Fwd: NP: another artist embeds The Bomb in cosmic 'symbolic form'

[Mark Kohut]

I could not help thinking, during a busy, busy day, what incredibly
wonderful work the word "supposedly" does below in what I posted yesterday
.

This novel has Murakami's cats (as kittens) in it; this book's ironies make
one ask, how subtle must irony be before it can't be detected?--I think of
gravitational waves or quantum particles as analogy. (The answer is
"Subtilize yourself!" as Herman declares in MobyDick then you can detect
them). There can be few writers in which the 'real story' is in the unsaid
as much as it is in Ishiguro; in this one it is actually a leitmotif
wherein the sentence "let's not talk about it" pervades.

There is a marvelous paragraph in which a young man, who performs very well
in a company negotiation when he is up for a promotion comes home and
Ishiguro embodies this insight from a good female business writer:
"The operative phrase is “modicum of power.” Bad behavior starts when some
men first achieve little power. Promotions followed by arrogance.
twitter.com/jotted/status/… <https://t.co/rOuLEVu8Qb>"

In the novel, he 'demands' tea from his wife. Pynchon's power & dominance
themes in kitten-like form. Wonderful.




>From Ishiguro's A Pale View of the Hills.

...."and the effect was a kind of austerity; the flat grass--a wide summer
sky and the
memorial itself--a massive white statue in memory of those killed by the
atomic bomb--
presiding over its domain."

"The statue resembled some muscular Greek good, seated with both arms
outstretched.
With his right hand, he pointed to the sky from where the bomb had fallen;
with the other
arm---stretched out to his left--the figure was supposedly holding back the
forces of evil. His
eyes were closed in prayer."

...."seen from a distance, the figure looked almost comical, resembling a
policeman conducting traffic.
It remained for me nothing more than a statue"
                                                           ----words by
another of Ishiguro's unreliable narrators

https://images.muralsyourway.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/base/1200x/
040ec09b1e35df139433887a97daa66f/3/6/369005c1f2ef8ceb16a95d376843adf7.jpeg
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