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Kafka on the Shore is one of my favourite novels written by Haruki Murakami. This is not a review – just some thoughts. I like how he tells two stories and cleverly intertwines the two. This talent of his I have seen before in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – my other favourite. I haven’t read enough of Murakami to judge out of all of them. But so far these two are top of the list – probably the latter more so.

I love the way he weaves the real and the unreal together and makes the story mesmerizing. The story is even more elaborate than Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World involving an old man who talks to cats and his whole purpose in life is to find lost cats, a 15 year old boy called Kafka who runs away from home to avoid an Oedipal curse. Having read a couple of Murakami novels, I was surprised at the heavy sexual overtones. In other books, the physical act is hinted at to the point that you’d think the author seemed almost disinterested. Here, the focus is unmistakable. He purposely dives in and dwells on the subject throughout as if it was a challenge.

Having done a little search on the internet, I found thenewcanon.com which compares Murakami style to those of other writers:

“This re-examination of the real is at the heart of the fantastical landscapes of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the pulp fiction-ish narratives of Philip K. Dick, the ‘alternative universe’ histories of Michael Chabon and Philip Roth, and the quasi-science fiction scenarios of Wallace’s Infinite Jest, McCarthy’s The Road and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Indeed, the pervasive incorporation of sci-fi plots into serious fiction, from Kazuo Ishiguro to Jonathan Lethem, is a recurring and unmistakable sign of this pronounced shift in the literary weather.

Few writers have poked more holes in conventional notions of reality than the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Other authors have explored what has come to be known as “magical realism,” but most of them— such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier and Ben Okri—have set their visionary tales in Third World locales where myth and folklore loom large over the cultural landscape. In these environments, magical realism seems a natural extension of an on-going and tradition-laden literary dialogue. But Murakami concocts his magical stories in the midst of affluent modern-day consumer settings.”

The above extract explains Murakami much better than I ever could. I’ve read Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, McCarthy’s The Road and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – and loved them all. Though I’ve got to add Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist to this. If you have read and enjoyed any of the above, then I’m sure you’d enjoy reading Kafka on the Shore too.

Have you read the book?

What did you think?

A thoroughly good read. I loved Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It reminded me of other novelists I enjoy reading such as Haruki Murakami, Paulo Coelho, Salman Rushdie and Ben Okri to name a few who are brilliant at mixing the real with the surreal and making you believe in a world that could not be.

Life of Pi was not what I had expected. As the title suggests, I had expected something mathematical orientated but it was more to do with biology – the nature of man and beast and how they relate to one another. Half the book covers Piscine’s (the main character) adventures and the lessons he learn on the relationship of man and animal at his father’s zoo, the other half is how he’s forced to use those lessons to survive.

The first mention of Richard Park made me chuckle. Read it and you’ll see why. I won’t spoil it here. My favourite bits were the relationship between Pi (Piscine) and Richard Parker – the story behind how the two got their names is amusing – and the surreal parts, the underwater world of the meerkats.

One of my favourites.

Writn by Jessie Mac

Our boots make comforting crunching sounds on the snow. I can feel wet flakes on my face and every once in a while I shake the gathering flakes from my thickest coat.

The thin layer of fresh snow is hiding ice in some areas where the crunchy sound is not noticeable. You manage to grab my arm as I feel myself slip.

I hold on tight. We are silent, enjoying that rare comfortable feeling we have when we are together – that nothing really matters, not really, in the end.

We walk on arm hooked in arm.

Photo: Snow Storm by Petr Kratochvil

How did I come to reading the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy?

We were driving along remember? I was passenger and you were driver.

When the path you’re walking on seems the same for a while, you begin to wonder when your environment will change. Your brain is in robot mode, you might wonder if everybody around you is in robot mode too and if these people are wondering the same thing about themselves and you. You wonder if you’re really just a machine, that society is just a machine, that imagine if there was no society and no machine.

Anyway, those were my ponderings when I said something stupid. Remember?

When don’t you say stupid things? You say. Hey – Cheeky.

I said – wouldn’t it be great if we all didn’t have to live like mice racing around a wheel, that society as we know it didn’t exist anymore?

You were horrified by my suggestion. Remember?

You said – have you read The Road? You should read The Road.

So I read it.

The Road is like a road trip with hints of hope in a grim decayed society where nothing exists except pure survival. The reason for why society turned out this way is never explained and doesn’t really matter much.

The language used in the book was surprisingly poetic. He uses his sentences as if writing poetry, with the minimal of words and punctuation.

Even to the point of omitting punctuation where there should normally be punctuation. The lack of punctuation, speech marks, names – the names of the main characters are not mentioned at all – they’re simply The Man and The Boy – stresses the lack of society’s rules.

After reading the book, I was curious about the film based on the book.

So I watched the film.

There was a scene in the book that I was surprised was cut out from the film since films seem to want to compete finding massive gratification in depicting blood and gore just to shock their audience. I found an article mentioning the scene here if you’re interested.  I won’t say which scene but if you’ve read it, you’ll know because it left an imprint in my mind.

While the book shocked me, the film made me cry. Why? The boy. It’s heart-wrenching to hear a small boy wish he was dead and begging his father not to leave him.

It seems that McCarthy had strange ideas of what is required in the art of progress which I’m not sure about. When there is birth, death may come first – but all the time and does death always mean violent destruction?

McCarthy said “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed,” McCarthy said during a rare interview in 1992. “I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea.” (Source: Times Online)

Here’s an extract from The Road by Cormac McCarthy:

Huddled against the black wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous.

Jesus, he whispered.

Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light. Help us, they whispered. Please help us.

After reading the book and watching the film, I changed my mind. Being a numb mouse running around a wheel is not that bad a thing. I quite like having electricity and hot water; and food etc. Does that make me a coward? The thought of living without the necessities and every day having to worry about being hunted and becoming someone else’s food makes me shiver.

He shoved the boy through the hatch and sent him sprawling. He stood and got hold of the door and swung it over and let it slam down and he turned to grab the boy but the boy had gotten up and was doing his little dance of terror. For the love of God will you come on, he hissed. But the boy was pointing out the window and when he looked he went cold all over.

The safe option would be to have the mind of a mouse. If that was the case, wouldn’t it be great to be mice that loved the wheel and loved the sometimes seemingly meaningless running we do inside the wheel?

Isn’t there a film about that? A film about indoctrinating people to love being part of a machine? There must be.

Have you seen the film or read the book?

What do you think?

Leave a comment. It’s good to know.

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson – 6 Things I Learnt About the Author

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon – Novel and Thoughts

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Your Dreams, Love and Thoughts (Part 1)

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Your Dreams, Failure and Thoughts (Part 2)

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Your Dreams, Diversions and Thoughts (Part 3)

Chuck Sambuchino – An Interview: Published Book, Writing and a Writer’s Life (Part 1)

Chuck Sambuchino – An Interview: Published Book, Writing and a Writer’s Life (Part 2)

Sean Ferrell – The Author Talks About Writing

Sean Ferrell – The Author Talks About Numb the Character

Sean Ferrell – The Author Talks About the Book Trailer Numb

“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourself a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles.”

Helen Keller

CURRENT STATUS: Reminder, Motivator and Review Meeting (Read on if you want to join me in my Corporation of One meeting)

What l have learnt:

• Take one step at a time.

What I am doing or have done/decided:

• Started blogging again.

WORD COUNT:

Night Walker 159,000 words. Finished. Leaving to marinate.

Insomniac Foetus Editing.

You look at me wondering. I look away. My shoulders slump further. I know you’re looking at me and wondering what’s wrong with me. Nothing is wrong with me – outwardly, anyway.

I know I look like I’m pouting. I’m not pouting.

You don’t push me. You wait. Patiently. Too patiently.

Have you ever felt so tired that you feel like you’re 83?

You shake your head and your eyes tell me that you don’t know where this is going.

Well, that’s how I feel. Inside. I feel old. Tired.

Your eyebrows raise ever so slightly – questioning.

I rub my eyes and sigh.

Anyway, recently I finished reading all three novels by Stieg Larsson. The books are also known as the Millennium Trilogy. The first is called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo followed by The Girl who Played with Fire and ending with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

It was only while reading the last book that I was shocked to find out that the author of the books had died in 2004. Yes, I’m slow. (Slow and tired)

I guess the shock comes from thinking that any book that has been published recently – the assumption is that the novelist is still alive and will be writing more.

It’s hard to believe that Stieg Larsson will never write anything else.

Though I saw the film based on the book The Girl who Played with Fire- which was very good – I still couldn’t put the books down – every single one of them. The films are produced by a Swedish and a Danish production company but I wouldn’t be surprised that there will be an American/English version soon enough. I even gave up possible sleep to read them. For someone who find it difficult to sleep or stay awake (yes, I’ll tell you more another time) – it’s a big thing. That’s how good they were. Then I find out there will be no more.

And the thought that he did not live to see how popular his books have become.

Because of the shock of finding out about his death and the realization of finding an author I enjoy reading and that there will be no more books by this novelist – Stieg Larsson – all this made me want to write a post to find out more about him and to say a big thanks to him and how sorry I am that we’re all going to miss out on more of his stories, stories we don’t even know about because this writer is no longer here.

~

Here are a few things I learnt about the author Stieg Larsson I’d like to share with you:

• He changed his name from Stig to Stieg so he would not be confused with his friend Stig Larsson, also a well-known author (source: wikipedia).

• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was not intended to be the last book in the series (I knew it!):

Larsson left about three quarters of a fourth novel on a notebook computer, now possessed by his partner, Eva Gabrielsson; synopses or manuscripts of the fifth and sixth in the series, which he intended to contain an eventual total of ten books, may also exist. Read more at wikipedia…

• Book four could actually be book five and there is no book four. Confused? I am.

“I got the email from Stieg 10 days before he died where he wrote book number four is nearly finished,” says his brother Joakim in his first U.S. television interview. “And to make it more complicated, this book number four, [is] book number five, because he thought that [it] was more fun to write than book number four.” Read more at cbsnews…

• After reading the trilogy, it’s not surprising to know that the author was concerned about politics and was a journalist and activist. It seems his combative reporting style mimic those of the main male character, journalist Blomkvist and according to reports, the threats to Larsson’s life led him to mask or conceal his personal details from public view to ensure he could not be tracked down easily mirroring his heroine, Lisbeth Salander’s need to cover and conceal her identity. All of which complicated Larsson’s relationship with his partner when it came to dealing with his finances after his death and fueled speculation and conspiracy theories concerning his sudden death. His life sounded like a thriller.

• His need to protect women from violence and the violence portrayed in his novels were based on personal experience.

Larsson…was disgusted by sexual violence, having witnessed the gang rape of a young girl when he was 15. According to a friend of his, the author never forgave himself for failing to help the girl, whose name was Lisbeth — just like the young heroine of the trilogy, who is also a rape survivor. Read more at the NewStatesman…

• Larsson had a destructive streak. He “smoked over 60 cigarettes a day and was a classic workaholic…” Read more at the timesonline…

The more I learn about Larsson, the more I admire the author. If I could only be half as brave and entertain half as many, I’d feel very lucky.

It just makes me wonder what other creations we miss out on because a writer out there doesn’t get to write their book because of one reason or another. Imagine there would have been ten books in the series, not just three (or possibly four). This could easily have been you – any of us – all of us. And you don’t know until you try.

So, how are you?

Have you read the novels?

What did you think?

Leave a comment. It’s good to know.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon – Novel and Thoughts

Chuck Sambuchino – An Interview: Published Book, Writing and a Writer’s Life (Part 1)

Chuck Sambuchino – An Interview: Published Book, Writing and a Writer’s Life (Part 2)

Sean Ferrell – The Author Talks About Writing

Sean Ferrell – The Author Talks About Numb the Character

Sean Ferrell – The Author Talks About the Book Trailer Numb

“To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.”

Alan Cohen

CURRENT STATUS: Reminder, Motivator and Review Meeting (Read on if you want to join me in my Corporation of One meeting)

What l have learnt:

• Querying Agents at the Same Agency. Should you?
• Agent Tina Wexler On: 6 and 1/2 Ways to Impress an Agent.
• Copyright Infringement and from there to the Facebook page to read comments from very annoyed people. I could read the comments all day but I won’t. A hunt is on for the head of the editor on a stick but I’m too tired.

What I am doing or have done/decided:

• Read Dexter is Delicious by Jeff Lindsay.
• Read Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.
• Read The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson.
• Reading Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig.
• Reading The Associate by John Grisham.

WORD COUNT:

Night Walker 159,000 words. Finished. Leaving to marinate.

Insomniac Foetus Ready to edit. Having a break before I start.

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