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Jan. 3rd, 2003 04:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathystFinished the first story in After the Quake, by Murakami.
I have to say, either Jay Rubin has improved immensely as a translator, or Sputnik Sweetheart was just a not so great novel. The story definitely carried the...well, the essential Murakaminess of Murakami, that which my father describes as a cross between Phillip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler. But even that isn't it...I don't have words.
It's strange, but it's a kind of strangeness which fits inside me well. It's surreal, in the original sense of the word, shorn of its modern connotations through overuse. It's that special quality of dream-logic, where the story is internally self-consistent, but the logic it works by is not our logic. I've spoken of this before.
And my dancing around the essence of Murakami has probably done more to obscure than reveal, and I should cease.
Words are so damn clumsy.
As is logic, often.
Note to self: look further into Zen at some later point. Maybe I'm still coming off the peak of really understanding The Trial as a koan, but dream-logic, internally-self-consistent-but-not-real-worlds and places where logic is meaningless seem to just keep cropping up. It almost makes me wonder if someone is trying to tell me something...but that doesn't make sense, by logic or antilogic.
I shall write of this further at a later date, I think. It may merit thought.
I have to say, either Jay Rubin has improved immensely as a translator, or Sputnik Sweetheart was just a not so great novel. The story definitely carried the...well, the essential Murakaminess of Murakami, that which my father describes as a cross between Phillip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler. But even that isn't it...I don't have words.
It's strange, but it's a kind of strangeness which fits inside me well. It's surreal, in the original sense of the word, shorn of its modern connotations through overuse. It's that special quality of dream-logic, where the story is internally self-consistent, but the logic it works by is not our logic. I've spoken of this before.
And my dancing around the essence of Murakami has probably done more to obscure than reveal, and I should cease.
Words are so damn clumsy.
As is logic, often.
Note to self: look further into Zen at some later point. Maybe I'm still coming off the peak of really understanding The Trial as a koan, but dream-logic, internally-self-consistent-but-not-real-worlds and places where logic is meaningless seem to just keep cropping up. It almost makes me wonder if someone is trying to tell me something...but that doesn't make sense, by logic or antilogic.
I shall write of this further at a later date, I think. It may merit thought.
