Book Review: Murakami – After Dark

It’s hard to tell if Murakami is recently prolific or if it's simply his translators who are are. Nevertheless, this is the fourth book from him in three years, and in that spell, it's his most elegant submission. A “slim” volume, it could be described as Murakami light, but even so it retains all the key elements that longtime fans love so much. Dualism, dream worlds, sinister fascist overlords, coffee, women with small ears, American food, cats, minimalists, and jazz all make their appearances in this light-hearted and ultimately very touching story.

Murakami’s Japan, often criticized in his own country for being too foreign (American), is a strange and spooky place where the characters never really feel at home. Through simplifying their lives, lives which are inevitably complicated by the author, and seeking solitude, they tend to find happiness. It is a most therapeutic journey for a busy western mind to take and I recommend it highly. Think of it as the modern literary equivalent of Zen meditation, but with chicken salad sandwiches and Jazz.

Urgency in young music

As I get older, look older, and heck, even act older, the music I listen to is changing: it’s getting younger. And not just in the way the very dazed and confused Wooderson observed of high school girls, the ones who highlight your mortal velocity by merely standing still in their pom-poms. No, my musicians are actually getting younger. And I know why.

When I started choosing my own music as an adolescent, I listened to the blues greats: Muddy, John Lee, Bo, Pop, Buddy (!). Sage old-timers imparting me with lessons hard learned, they bestowed upon me an unearned gravitas. My adventures restricted to the hushed streets of Westmount, I thirsted for something more, grander: something as big as me. And I was unwilling to wait. It wasn’t just me; all adolescents want desperately to grow up. They are ready for life, god-dammit, why won’t anyone take them seriously? For fuck’s sake I’m not a child!

Well, Albert Collins took me seriously. I would lie on the carpet of my room, stuck in there for the night, and listen as he slowly told me about the women he had loved, the whiskey he had drunk, and the cars he had stolen, now that’s OG. And I wanted all of it.

Now that I am no longer grounded, and I look on those years of identity crises with the knowing smile that my parents probably hid from me, my emotional deficits lie in other accounts. I miss the yearning. I miss the drama. I miss the sense that any one moment will define the rest of my life. I miss the complete lack of perspective. I miss the urgency.

But I can find it in music, the music of young people. Their music is all those things and it brings electricity to my grey-suited subway rides.

Adrian surveys the lawn, considers a dip in the pool

Scuff scuff go my shoes. Down the stairs, feet first!
My shoes are green.
Grass is green! Maybe I’ll sit in it for a while.
Maybe not.
Sitting is for sissies. I’m going to go.
Hey! Water! Over there! I see water, look!
Scuff Scuff.

There’s mum over there. She’s waving. Nice Mum.
I’ll just tell her about the water, “Agua!”
I don’t think she sees it, “Agua!”
I like when she smiles. It makes me think of puppies.
And I like puppies! Also: trains.

Scuff Scuff. I’d better just move this little stick.
But where shall I put it?
Maybe in my pocket?
No, it won’t go in there: this pocket is a fake.
I’ll just put it over here. There.

Did you hear that? Up above?
“Choop Choop!” That is what birdies say.

Whoa! The pool is over there. Water.
I’m just going to put my hands in there for a minute I think,
Maybe shovel some water onto the grass, which is green.
What’s that floating in my pool? Oh yeah, Dad said it is a Narwhale.
But it not built to “scale” that’s why it fits.
A small narwhale. I like narwhales.
And water. “Mama! Agua!” Yup, she’s looking. She sees the water.

Book Review: Amis – House of Meetings

Amis is deeply interested in Russia. He is an accomplished student of its history, and a huge fan of its literature. With this novel, he has made a very personal attempt to craft his own Russian novel. In fact, I know this because he tells us this in the text.

Most of the story takes place in a Siberian gulag, and this is where the novel’s best scenes take place. Amis’ account of the labour camp is both horrific and thrilling, but also curiously funny in many places. Reminiscent of Primo Levi’s account of Auschwitz, one probably needs the full 70 years of intervening time to find humour in such places, but even so, it is there. But the secrets that bind this text together are ultimately disappointing. Amis lords the Magoffin over the reader in an uncharacteristically clumsy manner.

It will surprise no one to learn that I have not read as much Russian literature as he has. But I do share a deep love for his hero, Nabokov. And, from this perspective, I regret that he has not nearly equaled any of Nabokov’s work, nor Dostoyevsky, for that matter, whom he is also clearly emulating here.

But even as I tire of his increasingly over-ripe leering, and occasional hubris, the fact is I will never tire of Amis’s style. Whatever the topic, and regardless of his age, the man is a delicate (though sometimes brutal) craftsman. I will keep reading him, but certainly won’t advise new readers to pick up this volume of his as their first.

Book Review: Pynchon – Against the Day

So I finished it. And it was pretty darned amazing. I’m not going to say it was an easy six months of my life. No. It certainly wasn’t. There were, of course, the obvious physical challenges of spending all those hours (those miles) with six pounds of hardcover bound small print, hard edges threatening my eye sockets, but that was the least of my problems. My wife did suggest that it was “un-sexy” to wear those sport goggles in bed, and she also threatened to ban it from our marital boudoir after I used it to stop that bathroom flood; wine lovers refer to that smell as “ash” or “barnyard” at worst, and even so they find it sexy.

No, I’m happy to report the real challenges lay in the text. With over a hundred characters to keep track of, working in multiple timelines, sometimes alternated dimensions or even media, there was frankly more than I could often handle. Encyclopedic is probably the best way to describe it, and many reviewers do. Except, it would be more like if someone decided to make a novel out of a “B-side” encyclopedia, compiling stories from all the slightly-less-significant-and-sometimes-even-a-little-obscure people and places of the early 20th century: Salzburg, not Paris; Venice, not Rome; Montenegro and Kazakhstan, not Moscow; Denver.

There were spells when I walked away from it. There was one occasion where I left three rather long voice mails on Liesl Schillinger’s phone. But each time, just when I thought I was on the verge of leaving my dollar-bill bookmark in that bad-boy for the last time, I would wind up with a pair of espressos in my hand and a quiet morning ahead of me. And when approached in this way, the book would roll over and show me its marvelous insides. Complex, funny, strangely touching, it could confuse as well as enlighten.

One of the Pynchon fan-sites that I appealed to for help midway through the first third (this would be, what, February?) offered up some advice that really resonated with me. Paraphrasing: reading Pynchon is like listening to jazz, you can listen and try to understand to as much or as little of it as you like and still enjoy it. If it gets to hectic, or you are not sure what is happening, just lie back and let it wash over you. It’s not supposed to make sense, it’s just meant to make you feel good. Feel good, and think.

Apologia

Today I said some things. We said some things. These things we said can never be unsaid. And they will ever linger out there in the aether of memory, would that I could, but alas I cannot: all I can do is to apologize.

Horrible, horrendous things. Surely, some of those words you probably had never heard aloud before. No doubt you wondered if some of them were even fit to be considered English. But they were. English of the bawdiest sort. Terrible English fit only for terrible deeds performed by terrible women. And surprised men!

But to be fair, there was no way I could know you were listening. Or, for that matter, that you weren't going to be out of town. So, though no doubt the words were mine, the ears were yours. And, my love, your ears were supposed to be in Sept-Isles this past weekend, were they not?

But for shame. How terrible of me to lash out at you again. I cannot blame you. It is only my love for you that makes me lash out at you so. What cowardice!

Though it bears mentioning that it wasn't technically the same bed we had slept in the night before you lied about leaving. I would never do that to you! I changed the sheets. Plus, she was wearing your perfume, so that business about "the stink of her" was a little over the top.

But I'm getting off track again. I really want to apologize for my brutish behaviour. Sure, things got a little out of hand, but I had no right to threaten your cat. That was out of line. Especially considering your cat is, in fact, a male, so many of the proposals I made in anger would be biologically unsound if not simply impossible. Similarly, your sister. Except, of course, she is female, so, well, I guess not so impossible. But still: I mean, especially if she was willing to undergo some intensive grooming and so on. Boy oh boy. She is something else.

Not that I'm looking! No! I have been so upset since our row that I have been shut up in my room, unwilling to speak to anyone. Idling away my afternoons, wimpering through my Twin Peaks DVD set. Barely able to eat or drink. Maybe a little schnapps to help me get to sleep at night. And who's kidding who, I have never been able to say no to cured deli meats. Oof, remember those sandwiches Dagwood used to make for himself in the middle of the night? Sausage links and ham-still-on-the-bone all packed in there? There was a guy who knew how to handle life's up and downs.

Has anyone ever told you your sister looks a little like Lara Flynn Boyle?

Look. We'll never be able to go back and change what happened last Friday. Not without some major, major pharmaceutical advances combined with a massive uptick in my purchasing power.

Speaking of which, while we're baring the wounds of our hearts, I should tell you that you are out of gas. I had to pick up my cousin at the airport yesterday and, well, I still have a set of keys to your car. I probably should have filled up on the way back, but, well, you were pretty low to begin with, and so it seemed pretty ridiculous to think that I should have to fill up just for a quick trip to the airport. I was careful to drive slowly so we didn't actually use that much. Riff says hello, by the way.

Oh and I borrowed a few dollars too. I'll get them back to you at the end of the month. Or maybe I'll just pay you back when we go to Stowe in June; get a nice bottle of wine or something. We could pop it in the hot-tub, pump up the Vangelis a little.... Maybe I'd better make it two bottles. You shouldn't leave that kind of cash in the car you know.

Cupcake. My little chocolate chip cupcake. Look at me going on like a fool! I'm sure you can see how distraught I am over our little misunderstanding. I am so sorry. It will never happen again. Not as God nor Eros himself still fills your lungs with the sweet breath of angels.

When does your sister graduate anyways?

Items I have attracted via careful application of The Secret

The admiration of all men

The adoration of all women

Syphallis

An unearned air of erudition

That windswept look

A great deal on gently used all-season radials.

A Jack Russel Terrier named "Champ"

A boxed set of Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" DVDs

The scent of freshly baked bread

A family of swallows in my garage

A bowling 'C' Flight championship

Surprising amounts of lint

Six knee-scuffed and somewhat androgenous kids trailing me on bikes.

A new credit card

A possible lawsuit

A wishing well

$45.90 in small change