The past few weeks have been eventful. Finals, over. I moved into a house, started my summer job, quit it, and quite recently went to a party from which I'm still trying to recover. Three cups of yerba mate while sitting in bed reading didn't do it. Coffee next. I may be waking up all day.
We don't have internet at the house. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it enforce a different lifestyle than the one to which I've grown accustomed. I don't waste as much time looking at dumb things, going to digg, playing, God forbid, flash games--but I'm used to being plugged in. My social life is also inhibited, but the compensatory effect of having one's own place more than makes up for it. If anything, it might improve the blog; I'm thinking of drafting things at home, correcting them, then bringing them to the library to post [edit: yeah right]. That would be easier than just sitting here, trying to think of sentences like I'm doing right now.
Two novels: Murakami's After Dark and The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. I recommend both. In After Dark, Murakami works out of his usual POV. The protagonist (if there is one) isn't another variant on Toru Okada (which I guess was true for Kafka by the Shore as well, so maybe this marks a new trend). I didn't mind the similarities between characters in his earlier novels, but I think he handles the new territory well. I also found After Dark to be a lot more thematically coherent than his other books, though I'm a different reader than I was last year. Maybe being an English major has made me even better at seeing connections where there are none. Oh well: After Dark seems to be an extended meditation on the borders of the self, and on one's ever-renegotiated position within the various networks of power and influence that shape society. Darkness is the condition in which borders become permeable, in which we can grow closer to others or drift away, suffused with nothingness.
This idea of identity, its mutability and dependence on/ existence within others (reminiscent of Hofstadter's view in Le ton beau de Marot and, I hear, I am a Strange Loop) is also present in The Echo Maker, in which neurological disorders are portrayed as explicit manifestations of processes and structures that are already present in normal consciousness. I wonder if Powers's book might be a little longer than it needs to be, and I still haven't fully grasped the significance of his ecological theme (or maybe I have, and forgotten), but I still think it's worth the time. And the cover art is great.
I need to eat lunch now. I'll come back to this later and fix typos. If anyone wants to hang out while I'm still unemployed, please let me know. On the other hand, if you know anywhere that's hiring, feel free to pass that along as well.
[edited 5/29/08; title added, some adverbs eliminated, other changes]
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4 comments:
after dark is definitely on my list of favorites. i loved, loved that book.
i wish you much luck in finding a job that's better for you, as well as in adjusting to your new internet-less lifestyle. kudos for that... not being plugged in would be annoying for most of us. :)
It can be annoying. And, surprisingly, depressing. I suspect that introverts become dependent on the internet in ways that aren't entirely clear until it's taken away. Still, I welcome the chance to rework my routine... keep the synapses reconfiguring.
I'm glad to hear you liked After Dark too. Any particular reasons why? I guess some of the Murakami fans on Amazon don't find it as appealing as his earlier work. I disagree... his only novels that didn't stick with me were South of the Border, West of the Sun and Dance Dance Dance. And I'm willing to give both a second chance.
I understand what you mean about the depressing part. I myself have tendencies of introversion that can sometimes even border on hermit-ism, and I find that being plugged into the worldwide web helps to remedy that feeling of disconnection. The thing is, I can't figure out if it's a good thing or a bad thing... does the internet/technology aid or hinder our social needs? I wonder. (Though I do like to think that it aids... otherwise I'd need to change my hermit habits, and no hermit wants to do that.)
After Dark... the reasons I loved it so much are difficult to describe. To begin with, I think the character development is really fantastic for such a short novel, though I think Murakami also asks us for a certain level of introspection at the same time... and it's so nicely balanced. As a result, I really ended up loving all the characters. I've also always been very fond of the utilization of metaphysical/abstract aspects as a means of speculation... it's just always been something that really strikes my fancy (which is why I'm enjoying The Satanic Verses so much right now). However, most of all, I think I just really love the paradox of nighttime as a sort of dark, dangerous time when the creepies and the crawlies come out while at the same time being a sort of blanket that safely hides the blurring of certain boundaries and the connections of certain beings. It's pretty cool.
What are our social needs? We are a species that has learned to alter itself. We should decided what we want to become (as individuals and/ or as a collective), and then we will be in a position to say what our needs are. I think the internet is too complex to label ‘good’ or ‘bad’ without reference to a specific idea of what we should be like.
I definitely agree with everything you’ve said about After Dark. I also like that you used the word “blanket,” considering the book’s final image. I wonder if the world of “darkness” in Murakami’s novel is, in some sense, truer than the daytime world. By revealing things that aren’t seen “in the light,” does it put us into touch with more fundamental aspects of our existence than we can access during the day? Or do the two exist in a balance? I would go on, but I don’t feel like my thoughts about this are fully formed.
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