2 posts tagged “irony”
Synopsis: "Like many of Murakami Haruki's English reading fans, I read A Wild
Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance without knowledge that the former
book was the third in a trilogy and that the latter book was an
addition that came a few years later. However, if the reader pays
closer attention to A Wild Sheep Chase one can really see that the
characters within the book seem to be established and that they already
have their personal histories which are not coming completely new from
the pages of A Wild Sheep Chase. Almost a year after picking up A Wild
Sheep Chase for the first time, I read Jay Rubin's highly informative
book Haruki Murakami & the Music of Words and learned about
Murakami's first two novels: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 both
of which had been translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum.
Hear the Wind Sing begins with the narrator, aged 29, talking about writing and how difficult it was for him to finally put down words on paper. It took him eight years in fact to put down his thoughts on the summer of 1970 and the people he was involved with during that year. Why 1970? 1970 was the year after the student activist group the Zenkyoto was forced out of the building they had commandeered and soon afterwards those who had been its greatest supporters were sucked back into the system to become automatons of mainstream society. For Murakami, the destruction of the student movement left a deep wound in his being and it pained him to see his fellows go to a more conservative, rightist path.
However, within the being of the narrator it might be hard to find a politically charged individual. This is instead found within the being of the narrator's best friend the Rat. Yet, the Rat's sense of aggravation towards modern society is quite impotent, so he instead fills his emptiness with beer and liquor. The Narrator, a more introspective fellow, spends his time consumed in the books of dead writers, the memories of his dead girlfriend, and pursuing the girl with four fingers on her left hand.
At the time he wrote this thin tome, Murakami owned a jazz bar called the Peter Cat and had little time for actual writing so his sentences within this volume tended to be quite pithy. Also, the short, pithy styles of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan influenced his writing. The book itself is more a collection of vignettes than one coherent novel and the order of the book was originally quite different that the final version.
While it does not hold a candle to some of his later works, Murakami's first novel is quite important in his body of work and it shows his early interest in such subjects as language, memory, China, and the student movement. Definitely a book worth seeking for the Murakami fan, hopefully, one day, along with Pinball, 1973, it will be given a wider release to Murakami's English reading fans." (by Michael W.)
Rating: 5 of 5 stars.
Hear the Wind Sing begins with the narrator, aged 29, talking about writing and how difficult it was for him to finally put down words on paper. It took him eight years in fact to put down his thoughts on the summer of 1970 and the people he was involved with during that year. Why 1970? 1970 was the year after the student activist group the Zenkyoto was forced out of the building they had commandeered and soon afterwards those who had been its greatest supporters were sucked back into the system to become automatons of mainstream society. For Murakami, the destruction of the student movement left a deep wound in his being and it pained him to see his fellows go to a more conservative, rightist path.
However, within the being of the narrator it might be hard to find a politically charged individual. This is instead found within the being of the narrator's best friend the Rat. Yet, the Rat's sense of aggravation towards modern society is quite impotent, so he instead fills his emptiness with beer and liquor. The Narrator, a more introspective fellow, spends his time consumed in the books of dead writers, the memories of his dead girlfriend, and pursuing the girl with four fingers on her left hand.
At the time he wrote this thin tome, Murakami owned a jazz bar called the Peter Cat and had little time for actual writing so his sentences within this volume tended to be quite pithy. Also, the short, pithy styles of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan influenced his writing. The book itself is more a collection of vignettes than one coherent novel and the order of the book was originally quite different that the final version.
While it does not hold a candle to some of his later works, Murakami's first novel is quite important in his body of work and it shows his early interest in such subjects as language, memory, China, and the student movement. Definitely a book worth seeking for the Murakami fan, hopefully, one day, along with Pinball, 1973, it will be given a wider release to Murakami's English reading fans." (by Michael W.)
Rating: 5 of 5 stars.
Synopsis: The greatness of George and Weedon Grossmith's masterpiece of comic
irony, The Diary of a Nobody, rests to a large extent on perceptions of
class. It purports to be the diary of Charles Pooter, a
lower-middle-class individual of the mid-nineteenth century who lives
at "The Laurels," Brickfield Terrace, Holloway. This address alone,
simultaneously poignant and stifling, reverberates with blandly
devastating irony--a note sustained at perfect pitch throughout the
book. Pooter is house-proud, thrifty, scrupulous in duty, alive to
social niceties and given to the occasional punning witticism, but the
story he tells is not quite the story he believes he's telling.
Frederick Davidson's impeccable reading is truly inspired, in perfect
unity with the Pooteresque view of the world. (from AudioFile; Portland, Maine)
Impressions: This was quite an interesting little book. I downloaded the audiobook from Librivox without having any idea of what it was about. I was somewhat disappointed when it began because it seemed like a mundane account of one man's small daily matters. A lot of focus was centered upon Mr. Pooter's daily expenses and comings and goings of Mr. Cummings and Gowens, which was one of the story's many little puns. Though it was a little bit dry (which I will be extremely biased in saying) like all classical English literature, I found lots of the antics and small jokes
that Pooter wrote quite funny. Mentions of class made the story somewhat dull but that was to be expected I guess. The Diary wasn't like anything by Jane Austen which, thank goodness, was a surprise. The crazy behavior of his son Lupin and his wife make the story a very colorful read and I finished this quick little book pretty pleased. It was something out of the ordinary, I think, and that's why it appealed to me. I don't really plan to read another diary again soon, whether fictional or real, but I started listening to Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities in addition to reading the other many books I am currently devoting myself to.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.
Impressions: This was quite an interesting little book. I downloaded the audiobook from Librivox without having any idea of what it was about. I was somewhat disappointed when it began because it seemed like a mundane account of one man's small daily matters. A lot of focus was centered upon Mr. Pooter's daily expenses and comings and goings of Mr. Cummings and Gowens, which was one of the story's many little puns. Though it was a little bit dry (which I will be extremely biased in saying) like all classical English literature, I found lots of the antics and small jokes
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.
