"Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light." -- Wisława Szymborska, View With a Grain"Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light." -- Wisława Szymborska, View With a Grain of Sand
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Such a great overview of Szymorska's poetry. Once in Hungary I watched a guy ride two horses at full gallop while standing on their backs. Reading Szymorska reminds me of that. I grasp the technicals of what she is doing. I understand that nothing she writes in either style or practice actually defies the ACTUAL physics of writing, but something about her finished poems still seem magical and beyond reach. Her poems are like spiderwebs that hold up planets. Anyway, I'll put the hyperbole in my pocket now and just say I loved the book....more
“Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.” ― Rainer Maria Ri“Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
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Rainer Maria Rilke seems to stretch his words from the dirt to the stars with his poems. His verse is my favorite kind of poetry. He is wrestling with angels, looking for the THING, peeling back the skin on tangerines while counting the seeds. This is both the poetry of my youth (I first read Rilke in HS) and my maturity. Rilke dances in that void between love, sex and death and makes the gravity of it ALL work.
I should also mention that I love Stephen Mitchell as a translator. I'm not sure exactly how many languages he reads, but his ability to turn German poetry into English poetry; his ability to turn Latin poetry into English poetry -- hell, it amazes me. Like Pinsky's translation of The Inferno of Dante, Rilke's 'Selectee Poetry' is one of those poet translations I believe is a must in a literate library....more
“The history of doubt is not only a history of the denial of God; it is also a history of those who have grappled with the religious questions and fou“The history of doubt is not only a history of the denial of God; it is also a history of those who have grappled with the religious questions and found the possibility of other answers.” ― Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History
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Hecht's historical survey of doubt is a lot of things and seems to do them all very well. It is a defense of doubt, a survey of doubt, a biography of doubters, a family tree of doubt's relatives. It looks at doubt both from within and external to belief. It examines the motives and believers and gives each its appropriate doubting due.
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I found the book to be highly readable. Strange to say, it was almost TOO readable. I felt myself slipping through the pages almost too fast. It has given me a whole new group of thinkers and philosophers to examine. I was very familiar with many of the doubters in Western and Classical traditions, but Hecht gave me a whole new group of Eastern, Jewish and Muslim doubters to get to know. Plus, even with those nonbelievers & skeptics I was familiar with (Lucretius, Montaigne, Spinoza, Cicero, Epicurus, Pliny, Gibbon, Paine, Jefferson, Bruno, etc.) she gave me whole new approaches and windows to see them through.
Finally, Hecht also found an appropriate way to thread the Book of Job writer, Jesus, Buddha, Qohelet (wrote Ecclesiastes), etc., into the framework of doubt. I think the book would have been crippled without it. Finally, she didn't avoid the negative, state-sponsored doubt period (Fascism, Communism) of the 20th century. Not all doubters do good things. Anyway, it was worth the money and the time for sure and will be re-read in the future....more
“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will neve“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how'.” - Viktor E Frankl
I read an interesting article in the NYTimes a couple weeks ago that lead me to finally pick this book up. Actually, a couple good articles. The first was titled 'Love People, Not Pleasure' and it was about how "this search for fame, the lust for material things and the objectification of others — that is, the cycle of grasping and craving — follows a formula that is elegant, simple and deadly: Love things, use people." The author uses an inversion of this formula that DOES lead to happiness: Use things, Love People (also quoted by Spencer W. Kimball). This article + another recent one from the Atlantic titled 'There's More to Life Than Being Happy' made it clearly evident to me that I needed to finally dust off my yellowed, Goodwill copy of Man's Search for Meaning, plug in my earbuds and experience this book that the Universe clearly wanted me to read this week.
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So, imagine a renowned Jewish therapist writes in 1946 (in 9 days) about his experiences at and survival in Auschwitz, and then adds his own psychotherapeutic method (Logotherapy), finding happiness by finding a meaning, a responsibility, a love, and ultimately self-determining. Perhaps it is a consequence of Frankl's work surrounding me in other writings, in popular psychotherapy, in various internet Memes and articles OR perhaps it is just a consequence of my own resilience to my own suffering that this book wasn't much of a revelation. I was like ... yup, makes a lot of sense. Good job. I think it is a great book for what it is. I just don't always get super-excited by self-help psychology books. This one is on the better end of the bell curve for this type, but I guess my problem is with the type. Other than that (minus 1-star for my type bias) it was a great book....more
“There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield.” ― Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
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One of my favorite historical “There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield.” ― Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
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One of my favorite historical fiction novels of ALL TIME. I read this with my 13 year-old son and 12 year-old daughter and it was amazing. My kids loved it just as much as I did. It was tight, character-driven, and dramatic. Imagine my surprise when my kids are discussing the virtues of Team Chamberlain (smart, honorable, thoughtful, a natural leader) VS Team Longstreet (Brilliant, ahead of his time, brooding, quiet).
The Civil War is one of those historical periods that is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It has elements of romance, chivalry, honor, gentility mixed in with the horrible stench of a modern, brutal war. There are characters like Lee, Chamberlain, Pickett, Stuart, etc., who seem to belong in some Arthurian myth/melodrama next to Longstreet and Hancock who could easily have been cast in some post-apocalyptic Battle Royale. Add to this, the fact that these were real men, with real failings, fighting real friends and the book almost seems to narrate itself.
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Anyway, this is a top-shelf war novel -- it educates, it entertains (as much as a war novel can be called entertainment) and it is beautiful. There were some paragraphs I wanted Terence Malick to film....more
“We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world.” ― Naoki Higashida, The Rea“We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world.” ― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump
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An interesting memoir, translated by David Mitchell, and written by a 13-year-old Japanese boy (Naoki Higashida) with autism. If you teach, live with, know someone who has autism or an autistic child this is (or at least was for me) an insightful glimpse into the struggles and perspectives of a child with autism.
I became slightly, and wrongly, familiar with autism in Jr High when I watched 'Rain Man' and a visit was made to our school by the guy who inspired the movie. Kim Peek, who wasn't actually autistic (not all people with autism are savants and not all savants are autistic), came to our school and performed some of his fantastic feats of memory. He had all of Shakespeare's plays down cold, could dance through calendars, etc. You would give him a date and he would give you the day of the week, phase of the moon, the holiday it may have been, famous people and events on that day.
Even when I was young, I felt a little wary of the way his talents and exceptional life was used, but I couldn't exactly explain why. It felt a bit exploitive. There was too much focus on his abilities and not enough focus on what those who think differently actually go through. It took years and a lot of other experiences with kids who were autistic, or family members who are on the "spectrum," to recognize that Kim Peek was just one manifestation of how the wide and deep the differences are in the way our brains are organized.
Autism, the last few years, has finally gained a bit of ground. I wonder if this is because a lot of my peers have autistic children. It seems like a higher number of kids are diagnosed with autism or some other complex forms of brain development. I'm not sure if we are just more aware of things, more willing to talk and to share, or if there is indeed something going on. When I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, about 1 out of every 2,000 children had autism. Today, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 150 8-year-olds in the United States has an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. Everything from GMOs to vaccines etc., have been blamed for this increase. It might also reflect nothing more than just the way we count.
Anyway, this book is another reminder that there are multiple ways to experience the world. Too often it seems that we have boundaries and expectations about what it means to be normal. Not all of us see the dress as Blue/Black or White/Gold. Some of us can feel the dress and some of us don't see anything at all. The more tolerant and understanding we become of the diversity of people, I believe, the better the experience we will have on this blue rock will be....more
“Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.” ― Barbara W. TuchThe Guns of August which I read in September
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“Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August
What an amazing piece of historical writing. Tuchman shows how August, 2014 was impacted by two failed plans (Plan 17 & the Schlieffen Plan), Generals and politicos who were either overly optimistic at the wrong time or overly pessimistic at the wrong time. She detailed how inadvertent acts by disgraced Generals might have saved France, how the politics and the national moods of France, Germany, Russia, and Great Britain may have contributed to the length of the Great War.
After the Civil War and the War of Franco-Prussian War of 1870, war had morphed into a whole new beast. Few leaders grasped this at the beginning of August but by September 1914 there were very few living on the European continent who could avoid recognizing that war would never be the same again. The vitality and the drama of Tuchman's narrative made this book seemed delivered by 420-millimetre siege howitzers. Chapter after chapter would absolutely devastate me as I read. I am very glad I wasn't in the French (or Belgian or German or Russian) military in August of 1914....more
“I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.” ― Edgar Rice Burroughs“I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.” ― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
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Edgar Rice Burrough's popular John Carter/Barsoom novels started with 'A Princess of Mars'. I can only imagine reading this cowboy in space novel when it was first published. It was absolute pulp (violent fights, naked women), but like all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels it can't be contained by any simple labels. Burroughs is able to explore ideas of eugenics and race, war and peace, love and family, all layered into a fast-paced, violent Martian travelogue. Burroughs loves supermen. The idea of John Carter having amazing strength because of the different gravities of Earth and Mars allows an everyman Virginian Civil Warrior to become a singular Martian Hercules.
Obviously, this is an extraordinarily influential sci-fi novel. It influenced everybody from Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon) to George Lucas (Star Wars) to James Cameron (Avatar). It is hard to watch Han Solo walk without thinking of John Carter's swagger or dream about Princess Leah in chains without my subconscious somehow floating back into visions of Princess Dejah Thoris in -- yes -- chains. It is a shame that Disney's John Carter movie didn't do better. I would love to see further efforts to make films out of the Barsoom series. It is a strange world where a movie that makes $200M+ globally and is still judged a failure....more
“The time has arrived when patience becomes a crime and mayhem appears garbed in a manner of virtue” ― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
[image]“The time has arrived when patience becomes a crime and mayhem appears garbed in a manner of virtue” ― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
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Tarzan is one of those characters who came out of the post-Victorian, pre-WWI age that seem almost to exhibit a place larger than the actual book(s) he was born in. Like Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan is both a type and a rejection of type. It is amazing to see the arc this character has taken over the last century. From the actual books written by Burroughs to the various movies, comics, cartoons, and the eventual Disneyfication of the story.
I read this book shortly after getting LOA's 100 year anniversary edition of both Tarzan and Princess of Mars. It was classic pulp. Like other magazine stories told during this time (the Most Dangerous Game, etc) it points to a certain level of supple, straight, superman that exists beneath the clothes of civilization. There must be some base-level appeal for us modern men where we feel compelled to dream we could, with only a knife and a rope, if put in the right situation, conquer the wilderness.
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There is a king of the jungle/nobel savage in all of us. It is the same impulse that drives viewers to watch 'Man Vs. Wild' and 'Naked and Afraid', etc. Civilization provides us with many comforts, but it also robs us of something. Burroughs recognized this missing treasure. His Tarzan novels (and to a degree his Mars novels) exploits and explores this missing link to our past. He is able to illustrate that underneath our jackets and ties there might be a bit of the savage inside this actuary and a beast inside that accountant, just waiting an opportunity to break free....more
“It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.” ― Bill Bryson, At Ho“It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.” ― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life
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Bryson uses his own family's Victorian parsonage to map out the history (mainly focused on the 18th - 20th Century) of the private life. His discussion of specific rooms ends up allowing Bryson to tangent off onto related topics as wide and varied as sex, family, shit, medicine, architecture, makeup, rope-making, etc.
This book is a movement through a house that allows Bryson to riff on people and ideas that are funny, iconic, and always peculiar. Bryson is amazing at flipping over a stone and telling three different stories about the stone, the flip, and the bugs hiding underneath the stone. He will also examine the shoe that flipped the stone and occasionally inserts his own experience with stones and shoes.
There is rarely a Bryson book that I hasn't made me laugh verbally while reading and filled me with a sort of awe at his ease at relaying interesting trivia and making you look at a place (his travelogues are amazing), a time, or a people in a different way. My wife and I share a love of books, but the oven diagrams of our interests don't often intersect. Bill Bryson is one of those authors we can both read, both enjoy, and often quote back and forth as we read. He seems to possess the same, self-efacing, Midwestern wit as Garrison Keillor, but with just a bit more Anglophile whipped in.
“Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.” ― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
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It“Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.” ― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
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It is hard to not like David Mitchell. He is literary, just not too literary. He is funky, just not too funky. He is hip, just not too hip. He is political, just not too political. He is spiritual, but also seems to leave room for a bit of humanist doubt. I can't think of another writer who captures the energy or direction of the slick, urban, cosmopolitan, educated, 21st century global zeitgeist.
David Mitchell is brilliant at ventriloquism and style-jumping. His books are filled with multiple narrative and style incarnations (the stacking-doll Cloud Atlas, or narrative leaping number9dream, or his most recent The Bone Clocks), but sometime I feel like he is starting to eat his own tail here. I want to see Mitchell do a Peter Carey and jump out of his slick, crowd-pleasing novels into something a bit different. Do I know what I want? No. I just see this author who I've liked enough to read everything he's ever published, and fear that we might just get two or three more of these books. I like them. Don't get me wrong. I liked the Bone Clocks enough to give it four stars and review and read it. I just don't want to see Mitchell begin to get so comfortable in his archipelago of interconnected narratives that he doesn't push his talent into dark, rough, and uncomfortable places.
Anyway, Mitchell hasn't written a novel YET that I'm very disappointed with and Bone Clocks is no exception. There might be a couple slower chapters and the ending might have been a bit predictable, but I had a hard time putting the novel down while reading and was sad to put it down when I finished. That isn't rare for me, but it is a pretty good indication that the novel is on solid ground. People keep claiming to see the death of the novel around the corner, but Mitchell's talent and slickness is at least one star that keeps consistently reappearing....more
“Never was a man’s love of risk so beautifully amplified by his environment as Clark’s was in Silicon Valley.” ― Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A S“Never was a man’s love of risk so beautifully amplified by his environment as Clark’s was in Silicon Valley.” ― Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
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I did like Lewis' exploration of the relationship of Investment banking and the information technology companies that seemed to weed up in Silicon Valley during the late 90s. The normal venture technology relationship seemed to invert in Silicon Valley. Power shifted from the money men to the idea men, or perhaps not even the idea men, but the risk men, the development men. It was, and still is, a bit of an aberration in business space and time. This book focuses on Jim Clark, who ended up wet-nursing three different IT start-ups (Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon).
Like his fellow Princeton New New Journalism master, John McPhee, Michael Lewis does a phenomenal job of finding and fleshing out the exact right person to serve as the locus for an even bigger story. This book is nominally focused on Jim Clark, but really is about the technology bubble of the late 1990s. Jim Clark just happens to be a near perfect example of the best and worst of that particular place and time in America's economy.
Not my favorite Lewis. Not because it isn't well written, but mainly subject matter. I'm more of a value man (Graham & Dodd), not a kamikaze investor. The whole idea of the New New thing is both interesting and a bit repellant to me. I love disruptive businesses, but I'm just not a fan of the smoke and mirrors of the early parts of these businesses. ...more
“The guiding principle of Martin’s personality, the sum of his interior existence, was the desire to be left alone.
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If all those years he’d sou“The guiding principle of Martin’s personality, the sum of his interior existence, was the desire to be left alone.
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If all those years he’d sought attention, even novelty, and if he still relished them, then that was because attention proved him different and solitude begins in difference.” ― Jonathan Franzen, The Twenty-Seventh City
Franzen's freshman effort is striking. First, just one long gaze at the picture of Franzen on the back and it makes me think this kid must have been gnawing on ideas for this book in his mother's womb. Seriously, he looks like he might be wearing the same deodorant his dad gave him at puberty.
Anyway, I was inspired to read this book because I was heading to St. Louis for a couple days and figured given the recent Ferguson-inspired race tensions, there might never be a more appropriate time to crack Franzen's novel about an Indian woman who takes over as the St. Louis chief of police. There is sex, violence, politics, intrigue, etc.. It is a thriller that aspires to be literary, or a thriller written by someone who is simply writing in the wrong genre.
The book is ambitious, messy (plot threads abandoned all over the place), inventive, cracked in places, but destined to stick around. I say that knowing that there are some serious Franzen haters out there. I also say that knowing this isn't his best work (by far). But in 1988, Franzen wrote a novel that seems to have almost perfectly captured the paranoid, xenophobic, social and race conflict that surrounds President Obama (birth certificate, etc). Imagine while reading this novel that Obama is Jammu and the United States is St. Louis and let the details slide from Ferguson to the Gateway Arch and there you are.
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Franzen's fixation on the American family (both in its function and disfunction) is in pupae form here. Family dinners, tensions between spouses, extra-marital encounters, spoiled children, holiday tensions, they all germ here. His prose is great, if a bit uneven (brilliant in parts and boring in others). His plot is complicated. His setting masterful. Again, this isn't a masterpiece, but it was a clear indication of his future ambition and trajectory....more
“It was as if this baseball coach had reached inside me, found a rusty switch marked: 'turn on before attempting use' - and flipped it.” ― Michael Lew“It was as if this baseball coach had reached inside me, found a rusty switch marked: 'turn on before attempting use' - and flipped it.” ― Michael Lewis, Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life
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I recently had lunch with an old friend of mine and her sister. Their father was one of those iconic baseball/football coaches in Oregon who recently had a celebration on his 50th year of coaching (or something close). This is a guy, who, by the accounts of his daughters was so tough he probably would be fired if he was coaching today. He would yell at the boys, drill them hard, and if he felt they weren't leaving everything on the field, if they weren't giving it their best, would make sure they were the last team on the bus. The lights would be shut off, the field abandoned, before he would quietly escort his boys to the bus for the long, quiet, dark, shame-filled ride home. The funny thing was, these adults now who were celebrating this man, many now in their forties, talked about this event, this time, this season as the BEST in their lives. It is amazing the ability a good coach, a strong mentor, an inspired leader can have on boys of a certain age.
It has been years now, but I also remember meeting John Wooden once at a business meeting in LA. One of those meetings they bring out inspired speakers, etc., to motivate the sales force. Wooden was great, no doubt, but I was more fascinated by the crowd of men (my peers) who stood in awe of this man. It is amazing to see how even adults can reverence the idea and ideal of a great coach.
Coach is more of a tribute/essay/paean than a book, Coach is a relic. It is a reflection on Billy "Fitz" Fitzgerald, one of those influential and transformative men who through their character, courage and strength affect a large number of boys. Lewis recalls his memories of Coach Fitz and details the way both parents and children have changed (at least in the milieu of New Orleans and the Isidore Newman School). At heart it is a nostalgia tour of a great man and how lessons about adversity, strength, practice, resolve, respect and focus taught the right way to the right children can help children concur both fear and failure on the road to adulthood....more
“I found that, much like gardening, most cooking manages to be agreeably absorbing without being too demanding intellectually. It leaves plenty of men“I found that, much like gardening, most cooking manages to be agreeably absorbing without being too demanding intellectually. It leaves plenty of mental space for daydreaming and reflection.” ― Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
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In Cooked Michael Pollan stays close to his food roots. Similar in theme to: Omnivore's Dilema (Four Meals), In Defense of Food (Food Manifesto), Botany of Desire (Four Plants), Food Rules (Owner's Manual for Food), and Second Nature (Growing Food).
Cooked is just another branch on the Phylogenetic food tree for the Pollan's Omnivore, me thinks. Unless, of course, Pollan is going to delve into the proper way to digest, poop, or compost your waste. And... he might just.
I am neither a Pollan lover or hater. I've read a bunch of his stuff because it is fast and rather tasty. The problem with Pollan is reading too much of him. His books are a bit full of roughage and eventually too much of his raw idealism or fiber-rich localism gets to you.
I think that is the problem with idealists and their genius (genus?). No one can quite live upto the expectations. There just isn't that many locally grown mushrooms, or farmer's markets, or grass-fed organic beef. But education about farming, feasting, and cooking gives us a better sense of both the idea and the real. As long as we are aware of the costs of the way we eat and the way we cook, we are better than we started. The probelm comes in when we believe ALL the hype. As long as you can remain pragmatic about food and Pollan, reading him is a good thing....more
I'll review it tomorrow. It is late (not midnight in Europe, but midnight in AZ). I'll review it tomorrow. It is late (not midnight in Europe, but midnight in AZ). ...more
“Unlike any other form of thought, daydreaming is its own reward.” ― Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder
It took me “Unlike any other form of thought, daydreaming is its own reward.” ― Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder
It took me a bit longer to come back and review this.
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I adore Michael Pollan. Sometimes he comes across as a bit too foodie-East Coast-hipster, but his writing and perspectives keep pulling me back. His writing all seems to contain the same germ or basic theme. Whether he is writing about food, gardening, cooking, or building a house/writing room, Pollan gravitates towards simplicity and sustainability. It is like having a quirky, Jewish Zen-master show you how to build a house or cook a meal.
'A Place of My Own' is an early Pollan book where he relates his experiences building a writing shed, a small backyard 104-square-foot outbuilding where he can dream, escape, imagine and write. It is part: A Room of One's Own + Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance + Walden + Shop Class as Soulcraft. Pollen is looking at the value of solitude, space, work, nature, etc., in a modern technological age.
Pollan is the Jenna Jameson of hipster porn. I WANT to build my own cabin on family land in Idaho. I want to buy all my food in local, Saturday neighborhood markets. I want to tramp around the woods looking for mushrooms and figure out a way to feed my family in a sustainable and healthy way EVERYDAY. But most days reality just sits on me and I grab some canned crap from Walmart, maybe get my veggies from Sprouts and Fresh and Easy (or as my wife calls it Cheap and Sleazy) and go back to my suburban tract home. Pollen gives me room to fantasize about what part of my brain wants to, but isn't totally able to do -- escape, simplify, and double down on the urban, lumbersexual hipster hiding inside of me. I can't build a small outdoor cabin in my backyard, but I can fantasize about it for a couple hours while I read Pollan in the dark. And maybe, one day, I can pick up that hammer, eat that shroom, and start BANGIN'....more
“You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.” ― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki
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A slow soak in a bath o“You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.” ― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki
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A slow soak in a bath of music, color, friends, loneliness, philosophy, creation and death. Murakami is a genius at writing with emotions swirling beneath the text. He gets the importance of the notes AND the silence of prose; of the unsaid, dreamy place that is both recognized and strange.
This isn't his most exciting work, but it is clearly not a throw-away either. It brings all the usual suspects to the Murakami table. Murakami writes best when he makes the reader feel like they are just near the surface of wakefulness. He bends the reader into a zone where it feels like a strange contractive tendency of the surface between sleep and wakefulness between musical, lucid dreams and surreal, philosophical nightmares.
It feels like you are balancing blind on the edge of a train platform; you feel the sound of the train and feel the compression of his words, but don't know if the Murakami train is going to hit you from the left or the right....more
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