Somebody loaned me a rare copy of a new Chinese establishment-angering writer who goes by the moniker Murong. The novel will be available in a few months, which leaves me wondering how this pal of mine got his copy. It's called Leave Me Alone and subtitled A Novel of Chengdu. Chengdu is the fifth largest city in China, and the action follows the first-person narration of the philandering middle manager Chen Zong. It's angry and bureaucracy, but doesn't really try to rope the same sentiment that Mo Yan does.
Murong started publishing his fist novel (Leave Me Alone is his second) on a Chinese blog, and between that and his micro-blogging site, he grew to prominence. His characters are amoral guys who sleep around and mess with and get messed with the system, full of humor and sex and self loathing. It's good, but not as excellent as Mo Yan or Murakami.
But that book served well some of my traveling trips, as it could withstand my hands better than the older book. Then, the other day, I had another trip to take, and seeing as how neither Brossard's nor Murong's books had me in their throes, I realized I should just fucking go for it and grabbed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as my travelling book.
Norm, while reading 1Q84 do you expect to see Toru walking around? Reading this I find myself keeping an eye out for Tengo or Aomame. I see the shadow of nearly the same character between the teenager May in the first sixty-seventy pages here and Fuka-Eri from 1Q84, just without the mysticism or questions-without-question-marks way Fuka-Eri emotionlessly conducts herself.
I mean, both books cover the same time periods and even parts of the same neighborhoods around Tokyo (Koenji). Is the Ruke-Man forming a canon like Pynchon with the Bodines and the Traverses?
