Murakami's "After Dark" Not Light Reading

I got a cold. A semi-badish one. There was a lot of coughing up involved. No more details necessary.

A general sense of discontentment. A week without finishing a single book. Many started, none finished. I am holding out to go cheap book shopping because despite the numerous books on the shelf, I don't want to read any of them at the moment and the ink well has gone dry. I haven't written more than a paragraph in some time. Remember, blogging doesn't count. It's like horseshoes and hand grenades. An exception.

I tried to provide moral support to C. so he'd finish Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. I don't think it worked. He got confused by all the names and timelines. I however will go to the grave defending the book's brilliance. To the grave.

In lieu of writing, I spent massive amounts of time downloading music I don't need because my iPod is the music player equivalent of an overeater's pants after Thanksgiving dinner. But of course I needed 6 gigs of Kraftwerk. Who doesn't? Plus I now have the entire Madness discography and a new selection of Razormaid remixes to choose from as I nod my head on the metro.

Also, I did find The Monroes "What do all the people know". Which might be one of the greatest Ska songs of all time.

But now to Murakami's "After Dark".

In terms of the way it's written with everything taking place within the course of one night and in the first person plural "we", it's interesting. He managed to get cats into the story (of course he did). There's the usual call girls, chain restaurant references, and characters who are unhappy but not unhappy enough.

In terms of length it's about 200 pages. Why did I get the feeling that Murakami had to push one out for the publisher, which is the writer's equivalent of jerking off before a big date. I simply didn't connect with the book. I kept reading it because I thought at any moment I would. I didn't learn enough about the characters. Or at least not the ones I was the most interested in. I know it's supposed to be a novella (fancy word Italian in origin for a short book the writer obviously didn't give a shit enough about to write properly? Hmmm maybe.), but why introduce a character at all, focus on them intensely, but not tell me anything about them really?

Towards the end there was something resembling an ending. The sun came up. A few things happened. But characters disappeared. It left me with the same feeling I have when I try to find the Rick James skit from the Dave Chapelle show on YouTube and it's some teenage idiots horrible remix of it and not the actual skit.

I still hold a place in my heart for Murakami because of Norweigan Wood, Wind Up Bird, and Hard Boiled, but I can only forgive so much. I did however take notes of some of the effects he achieved which might be helpful to me in my work. But I except and demand more.

Maybe Murakami's ink well is going dry too?

Overall I wouldn't discourage someone from reading it, but if you like it. Please, tell me why.

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The Inner Child Outs Exuberence

It always amazes me where used bookshops keep their children's books.

While Calvino and Joyce, Miller and Faulkner, or Rabelais and Proust get prime front of store spots; E.B. White, Jean de la Fontaine, and Roald Dahl get stuck at the dead end of narrow alleyways lined with tall bookshelves. A passage so cramped I began to understand how dental floss must feel.

Still, now that I'm embarking upon the great endeavor of writing a children's book, I wanted to scope out some of my lesser-known competition. What I didn't expect was that the journey would remind me of what I loved to read when I was a child.

When I was seven years old my father took me to Paris where my parents unofficially "lived" since they traveled so much for work. My first memories of the Eiffel Tower, The Arc Triomphe, or any other major tourist site are most easily recalled from the much later age of 9, when I was soooo grown up that my only interest in Paris was MTV and that I could buy Madonna cassettes to bring back to Africa with me.

Only one vivid memory has stayed with me all these years. My first trip to Shakespeare and Co. where I bounced on the bed much to George Whitman's delight, unaware that while I feared bedbugs they didn't really exist unless you let them bite you, you were safe - except they did exist and I was in my childish ignorance probably scaring them for once. After a good jump, my father bought me my very first English book, The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White.

Thanks to Madonna and a stint of schooling in the States, I eventually did read the book in its original language; but before I could read in English I stared at the very simply illustrated book cover and imagined what might be happening inside the book I couldn't read. In my mind the swan holding the trumpet under his snowy feathered wing played in smoky jazz joints and incited soldiers to charge forth towards victory - each time I glimpsed at the drawings inside I made up a story and upon seeing real swans refused to believe that they didn't all have a trumpet stashed away under their wings and that only stagefright (a condition I thought plagued all swans) kept them from honouring me with an impromptu concert, even when I gave up both of the ends of my baguette to encourage them.

To see this book again, now that I am older and have read some of those grown up books, gave me such a feeling of joy. It seemed in that childish place in my heart that book was still vibrating with its story. Despite all of my fanciful imaginings the story I didn't imagine brought back all the stories I had. I saw again what I described to my father as the special neck exercises the swans did in order to be able to play long notes; me mimicking the motion as I circled the desk in his study.

It might seem like a strange idea to take your child to a book store in Paris, but don't let the language barrier stop you. If the cramped alleyways seem troublesome, turn it into part of the adventure.

Your stay in Paris might be a week or two, but a good book is a journey that takes a lifetime.

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