Re-discoveries: Murakami

I love Haruki Murakami. My first encounter with him was probably in a New Yorker short story, but I first discovered him the summer after graduating from college, reading Norwegian Wood. It was haunting and sad and lovely. Most of his short stories are as well. And then there is the utterly bizarre The Wind-up Bird Chronicles. This novel is fantastical and nonsensical - like a dream that seems normal while you're in it, and then you wake up and think "what?!" Like Tom Robbins. (Another re-discovery that should be on my list: Jitterbug Perfume.)

I have heard (but have no immediate source) that Murakami is somewhat derided in Japan for his embrace of Western pop culture and literary style. Having no deep knowledge of the Japanese version of either of these, I can't tell. But I do know that his commentary of the isolation and search for human connections in modern life rings true to me.

Secrets

Thanks to greenLAgirl, I am able to brighten up this blog with the occasional meme. So here goes...

Five things you didn't know about me (with a slightly literary spin):

1. I cheated on a spelling test in second grade so that I could get a perfect score. (I believe the word in question was "swiming" (sic).)

2. I had (have?) a huge crush on Ramses Emerson. (Thank you Elizabeth Peters for my absolute favorite guilty pleasure reading.)

3. Bob Saget cut in front of me in line at the buffet table during a taping of "America's Funniest Home Videos." Oh, and I was on the show too.

4. When I was 9 or 10, I penned a "tome" called "The Book about Everything." I think it was about 6 pages long.

5. I served in the honor guard at a police funeral.

Who should I tag? This isn't really my thing, but Lyen & Becky, you're up. Michael too.

Countdown to 9/11

I love the LA Public Library's "Hot off the Press" program. They make a selection of popular new books available at the branches for a 7-day loan period. So you have to read fast, but you don't have to wait forever on the hold list.

This is how I got my hands of Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children. It's on pretty much every best books of 2006 list, but has apparently also become fashionable to hate on as of late. (I'd provide links, but I'm on this 7 day deadline. Maybe later.) But I'm not a hater by nature, and even if I were inclined to be, I loved this book.

Messud's characters are awesome - they move in rarefied circles and are comfortable in the kind of intellectual banter that most of us don't get on a daily basis. So in some ways it's hard for me - even as a graduate of another elite university - to identify with them. On the other hand, they are charmingly flawed and selfish. And oddly enough, I love the ways that they are frustrated by the petty imperfections of those they love the most. Because after all, who doesn't carp about their friends?

Anyway, the book starts in March of 2001, and jumps through the odd numbered months through to September, to that fateful day, and then beyond to November. As the reader, you know all along what's coming, and how it will - must - affect their lives and plans. And at the same time, I at least found myself reliving my own pre-9/11 live, just out of college, and wondering if it would have been different had I known what lay ahead.

If you've read the book, let me know what you thought of the characters. I was most drawn to Danielle, and wasn't sure if that was the author's intention, or a reflection on myself. And insights into Ludo are particularly welcome.

Snarky

This week's surprisingly quick read was Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh. First published in 1930, it details the mostly vapid lives of London's "Bright Young Things." Waugh has a sharp wit and is often very funny, but I was somewhat unsatisfied. He just seems so mean-spirited; I started feeling uncomfortable that no one had any particularly redeeming characteristics. I guess I prefer a slightly more tender bite.

But I'm willing to give Waugh another try - he was young when he wrote Vile Bodies, so I'll have to see if he softened a bit with age. Besides, how can you not love someone who writes this about the Prime Minister:

" '...You treat me like a child,' he said. It was all like one of those Cabinet meetings, when they all talked about something he didn't understand and paid no attention to him."

Who knew Bush was prime minister in the 20s?

Re-discoveries, mad romantic

The English Patient has pulled off the accomplishment of being among my all-time favorites in both novel and movie form. (The film's soundtrack, for one, is stunning.) Michael Ondaatje is amazing - when I read the novel at age 17, I had never come across anything quite like it.

While the film has two main narratives (present and past), each goes in roughly chronological order. The novel goes into the past of more characters, and completely mixes up the chronology in favor of an unveiling, piece by piece, of the characters and their tales. And the descriptions - they are lyrical and haunting. Ondaatje has also published collections of poetry, and it shows in his prose.

God, I love this book. It's been so long since I've read it, I can't give specific details. But reading it is like stepping into a whole other world, and putting yourself into Ondaatje's very sure hands.

Sweet Suite

After finishing Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, I decided I needed a few days to mull over what I wanted to write here. But then I waited too long, and I have to return the book right after work. So here is my capsule review:

This novel is gorgeous - the descriptions are so lush, and the people are real even as they are archetypes. (I also loved the scene in which the cat goes exploring, arriving back at his owner's bed seconds before an air raid.) The juxtaposition of love and life with invasion and occupation is fascinating and very moving - the French were not innocent in their loss to the Germans, but nor should they be held fully accountable for collaboration. There were so many shades of grey.

But what makes the book truly amazing is the story of its genesis. Nemirovsky was a well-known writer in France before the war, a Ukrainian Jewish refugee from the Soviet Revolution. She wrote the novel essentially contemporaneously with events, and while struggling to survive. A losing battle, it turned out; she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in summer 1942. Her husband followed her a few months later, but her two daughters lived, hidden, with her notebooks.

In the 1990s, they revisited the notebooks, which were previously too great a source of pain, and discovered that in addition to notes and a journal, there was a full-fledged novel taking shape. Suite Francaise is only the first two sections of what was to be a full "suite" of France during the war and occupation, a difficult task for Nemirovsky, as she did not know France's fate. After the body of the novel, the book includes Nemirovsky's journal and notes, laying out a rough sketch of her plans for the future parts. One guiding light was Tolstoy and War and Peace, which should give you a sense of why I liked this book so much.

Anyway, it is stunning. Purely stunning. I will be looking for more of her work in translation (or possibly even in the original French).