SansPoint

Well, this year is the year I read Ulysses. Arguably one of the most complex, involved, and difficult novels in the English language, Ulysses is one of those books: one of those big books that people get to put on their shelf because it is large, authoritative, and impressive. I, however, am going to read it.^[1] The thing about Joyce is that his works are sort of intertwined. I’ve read Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but before I dive into Ulysses, I think Portrait deserves a re-read.^[2]

Portrait is one of those books I read for college, specifically a course on Modernist literature which I loved. However, like all books I read in College, with few exceptions, I did not read it so much as skim it. Taking four literature courses at the same time does not allow one the ability to actually read anything with any degree of depth, no matter how much the course demands. You scrape the bare minimum needed to write your essay, and move to the next book. Keeping that in mind, and knowing the thematic challenges of Ulysses, I’m tackling Portait as an appetizer. Reacquaniting myself with Stephen Dedalus should be useful for his return in the background of Leo Bloom’s journey.

It is worth adding that I have actually read part of Ulysses, via an eBook on my iPod touch. Sadly, while the book is great, reading it on such a tiny screen is an exercise in frustration. The damn thing only shows about 20 short lines of text a page. This is no way to read an epic.

Finally, as I read Ulysses, I plan to take notes. I’ve not decided if it will be in the form of marginalia, or in a notebook, but I want to be able to share my journey with this book with you. Wish me luck.

1. In fact, my reading in 2009 is dedicated to big, long books, especially with Pynchon’s Inherent Vice coming out in August. I need to (re-)start and finish Against the Day in time to be able to go and buy that and read it while it’s fresh. I also am being egged via two separate people to read 2666, so that’s going to have to work its way in there too. Also, I need to re-read Infinite Jest, for DFW. ↩
2. Also, my copy of Ulysses isn’t going to arrive from Amazon for another two weeks. I need to read something before then. ↩

The day was cold but bright, and all the more cutting coming after an Indian Summer of a week and a half that, at the time, seemed interminable. Wind rushed through the canyons between buildings, shaking the branches of young trees and catching pieces of newspaper and trash in its draft. A few office workers on lunch break braved the elements with jackets and cups of coffee, trying to savor the outdoors for a while longer. They seemed to be in denial. Those few outdoor lunchers were too engrossed in conversation or listening to the stock report on headphones to hear the sound of a window shattering forty stories up. The tiny fragments of safety glass hit the concrete and sounded like a wave hitting the shore.

If one looked up, they wouldn’t be able to place the spot, exactly. The window, now a hole in the facade, looked in on a conference room with exactly two occupants. Neither of them were anywhere near the window. They were at the conference room door, one with a hand on the doorknob, and the other with their hands on the other’s arm. At this height, the wind howled, swirled around the room and threatened to take any loose objects with it. A poster, loosely attached to the wall, struggled for freedom. The two people in the conference room were standing, silent, mouths open. The one with her hand on the doorknob was naked from the waist down, and her blouse was unbuttoned. Her partner, clinging to her arm, was wearing boxer shorts, an Oxford shirt and a skewed necktie.

“D—Do you think anyone heard that?” said the man. He struggled to speak, and had the woman been only a few more inches away, the wind would have rendered the question inaudible. The woman indicated that she did not know, and let go of the doorknob to button her blouse. She trembled, and a corner of the poster broke free of its mooring.

“This was your idea,” she said, and tried to grasp her underwear with her toes.

“You agreed.”

Kafka on the Shore is, top to bottom, 100% pure, distilled Murakami. It hits all the right notes, all the usual requirements, and checks off everything on the standard Murakami checklist.I’ve harped on before about Murakami’s writing^[1] Reading Kafka, however, felt a great deal like rediscovering Murakami once again. Even on a first reading, something about the novel feels like slipping on an old, well-worn t-shirt or sweater. Even in the midst of the surreality and the confusion there is comfort. Reading Murakami is a bit like exploring the dark side of the moon, while being lead by the person you trust the most. “Just follow me,” they might say, and you do. There’s no reason not to, and as long as you do, you will be perfectly safe, no matter how harrowing it may get.

Approaching Kafka after having read After Dark provides an interesting perspective into some of the perceptual twists that Murakami uses in Kafka. There are several moments in the narrative when point-of-view is shifted to great effect. Most of these come through the “Boy named Crow”, but one major one occurs without warning and made nearly drop the book from shock. The brief point-of-view experiments foreshadow Murakami’s full-bore shift in After Dark, as if Murakami used Kafka as a staging area. Certainly, the brief foray into second-person narration for a brief moment proved to be, at least, good practice for the perspective of After Dark. For all its novelty, however, Kafka bears more in common with an earlier work of fiction, his fourth novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - even beyond the symbol of the shadow.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland, much like Kafka blends two, seemingly unrelated narratives, each taking up alternate chapters. The connection between the two narratives is initially hard to determine in both novels, and as each parallel story follows its path, Murakami skillfully weaves them together in a way that seems purely natural and seamless.^[2] Hard-Boiled Wonderland is less subtle in its introduction of the surreal—right in the first chapter we are given the sensation of more of a science-fiction, Blade Runneresque style work, which stands in a pretty stark contrast to the fantasy-novel style narrative in the second narrative. There is a methodology, however, to the earlier novel’s approach that shows Murakami still finding his feet in the surreal. Kafka’s melding of stories is clearly the work of a much more experienced author.

Another stylistic similarity comes in point-of-view in the parallel narratives. Hard-Boiled Wonderland established its varience through the first narrative being in past tense, and the second narrative in present tense.^[3] Kafka alternates between first-person limited point-of-view and third-person omniscient to tell the stories of Kafka Tamura and Mr. Satoru Nakata. It is difficult to go into the details of both narratives in either novel without plot spoilers. Suffice it to say, that the one major difference between Kafka’s use of parallel narrative and Hard-Boiled Wonderland is that each narrative in Kafka deals with two totally separate characters, and the way the two stories link will make you very confused and intregued indeed.

What the parallel narratives do in Kafka and in Hard-Boiled Wonderland is give the reader a puzzle. The challenge, and the pleasure comes from not simply riding the story out, but in predicting where it will go. There is a much slower and much clearer reveal of the solution in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, but Kafka will have you scratching your head for days to come. There is little fiction, I suspect, quite like it. As always, any Murakami comes highly recommended. His fiction is one of the most aggressively unique and powerful as anyone’s today. Kafka is only one example of many of an author ready to challenge the reader, and himself.

1. Among the Murakami-related posts are this one about Murakami’s first novel, compared to his newer works, a bit of praise for the short story “TV People”, and a review of the novel After Dark. ↩
2. This, particularly in Kafka is dependent on the readers ability/willingness to go with Murakami’s stylistic and thematic quirks. It is a testament to the carefully metered way in which the surreal is mixed with the normal in Murakami’s fiction that you can simply accept the appearance of Johnnie Walker (the character from the whisky bottle), and his role in the story. That’s not the weirdest bit, either, and neither is the appearance of Colonel Sanders. ↩
3. The original Japanese version of the novel provided what may be a better trick, but one that is unreproducable in English. The first narrative used the first-person singular subjective pronoun watashi while the second used the more personal pronoun boku. Since there’s only one first-person singular subjective pronoun in English, an attempt to reproduce this in a more authentic fashion would go over like a lead balloon filed with uranium. ↩

Lately, I’ve been thinking about epic novels—the long, sprawling masterworks of writers with massive scope. The last novel I read that could, conceivably, fall under this umbrella was Infinite Jest, or possibly House of Leaves.^[1] This coming year, I would like to dedicate my reading to these sorts of works. First on the list, of course, is Ulysses, but I would need more. I’m a bit wary of reading some of the “classic”, older epic novels like Moby Dick or War and Peace, unless someone can provide a really compelling case for each.

This post is to kick-off a new category wherein I ask for recommendations from you, the reader, for reading. What long, sprawling, epic novels should I read this coming year? Modern and post-modern era preferred, but go nuts with your choices.

1. I would love to count Against the Day here, but I still have not finished it. I will be picking it up again, once I have the strength to. Note to self: next time you want to read a 1000+ page novel, wait for the paperback. ↩

I am not proud of this, but I am sitting out on NaNoWriMo this year. I sat out last year, too, but with the alleged commitment to writing I made for this year^[1], it stings a bit more that I feel I need to sit this one out. My reasons are twofold:

1. I am working two jobs, and so my free time to write is limited at best. I could, theoretically, write during breaks at my day job, and e-mail the results, but the opportunities would be sporadic at best.

2. November is promising to be a busy month even outside of work: I’m moving, and that entails a whole mess of things, including setting up internet access, settling in, unpacking, and putting my life in order. That is the majority of my thoughts for the time being.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t been writing. There’s an interesting short story shaping up that I need to get back to, and I am still bouncing around the several novel ideas in my head. The trick, as always, is finding the time.

NaNoWriMo has been historically problematic for me. While it is usually easy to keep my motiviation up for a while, around the 10,000 word mark, life creeps in and/or the creative well runs a dry and I don’t have the ability or time to prime the pump any further. I am not proud. Next year, however, I think I will be ready to try my hand again… because I don’t know when I am truely beaten—the sign of a great writer!

1. A commitment that has been rather poorly attented to, and deserves a renewal in 2009. ↩