We've all been busy. That's life. I've been getting holiday newsletters and had a crazy idea about making a newsletter that would be entertaining and fictitious, but I've been too busy to get around to doing anything with the idea, barely even breaching the topic with Corrie, who thought it more amusing than practical.
Anyway, because Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki... is relatively slim, I was able to finish it in random moments here and there (giving a test; sitting on the can; etc) whereas, had I been riding the train everyday like last year, it would have taken a week. Maybe two.
I couldn't get the picture I wanted last time to show the relative size differences of Murakami's last two books, so I tried again:
That one is not so bad, but it is kinda weird. 1Q84 tops 900 pages if I remember, and while CTTaHYoP is just over a third of that, it feels like had it been produced at the dimensions of 1Q84, it would be maybe 150.
I tried one more picture with my hand:
What I really wanted to do with these pictures is relay the weird sense I had holding both of these books. That's mostly unrealistic.
Colorless Tsukuru... starts out more sexually charged than it finishes, seems like it has three entwined time spans spiraling to a conclusion when it's really more like one-and-a-half, and leaves more loose ends than Pynchon on a bad day. It's good and more emotional than Murakami usually attempts, and the Haida's father's anecdote about the "death-coin" is a nice red-herring. You find yourself trying to piece how the Ruke-man will connect it all, only to find there to be two millimeters left of pages, and that's way not enough for a wrap-up effect to be slapped on. Maybe Murakami's getting a little more comfortable letting somethings remain unsettled.
Moving on...
A while back I ordered the Mo Yan book I'd wanted from the first time I learned about him, back before I discovered The Garlic Ballads:
I got a chance to read the first few pages today...
In the first TWO PAGES the main character, Ximen Nao, is in hell being tortured by frying in huge vat of oil like a tempura landlord. He refuses to confess to dastardly deeds. He's pulled out, all crispy and brittle, and begins to defend himself and his honor and has half his face blasted off by a large musket full of grape-sized shot. Fried in oil until brittle and shot in the face by a shotgun.
In the first two pages.
He convinces the judges of hell that he has honor and should be allowed to confront his still-living accusers, and the story follows his repeated reincarnations: first a donkey, then an ox, then a pig, then a dog, then monkey, and finally, as "Big Head Baby Lan", a progression seen on the cover in that makeshift zodiac.
Good stuff. Vacation is coming up fast...
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