Ushikawa?

It's the funky looking, off-putting, chain smoking character that Murakami named "Bull-river," Ushikawa.

I got to page 426 in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and by 427 when the description comes in I remember thinking, This has to be Ushikawa, and then on 428 he introduces himself: "'The name is Ushikawa. That's ushi for "bull" and kawa for "river". Easy enough to remember, don't you think?'"

I mention it because, depending on how far along you've gotten in 1Q84, you'll have run into Ushikawa again.

This also highlights a few random thoughts I was having.

Like with Against the Day and Pynchon, this was another time of reading a later work before an earlier work. With Pynchon, I didn't know that Bodine was one of the recurring names of a set of characters.

With having read 1Q84 before The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which itself was written maybe a dozen years prior, this Ushikawa made his first impression on me in the newer story. Had I read Wind-Up... first, I believe that I surely would have recognized him in 1Q84 before his name came up, as did other Ruke-man fans.

Another thought I was having was the pace at which I'm making it through Wind-Up Bird...

I started it back in December when I was busing it to tutor sessions on the PV peninsula. It's not like the book is difficult and reading it is a slog (see Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon), and, for the record, nothing by the Ruke-man that I've found could ever really be considered a "slog."

Something about it though...it never gripped me, or at least hadn't as of the 420 pages. Maybe it is starting to now, at least, with  the random 3rd person breaks about the boy and the "newspaper articles" filling in some holes. (The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace also has a multi-pronged narrative approach with transcripts and articles and such...)

And it's not like I haven't had time to read. If that had been the case, like I imagine it is with my blog-mate, I could understand the lag better. When the Bleeding Edge comes out in September, what with my schedule being what it'll be, that could easily be the case at that time. But, while I've been reading this book by Murakami I've also read: Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman; half of a Tesla bio by Margaret Cheney; And Still We Rise by Miles Corwin; As They See 'Em by Bruce Weber; The Dinosaur Heresies by Dr. Bob Bakker; and The Tao of Baseball by a Canuck writer and thinker who goes by Go. The Goldman and Weber books were both gifts from Uncle Dan and Auntie Peg; and along with the Corwin book and Bakker book, everything is non-fiction, which is easier for me to breeze through on my LA Metro rides than even something as smooth as Murakami.

So...what...

Seeing Ushikawa in multiple spots is the same for me as seeing the Traverses in multiple spots, or even my own character Cooper. I have a character named Cooper who has bit roles in both my short The New American Patriot as well as in the current novel I'm working right now.

So, I was excited anyway. I've been busy with a different writing project lately; I'll go into it in detail a little later...

See you at the Birthday Party!