confused but approving

[freckles_and_doubt]

Well. That was ... lateral. Have just finished Kafka on the Shore, and have to confess myself a somewhat bewildered Murakami fan. He nearly lost me around the disembowelling cats bit, which I still think was a bit gratuitous, but I got over it. I can't actually work out how much of the off-the-wall surreality is Murakami, and how much of it is simply inscrutable orientalism - I am eternally fascinated by the extent to which Eastern assumptions about narrative are madly, madly different to Western. Have been trying to find the right word to describe his storytelling. Occlusive? oblique? also adumbrated, implicit, abstruse, recondite and elisive. Anyway. Colour me scouring Cape Town for more of his writing.

Positive vibes on the book-revision front. Nicest Ex-Supervisor in the World came round yesterday to collect the revised Carter chapter in order to check it for hopeless incoherence. She seems to think that the airy wave of the hand with which I am dismissing semiotic narrative criticism and all its horrible ilk, is legit. Am currently struggling with how to implement the changes required in the Thurber discussion, since currently reading through the chapter is causing me to wail "but I do that already!" at intervals,in response to the examiner and editor suggestions. Woe. But the acquisitions editor approves the Ursula Vernon cover, yay!

Cape Town continues hot. Sigh.

Comments

Re: Hardboiled Murakami

[(Anonymous)]

I finished Wind-up Bird, the first of his I'd read, in a state of not only bewilderment but intense frustration - because the protagonist is indeed so ordinary, I kept expecting all the weirdness to get 'explained' at some point and instead I wound up without anything under my feet, in a narrative sense. Er. What horrible phrasing. Sorry.

But I liked it nonetheless, and found much the same thing with Hardboiled (thanks Strawbs!), except that I was prepared - and it ends up in a proper separate reality, rather than this reality minus any sense, which was a bit easier to deal with. And then with Kafka, I felt even less bewildered, because all the weirdness is (mostly) behind you, though not actually explained, and you're back in the real world. This is my impression; but I do wonder whether it's just me getting used to the Murakami Madness, or whether he is in fact mellowing. Huh.

robynn