Book off

Murakami's 1Q84 is the next book on my reading list and I'm feeling pretty excited about it. His biggest yet, at over 900 pages and I've heard this one is pretty weird. And no one does weird quite like he does! 


As an author I find Murakami to be a most interesting man. He wrote his first novel at age 29 after having an epiphany while sitting on the outfield at a baseball game, seeing a baseball fly through the air. He loves jazz, runs every day, sleeps from 9pm to 4am, speaks English, and ran a cafe for 10 years in Tokyo called 'Peter Cat' before beginning his writing career. He takes little credit for his brillance describing himself as a 'boring old vessel for his imagination'. There is something about him that is so strange, lovely and unpretentious, almost not of this world. 


If you'd like to read a wonderful article about him you can find one here.

Another kooky piece of amazingness is Miranda July and she has a new book 'It Chooses You'. YAY. It details her adventures with strangers she met through classified ads in the Pennysaver. There is a pretty wonderful piece on her at nextness with tips for young creatives. It reminded me that although sometimes things are hard you have to believe in your abilities and forge your own path.  I forget this sometimes.

I'm going to put my Japanese reading skills to the test with this Yuzuko's さんぽの時間 which roughly means 'time for taking a walk'. It explores various areas of Tokyo, taking readers on a lovely wee walk. It's so cute and has been divided into different seasons which is understandable as they are super distinct in Japan. I am pretty elementary so most of the time when I am attempting to read this my face has a furrowed brow! There are sooo many cute books in Japan which has really inspired me to try harder with my studies. 

Freedom

I am in complete awe of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom but I don't know what I'm going to do with myself now! It was such an incredible read and I'm now envious of anyone who gets to read it for the first time. If you haven't you should! Do it! 

Afterword

As a rule, Murakami doesn't like adding Afterwords to novels, but he considered Norwegian Wood an exceptional case.

1. This novel is based on a short story I wrote five years ago, called “Firefly.”  I had it in my intentions for a while to write a clean, short and simple love story based on that short story on 600 sheets of a 200-letter manuscript stationery.

After I finished writing Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, I started writing Norwegian Wood light-heartedly, almost as a mood changer. However, the 600-sheet work ballooned to 1800 sheets, and hence became a novel that is difficult to call “light.” I think that perhaps, something which existed above and beyond what I had in my intentions became written into Norwegian Wood.

2. This novel is an extremely personal novel. It is an autobiographical novel in the sense that one can say that Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is autobiographical, insofar as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night and The Great Gatsby are autobiographical.

Just as much as I can’t say of myself that I am either an okay human being or a not-an-okay human being, it’s my thought that one can’t say that this novel is good or not-good. I only wish for this novel to continue its existence as a work which surpasses what merely consists of “me” as a person.

3. This novel was written in Southern Europe. I began writing it on 12/21/1986 in a certain villa in Mycenae, Greece, and completed it on 3/27/1987 in a hotel apartment in the peripheries of Rome. It’s difficult to determine what kinds of effects that this had on the novel, the fact that I wrote it in places outside of Japan. Who knows, it could have had some effects, or it may not have had any effect on the novel. I am only thankful that I could zone in on the task of writing, in the absence of telephones and visiting guests. Other than that, there weren’t really other big changes to my writing environment.

The first part of Norwegian Wood was written in Greece, the second part, in Sicily, and the final part, in Rome. There weren’t tables or chairs in the cheap hotel room that I rented in Athens. So I went to a taberu (* bar) every day, repeatedly listened to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on my Walkman about 120 times, and wrote continuously. In that sense, it could be said that this novel received a slight assistance from Lennon and McCartney.

4. I dedicate this novel to some of my friends to whom I had to bid farewell because of their deaths, and also to a certain, few friends of mine who are alive, but far away.

June 1987

Haruki Murakami

Banana Fish

Banana Fish Books is an independent online bookstore based in Shanghai. What a lovely treasure. They sell assorted books, magazines and zines that are hand picked, lovely and like Banana fish, rather rare. 

Learning to read (again)

I distract easily. To aid my Japanese language endeavours I picked up this children's comic at a book warehouse for a meagre $4. It's tough going and I feel like such a dummy but decoding the adventures of frog and mouse is way more motivating than memorising language charts!

Short story treasure trove

 Bless the New Yorker. Their fiction section holds a goldmine of short stories that are as diverse as they are entertaining.

Particularly good pieces worth reading are 

Bear meat by Primo Levi

The science of flight by YiYun Li

An Honest Exit by Dinaw Mengestu

Extreme solitude by Jeffrey Eugenides

Poor Mr Plumbean

Magical transit days

Yayoi Arimoto - Air hostess turned photographer. Picked up at Shibuya Publishing Booksellers, a dreamy bookstore if I ever did see one.

Classics revisited

How I love the grumpy ranty ways of Notes from the Underground.  This weekend I am starting my revisit of the classics.

Fodder fix

Sometimes breathtaking works of literature need to take a step aside for deliciously dramatic, romantic, incestuous, drug addled drama that can only be the work of Jacqueline Susann and V.C Andrews. Oh the deceit, addiction, bitchy fights and triumphant back stabbing. Choosing a fluffy piece of fiction is a fine line to walk. One doesn't want to lose all pride succumbing to the fodder of she-devil Marian Keys or Danielle Steel for fear of reading the same book (cleverly marketed as a different book) over and over again.

I first clapped eyes on a V.C Andrews book at eleven years old and promptly devoured its contents. My aunty gifted me the entire Flowers in the Attic series and I boasted about the contents at school. Most kids didn’t care (there was a myriad of things far cooler than me harping on about a book) although I did manage to lure a few into my in exclusive V.C Andrews circle and we discussed plot lines at length.

One afternoon my mother caught sight of me reading some rather filthy words one day all the while laughing loudly and banned the series for two whole years. This only raised the illicit desirability of such a work and I stole the books back continuing to read about crazy grandmothers and incestuous children late into night, torch slyly hidden all the while listening for creaks in the corridor which could be either mum or dad about to snap me with my forbidden fruit.

Jacqueline Susann came later in life, both books and movie. The glamour, the plastic world and insane meltdowns proved to be the perfect escapism while trapped in a boring suburban town devoid of drama. Watching Sharon Tate on screen all the while knowing her imminent fate in real life seemed so fitting of a plotline from one of Valley books that it was all the more sad and poignant.

I haven't picked up a heinously embarrassing book in a while now and I am hearing alluring things about Jilly Cooper. 'Sex and horses, who could ask for more?' said the Sunday Telegraph review. Enough said. I'm approaching with caution all the while secretly hoping for embezzled millions, big hair, ultra 80's glam and incomparable love affairs.

Readers list

I like picking my way through many a book at one time, depending on my mood. I have never been a book purist. At the moment I am looking into:

Haruki Murakami's What I talk about when I talk about running

A rather trusty version of Learn Japanese

Vitamin D: New Perspectives in drawing

Jim Goldberg's Raised by Wolves

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary

And philosophy meets photo essay all in one: Andrew Zuckermann's Wisdom

Steinbeck

If you've never picked up a Steinbeck novel, I thoroughly recommend it. Although at first I thought they were 'boys tales' I quickly changed my mind and became totally engrossed with the characters laid out upon the pages. Winner of a Pulitzer prize and a Nobel prize for literature Steinbeck is a heavy weight in the world of fiction. When asked whether he felt his Nobel he replied "Frankly, no." I have to disagree.

Steinbeck on writing:

"The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

Orwell

Recently I was lucky enough to get my hands on an anthology of George Orwell's works. I'm still working my way though it and it's a struggle to put it down. My lunch breaks, bus rides and evenings have become lovingly devoted to Orwell. Tackling intense (and somewhat scary) themes such as social injustice, democratic socialism and his opposition to totalitarianism, Orwell's writing is clear, accesible and beautifully written. Never one to dress his words fancily or try to outwit his reader, his writing maps out questions about the society we live in and the moral and ethical codes we live by. Orwell lived through troubled times of turmoil, uprising and revolution as well as economic depression. World War two, the Spanish civil war and time in Burma provided him with material for insightful and somewhat bleak and honest novels about what power and corruption can do to human lives.

Inspiration

Creative friendships : Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith

Neil Young's Vampire Blues

Moving houses and a temporary new space

My impending departure to Japan

The painted hairstylings of Winnie Truong

Kewpie mayonnaise, nom nom

Clogs in any way, shape or form

Joanna Newsoms triple record 'Have one on me'

Sylvia Plath

Religious paraphernalia

and recipes from this website