Murakami & Pynchon

[Bekah]

Oh you made me smile,  Elaine!   Thank you for a lovely and evocative metaphor - .  :-)     

Bekah
Now I can go to get groceries and maybe stick to diet food. 


On Nov 15, 2011, at 9:19 AM, Elaine M.M. Bell wrote:

> Nicely stated, Bekah.  I think it is exactly the clashy blend of Eastern/Western thinking that makes Murakami so absorbing.  It's as if his work is Mozart played on a samisen.
> 
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Two round little souls in the cosmos.
> 
> Perhaps none of us sees exactly the same thing anyway.   What do you see when you say red?   I know color wave-lengths are arbitrarily standard,  but what about the the reception/perception of red?   Can some of us not see what others see?  (I know this is not terribly new stuff in itself,  but I think Murakami's development is unusual if not unique.)
> 
> A separate world(s) is fairly standard in many of Murakami's works - short stories especially.  In 1Q84 he has meshed two worlds, two realities,  better than in any of his prior novels.  He did it without the use of the dizzying hallucinogenics of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" or the interior development of Kafka on the Shore or the geographical relocations of Norwegian Wood and Wild Sheep Chase.
> 
> Another common theme , although sometimes inextricably related,  is that of alienation.  Characters distance themselves, or are distanced,  from the here-and-now right smack into another reality.
> 
> Odd -  in Japan Murakami is viewed as a very Western writer and they love him. In the US he's viewed as a very Japanese writer and we love him.  Perhaps there really are two realities working themselves out in his works.  Like hearing two different radio stations going at the same time - one in Japanese and one in English.
> Two moons.
> 
> Bekah
> needs caffeine
> 
> 
> On Nov 15, 2011, at 2:50 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> 
> > The alternative two-mooned world?...as if time was split via Iceland Spar, so to speak?............
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> > To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> > Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Monday, November 14, 2011 9:15 PM
> > Subject: Re: Murakami & Pynchon
> >
> > Well there are the old goodies vs baddies  -  The Vibes vs the Traverses,  Doc vs the Golden Fang folks,  Mason & Dixon vs the Jesuits,  Zoyd Wheeler (etc.)  vs Brock Vond (etc).  More karmic adjustment (per se)  in Vineland,  what with Takeshi Fumimoto's  (Japanese) karma adjustment business.
> >
> > But where Pynchon's characters look up to the skies and go high up there in rockets and balloons and airplanes and otherwise -  Murakami's characters look at the sky and dig in where they are -  to wells, to apartments,  to little houses,  etc.
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
> >
> > On Nov 14, 2011, at 5:02 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >
> >> When I replied to a twitterer--Doug Amato--- reading 1Q84 linking "karmic adjustment"
> >> to a quote implying a kind of karmic balance in 1Q84---he responded by saying he had
> >> spoken to a reader who found lots in 1Q84 influenced he thought by 'later Pynchon".
> >>
> >> All reading 1Q84: write your essay post now.......................
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Elaine M.M. Bell, Writer
> 860.833.2625
> Have Laptop/Will Travel
> (but wicked good to be back in Massachusetts)