faint but pursuing

[freckles_and_doubt]

Gosh-darned 'flu still lingering - currently giving me blocked ears that go "pop" every now and then, rather disconcerting. And still with the snuffling. But my brain generally seems to be emerging from the grip of the grippe, so to speak: I had enough coherence today to actually do some work, and spent a happy few hours noodling around with the paper on Tolkien and fan culture. Going well, apart from the fact that in moments of excitement the pile of books on fan culture will fall down behind my desk, necessitating swearing and scrabbling to retrieve the necessary tomes. Memo to self, must clear desk. Must also get a new screen pronto, this one had a ten-minute fit of fade-to-black this afternoon, producing a visual effect not unlike a black-and-white movie lit and photographed by a severely Impressionist director in a state of angst.

I have finally got around to tackling the huge pile of books I have borrowed from all four corners of Cape Town: yesterday, read Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland. Is it just me, or are all his main characters the same person? Weird sort of flat non-reactiveness to things, made all the more noticeable because the things that happen to Murakami characters are truly, truly odd. I have a sort of feeling that H-B Wonderland would have made more sense if I hadn't been 'flu-ridden, although, this being Murakami, maybe not. Strange sort of Escher-esque mental spaces, inside and outside each other at the same time. Odd book, and haunting me a tad. I think it was the unicorns.

On a not necessarily lighter note, although much more comprehensible one, I have now acquired books 5 to 7 of the Lemony Snicket series, once more crippling my long-suffering credit card. I didn't plan to, honest; I was in Exclusive in Cavendish for the excellent cause of meeting Stace and starmadeshadow, the purposes being to celebrate the former's birthday. Reason number umpty-whatever for not having kids: a night out with the grrlfriends becomes a High Treat, TM, necessitating organisation days in advance, and the connivance of the husband as baby-sitter. However, very nice dinner. Stace should have birthdays, or at least nights out, more often. I am full of chocolate cake and veal in lemon sauce, and shall trundle bedwards with a Lemony Snicket. It's not a bad life, really.

Comments

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Murakami ... Is it just me, or are all his main characters the same person?

It's not just you, and I suspect his protagonists are him.

uniformity

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting person, I hasten to add, just rather weird, in the sense that his emotional affect is completely flat. I'm wondering if this is actually intrinsically necessary to achieve that strange magical-realist effect his novels have; a more emotional protagonist would destroy the matter-of-fact taken-for-grantedness which gives the weird a lot of its force. I really think Murakami's closest literary relative is someone like Gabrial Garcia Marquez.

Re: uniformity

[(Anonymous)]

I'm with you: if it weren't so "Weirdness? Okay. Whatever. More whisky" it really wouldn't work. So I don't think the protagonist is necessarily him, I just think it's more of a construct than a character.

robynn

Re: uniformity

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Interesting point, yes - the central characters are constructs who enable the exploration of the actual character in a Murakami novel, which is basically the weird, weird world. Murakami's world is a trickster magician with a multiple personality disorder.

(And I typed that whole comment writing "Miyazaki" rather than "Murakami", which shows you how eager I am to get my hands on Howl's Moving Castle).

One hundred years of solitude

[(Anonymous)]

I really enjoyed GGM. If this Murakami is anything like him, I should read some of his books. Although, there was just something about the large noisy Latino family that appealed to me.

Jo (ty)

ps: mwahahahahahhahhahaahhahahahhahahahah