the cracks of existence made visible only after the sun goes down, and even knowing that Murakami clearly knows this about himself, After Dark is nonetheless the weakest, most self-indulgent, most inconsistently written novel he has in my experience produced. It should have been hacked at with a sacred editorial machete; it should have been cleansed in ritual re-writing fires. It was not; it simply cannot have been interfered with in the way it needed to be interfered with. It was, I'm guessing, published in the malformed state in which it burst original and entire from its author's forehead.

But original...yes, Murakami is still absolutely original, at least in comparison with other writers, if not with himself. Nobody else writes the way he writes, and sometimes it's just so irresistible...Yes, I will probably eventually read the 900-page monstrosity 1Q84; I suspect there will be gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair though.

The human side of Haruki Murakami

If you've been reading Bookphilia for awhile, you probably know that I have a complicated relationship with Japan's most popular literary export. I loved after the quake and Underground; further, I count Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and South of the Border, West of the Sun amongst my favourite books of the last 5 years, if not of all time. On the other hand, I thought Kafka on the Shore was promising but ultimately disappointing, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman was alternately irritating and forgettable, and I haven't been able to get past page 20 of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at all.

This author's inconsistencies have inspired me to identify a literary affliction I've dubbed the Haruki Murakami Syndrome - what happens when gifted authors are both abandoned by their editors (who stop doing work because such authors' works sell no matter what), AND said authors begin to believe the hype about themselves and stop trying as hard. With this unfortunate and unfortunately pretty widespread affliction in mind, I was terrified to read Norwegian Wood, which is considered to be one of Murakami's best, and is his most beloved novel in Japan.

Luckily, Norwegian Wood reflects good Murakami + good editor which = excellent book. (Also, it must be said, great translating. As there's no way for me to know what may have been altered slightly or left out, I judge good translation by one thing: how unnoticeable it is. Nothing is worse than being constantly aware of reading a translation instead of just reading and enjoying a book.)

I still think of Murakami's "normal" books, South of the Border, West of the Sun is my favourite - but that may simply be that it was in that novel that I first saw the author's hitherto unknown to me human side. His fantastic novels are too fantastic to be anything but (a sometimes amazing, sometimes unsatisfying) intellectual experience; works such as South of the Border, West of the Sun and Norwegian Wood are to me much richer works, for they don't remove the emotional from the intellectual so coldly and blithely as books like Hard-Boiled do.

So, yes, Norwegian Wood is a wonderful book. Having read no reviews of it before reading it for fear of running up against unflagged plot spoilers, I'm not sure why others liked it; I suspect it may be that for all of Murakami's apparent rejection of more traditional forms of his nation's literature, he's very good at the art of nostalgia, at invoking an atmosphere of quiet pain and gentle elegy - the things that sit at the heart of the great haiku of Basho and the works of writers like Yasunari Kawabata. Given my personal tastes in Japanese literature, this makes up a great deal of why I prefer Murakami's less fantastical works.

But what I really love about Norwegian Wood (and South of the Border, West of the Sun) is Murakami's talent for creating characters who are experienced and knowing and shat upon by life, and yet at the same time somehow tremendously innocent and artless and vulnerable. Many others attempt this, but I don't feel many manage it as successfully as Murakami does. In his hands, such characters seem real rather than created. Following are two snippets of conversation between two of the main characters, Toru (the narrator) and Midori (a girl he meets in one of his university courses) that I found particular endearing.

In the first snippet, Midori is trying to get Toru to reveal something, anything, about his mysterious love Naoko; because Toru refuses to reveal anything, Midori's imagination has been running wild, and she invents a sex-starved older woman for him:

"She's dying for it all the time, so she does everything she can think of. And she thinks about it every day. She's got nothing but free time, so she's always planning: Hmm, next time Watanabe comes, we'll do this, or we'll do that. You get in bed and she goes crazy, trying all these positions and coming three times in every one. And she says to you. 'Don't I have a sensational body? You can't be satisfied with young girls anymore. Young girls won't do this for you, will they? Or this. Feel good? But don't come yet!'"

"You've been seeing too many porno flicks," I said with a laugh.

"You think so? I was kinda worried about that. But I love porno flicks. Take me to one next time, O.K.?"

"Fine," I said. "Next time you're free."

"Really? I can hardly wait. Let's go to a real S and M one, with whips and, like, they make the girl pee in front of everybody. That's my favorite."

"We'll do it."

"You know what I like best about porno theaters?"

"I couldn't begin to guess."

"Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this 'Gulp!' sound when everybody swallows all at once," said Midori. "I love that 'Gulp!' It's so sweet!" (pp. 183-84)

This scene is in no way subtle, and yet it works in spite of that - or maybe because of it. Another scene as striking to me occurs later in the novel as Midori and Toru become much closer:

"Tell me about yourself," Midori said.

"What about me?"

"Hmm, I don't know, what do you hate?"

"Chicken and VD and barbers who talk too much."

"What else?"

"Lonely April nights and lacy telephone covers."

"What else?"

I shook my head. "I can't think of anything else."

"My boyfriend—which is to say, my ex-boyfriend—had all kinds of things he hated. Like when I wore too-short skirts, or when I smoked, or how I got drunk right away, or said disgusting things, or criticized his friends. So if there's anything about me you don't like, just tell me, and I'll fix it if I can."

"I can't think of anything," I said after giving it some thought. "There's nothing."

"Really?"

"I like everything you wear, and I like what you do and say and how you walk and how you get drunk. Everything."

"You mean I'm really O.K. just the way I am?"

"I don't know how you could change, so you must be fine the way you are."

...We got into her bed and held each other, kissing as the sound of the rain filled our ears. Then we talked about everything from the formation of the universe to our preferences in the hardness of boiled eggs.

"I wonder what ants do on rainy days?" Midori asked.

"No idea," I said. "They're hard workers, so they probably spend the day cleaning house or taking inventory."

"If they work so hard, how come they don't evolve? They've been the same forever."

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe their body structure isn't suited to evolving—compared with monkeys, say."

"Hey, Watanabe, there's a lot of stuff you don't know. I thought you knew everything."

"It's a big world out there," I said. (pp. 264-65)

Ah, the rambling conversations that alternate so naturally between nothing and serious things, the kind of conversations that only come with real intimacy! I don't know of any other author who can do this so well as Murakami can.

So, yes, I loved this book. If you're looking for a review by someone who hasn't gotten aboard the Norwegian Wood love express (and someone who tells you anything about what the book is actually about, which I don't feel like doing, for I am having a sleepy Sunday), check out Verbivore's recent review here. Her points are all valid I think, but they didn't diminish my enjoyment of the novel.

Mental indigestion

I read Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart much too quickly and was left feeling a bit headachy afterwards. It really deserved a slow, meditative read, which I gave the first third or so of it. But on Tuesday night I felt the fit upon me (the fit being the irresistible desire to stay up way too late reading) and ended up reading 2/3 of it in one sitting.

For the sake of both myself and the book, I should have resisted giving into that temptation for Murakami's dreamy tale of an existentially wrought love triangle is pretty much the opposite of a good ol' yarn (which is really what I was yearning for when I decided to stay up half the night).

Not that this wasn't a good book, it was (again, making me feel more disposed towards Murakami) - the character of K (also the narrator) was, to me, one of Murakami's most compelling so far; but I feel like maybe this wasn't the right time for me to delve into it. Having just read the excellent yarn Peters spun in A Morbid Taste for Bones, I really just want more of that sort of tale right now.

I find it really quite difficult to find good ol' yarns though; it's really more challenging than it should be. I feel sometimes as though too many authors are working too hard at being super deep or profound when a passing strange tale told exceptionally well would be much more in order. Recommendations for well-spun yarns are currently being accepted at Bookphilia.com - you know how to get in touch with me!

The steady accumulation of small realities

I was surprised at how different South of the Border, West of the Sun turned out to be from the other Murakami novels I've read (Kafka on the Shore and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World).

The first Murakami novels I read were heavy on the fantastic and the surreal and contained several narratives connected only in the most tenuous and metaphysical of ways (although I found the connections in Hard-Boiled much clearer and more compelling than those in Kafka).

South of the Border, West of the Sun was a straightforward, almost linear, narrative (and the non-linear parts were clearly flagged flashbacks to a realistic past) told by one person. There were no sub-plots, immortal soldiers hiding in the forest, or underground caves full of mysterious monsters.

On the contrary, this novel realistically told the story of one middle aged man's mid-life questioning of the meaning of his successes - being married with two kids, having a thriving business, and being able to display his financial success outwardly via expensive cars and pricey brand name clothing. At the core of his questioning of all these accepted markers of success is his inability to let go of the memory of his childhood best fried/first love and then the revival of his obsession with her when she shows up at his bar one night.

I have to say, that I really, really enjoyed this book. I had no idea Murakami was capable of something so straightforward and, well, human. The narrator was a compelling blend of confused and immature, and wise and reflective, showing the latter sometimes by dropping gems like this (discussing relationships): "What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities" (p. 33).

I loved the writing (as always - even when I don't know what Murakami is on about, I love his writing) and I thought Murakami really captured the bittersweet nostalgia involved in looking back at a childhood love as the one true example of a real relationship. I think this may have restored a little of my faith in Murakami; only time will tell, however, if some other author will have to take over a renamed Haruki Murakami Syndrome.

40. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

The irony of this post is that it's 4:21 am here and I'm online because I can't sleep. I'm having bad anxiety about my dad wanting to come visit - I just started working on my thesis again for the first time in months and I'm afraid of losing my tenuous hold on working to a disruption in my day-to-day life.

Also, when I was sleeping, I was having weird dreams about there being snails all over my stove and kitchen counter tops. (A snail-let crawled 5+ feet up the wall by our front door and died there yesterday; that, and the fact that I don't know why some snails have houses and others don't, had me thinking about snails right before I went to sleep.)

But about the Murakami. I received this book as one of a cartload of books for my birthday last month. I was really looking forward to it because the last two books of Murakami's I read (after the quake and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) were fantastically good. This one is just okay so far. In fact, I positively didn't like a few of the first stories but the more recent two have been enjoyable enough.

I just realized that I started reading this book one night around 5 am when I couldn't sleep. Maybe this book is cursing, or adding to the curse of, my sleeping!!!!

On an unrelated note, my reading will likely be slowed down for the next 4 weeks or so. I just started a meditation course and it involves me meditating every day for 1 hour, except for Thursdays, which is when I have the actual 3-hour long class.

And one of these days, I should really start using the Italian language CDs my father-in-law gave me. It's just under a month until I fly to Italy for 6 weeks!

PS - About the Murakami book

I see I promised to update on Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - AWESOME!!!!! One of the best books I've read in a long time. It makes me want to go read all of his stuff, which Kafka on the Shore never made me even think of doing.

29. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

I've decided to take a little breather from my two short story collections and read a novel. I'm happy to take a break from Rez Dogs Eat Beans because it's so mediocre, but I'm also taking a little break from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio because it's really good and I don't want it to end!

Two days ago I was reading Strange Tales on the subway and I was so engrossed that I missed my station by two stops - I've never before missed a stop because I was so into a book (it used to happen to Brook quite often, however, especially when he was reading Anna Karenina). Two thumbs up for Pu Songling.

Anyway, I started another Murakami: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - which, if nothing else, ought to win some kind of award for having one of the most compelling titles in the history of literature.

Hard-Boiled is exceedingly post-modern; it's not yet clear if it's too post-modern for me. There are two parallel narratives that have some kind of profound connection but I'm not yet sure what the terms of that connection are. At this point, I'm still able to just enjoy where each stream takes me, but I'm worried that, as in Kafka on the Shore, Murakami will never make clear the linkages he gestures toward. For now, I'm going to enjoy a good read and will update you later on whether or not Murakami gets his s*** together this time 'round.

12. Flowers for Algernon and 13. after the quake

I don't usually like to be reading two leisure books at the same time, but the circumstances of my day brought this unusual state about.

This morning, I started reading Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon (I finished the Mishima book yesterday; 'twas excellent). Melinda recommended the Keyes book to me when we happened upon it in a bookstore last fall. She'd read it when we were teenagers and really liked it. In fact, it turns out that my hubby and I are some of the only people in the world not to have read this as a teenager...ah well.

Flowers for Algernon is okay. I think I would have been blown away by it as a very young teenager; however, I'm not as forgiving a reader now as I was then (hell, I semi-willingly read V.C. Andrews then - I wasn't forgiving, I was stupid.) It's told in first person from the perspective of a young man with an I.Q. of 68 who is the recipient/victim of an experimental operation to increase intelligence. At this point in the book the operation is looking like a stunning success, as our erstwhile narrator has become even smarter than the scientists who did this to him. (Yet somehow, his writing style is about as sophisticated as that of a reasonably well-educated grade 12 student; the author is failing me here).

So, I hadn't planned on reading more of Flowers for Algernon tonight because it's irritating me a little. That said, I'll finish it because it's got short chapters and is therefore perfect for picking up and putting down when I get back to my revisions tomorrow. But then this afternoon, I sprained my ankle and have had to spend the evening sitting with my foot propped up and iced - what else is there to do in a situation like that but read? But I just couldn't stand the idea of reading any more of the Keyes book today, so I grabbed the most compelling thing within reaching distance of my chair - Haruki Murakami's after the quake.

This Murakami book is a collection of 6 short stories written after and peripherally about the huge earthquake that hit Kobe in 1995. I read the first 3 stories tonight and really enjoyed the second two, but especially "landscape with flatiron." I recently read Murakami's novel Kafka on the Shore and was ultimately extremely disappointed by it, so I'm pleased to be enjoying his fiction again.

(I can't recall when I was first introduced to Murakami, and I think Melinda introduced me to Keyes. I'll read more Murakami; Keyes can go eat his own head.)