First of all, thanks for the recommendations a few weeks back. I've developed an obsession. Anyway, I just wanted to give a heads up -- Haruki Murakami gives an interview in the latest issue of the Paris Review, which means he's pretty much accepted as literary canon now. It's a spiffy interview, too, and it's interesting to hear how he writes and develops ideas. And he dislikes anime.
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Hey Haruki Murakami fans. . .
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what did you end up reading first?
for some reason that gladdens me, did he expound on that further in the interview?
for some reason that gladdens me, did he expound on that further in the interview?
He appears to not be enthralled with Japanese art outside of the folklore told to children. He's always studied english and european literature, even though his father was a teacher of japanese art and lit. He mentions 'wanting to escape Japanese culture' but at the same time feeling alienated during his time teaching at Princeton.
He has no friends that are authors and he doesn't like meething other authors. The only person that reads the drafts of his novels is his wife. He doesn't plot out stories before he writes -- he just sits and writes what comes to his head. When he writes a mystery, he doesn't know who 'did it' until he actually writes the part himeself. He is a big fan of rewriting and revising. His first two books will never ever ever be available in english. He will never write another book in the style of Norwegian Wood. His new book, Kafka on the Shore has already sold 300k sets in Japan and will be available in English later this year. He dislikes videogames. He loves jazz music (used to own a jazz club). He likes Radiohead and Radiohead likes him.
It's a 50 page interview. Very thorough. He talks about the comon themes in his book and about the new book.
EDIT: I read HBW first, then Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After the Quake. I've just started redoing HBW, doing a thorough analysis. I've found striking similarities between the work of Charles Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the twin plots of the book. He pretty much blatantly spells out what the book is about. . .as a matter of fact, he clubs you over the head with it. It's about the Object-Sign-Interpretant relationship in semiotics, and on a larger scale it's sort of about a sort of metaphysical/kinda idealistic (in the sense that ideas are not matter; not in the comon sense of idealistic) relationship between signifiers and signs on a perceivable level. If anyone is interested in my full interpretation at a later date, I could get into it. I've hit a sort of thematic snag on the chapters Whiskey, Torture, Turgenev and The Coming of Winter. At this point he throws more ideas into the mix. I think he may just be snowblinding me with wordplay concerning Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic signs. They're all clearly represented in these two chapters, but there appears to be no larger message, and I doubt he'd put them there just for fun. I also think the translation from japanese creates a sort of loss of idiom. That will be covered as well.
He has no friends that are authors and he doesn't like meething other authors. The only person that reads the drafts of his novels is his wife. He doesn't plot out stories before he writes -- he just sits and writes what comes to his head. When he writes a mystery, he doesn't know who 'did it' until he actually writes the part himeself. He is a big fan of rewriting and revising. His first two books will never ever ever be available in english. He will never write another book in the style of Norwegian Wood. His new book, Kafka on the Shore has already sold 300k sets in Japan and will be available in English later this year. He dislikes videogames. He loves jazz music (used to own a jazz club). He likes Radiohead and Radiohead likes him.
It's a 50 page interview. Very thorough. He talks about the comon themes in his book and about the new book.
EDIT: I read HBW first, then Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After the Quake. I've just started redoing HBW, doing a thorough analysis. I've found striking similarities between the work of Charles Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the twin plots of the book. He pretty much blatantly spells out what the book is about. . .as a matter of fact, he clubs you over the head with it. It's about the Object-Sign-Interpretant relationship in semiotics, and on a larger scale it's sort of about a sort of metaphysical/kinda idealistic (in the sense that ideas are not matter; not in the comon sense of idealistic) relationship between signifiers and signs on a perceivable level. If anyone is interested in my full interpretation at a later date, I could get into it. I've hit a sort of thematic snag on the chapters Whiskey, Torture, Turgenev and The Coming of Winter. At this point he throws more ideas into the mix. I think he may just be snowblinding me with wordplay concerning Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic signs. They're all clearly represented in these two chapters, but there appears to be no larger message, and I doubt he'd put them there just for fun. I also think the translation from japanese creates a sort of loss of idiom. That will be covered as well.
Check a B&N or Borders for the Paris Review. They usually have copies. Even if you don't read anything else in it, 12 bucks is a good price for a near 50 page interview.
I didn't take a comparative lit course. I've always been fairly interested in literary criticism, and I was concentrating on writing in college, but I never had the opportunity to take one. I just know my socio-philosophy, and I like to read books slowly, tearing them apart.
I didn't take a comparative lit course. I've always been fairly interested in literary criticism, and I was concentrating on writing in college, but I never had the opportunity to take one. I just know my socio-philosophy, and I like to read books slowly, tearing them apart.
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