Norwegian Wood
I finished Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami a few days ago.
It's pretty good. As i wrote earlier, it really reads like classical music.
It has the wonderful Murakami spareness, which like in Hemingway and Salinger i always feel a bit mistrustful of its soothingness. (More sentences only a mother could love to come, i'm sure) - Because the characters often have a sameness of tone to each other and to the narrator. Altho Murakami does this much less than H or S.
For some reason i began reading it again immediately after finishing it; like the next day or possibly that evening. I think this would be great, i certainly appreciated the early action (so to speak) much more after having been around the characters and narrator for a while. However i've gotten whisked away by Huck Finn.
What's to say about Huckleberry Finn ? Everything you hear is true; it's a supremely excellent book. If you haven't read it in the past 5 or so years you're missing out.
From our bathroom i stole Dylan Thomas - Collected Poems 1934 - 1952.
I'm not much of a poetry lover. I mostly can't stand poetry. (I loved it in high school 'tho.)
My favorite poet is by far William Taylor Jr. I tried to read thru some E. E. Cummings a while ago, as it seemed like he should really be My Sort Of Thing, and while they were excellent, i just stopped reading. So i found Dylan Thomas and read a few and there's a breaking of cadence which i find fascinating, like a hole in the ground, so i'm going to pursue it a bit further.
Sarah has given me We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Enemies, but i haven't started it yet.
I picked up Ursula leGuinn's realist sci-fi novel of a functional anarchist planet, The Dispossessed, and would probably be (re)reading that instead of Huck Finn except Mykle stole it from the bathroom. I wanted to reread it because i remembered the folks on the anarchist planet have removed possessives from their (ha) language, and wanted to see again how she went about it.
It's pretty good. As i wrote earlier, it really reads like classical music.
It has the wonderful Murakami spareness, which like in Hemingway and Salinger i always feel a bit mistrustful of its soothingness. (More sentences only a mother could love to come, i'm sure) - Because the characters often have a sameness of tone to each other and to the narrator. Altho Murakami does this much less than H or S.
For some reason i began reading it again immediately after finishing it; like the next day or possibly that evening. I think this would be great, i certainly appreciated the early action (so to speak) much more after having been around the characters and narrator for a while. However i've gotten whisked away by Huck Finn.
What's to say about Huckleberry Finn ? Everything you hear is true; it's a supremely excellent book. If you haven't read it in the past 5 or so years you're missing out.
From our bathroom i stole Dylan Thomas - Collected Poems 1934 - 1952.
I'm not much of a poetry lover. I mostly can't stand poetry. (I loved it in high school 'tho.)
My favorite poet is by far William Taylor Jr. I tried to read thru some E. E. Cummings a while ago, as it seemed like he should really be My Sort Of Thing, and while they were excellent, i just stopped reading. So i found Dylan Thomas and read a few and there's a breaking of cadence which i find fascinating, like a hole in the ground, so i'm going to pursue it a bit further.
Sarah has given me We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Enemies, but i haven't started it yet.
I picked up Ursula leGuinn's realist sci-fi novel of a functional anarchist planet, The Dispossessed, and would probably be (re)reading that instead of Huck Finn except Mykle stole it from the bathroom. I wanted to reread it because i remembered the folks on the anarchist planet have removed possessives from their (ha) language, and wanted to see again how she went about it.
posted by good old o at
7:40 PM
2 Comments:
i haven't read Norwegian Wood (yet), but Murakami's character structure seems to repeat itself: mystically bemused, isolated young man, disappearing women who run the archetypal gamut (maiden, mother, crone, virgin, whore, etc.) while still remaining aloof, a mad, vanishing old man, & a mysteriously meaningful animal.
but this repetition (generally) doesn't dull the work at all; if it's like classical music it's a fugue, subtle variations in repetitions of a theme.
there's my literary rant for the day. HBW is my favorite, maybe b/c it was my first. Sputnik Sweetheart was also really charming.
By
Anonymous, at 10:51 AM
from the two books i've read (HBW, N. Wood) i think you've hit the nail on the head. there's even a vanishing old man in NW, arguably mad. - Which scene i now recall i wanted to write about! There's a scene where our mystically bemused hero spends an afternoon with our wild maiden's dying father in his hospital room. the father can barely speak or emote, and our hero basically just pretends he can and talks to him like you talk to anybody and this basic human treatment more or kindles a tiny spark of life in the old man. it's a very beautiful few pages.
anyhow, yes, there's a sameness of texture going on but it's sort of like the sameness of jasmine- it's really hard to tire of.
By
Anonymous, at 10:59 AM
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