村上 春樹

I started reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and thought it was pretty amazing, but when the vivid description of a human being having his flesh peeled off of him came along I exited stage left.  I thought I'd probably come back to it one day.  But I didn't.

And then I listened to Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and enjoyed it quite a bit, but for some reason it didn't fulcrum me into another  村上 春樹 novel (which is what usually happens).  

But just a week or two or three ago my Number One Son said that he was going to read Kafka on the Shore, and I like to read books with other people, and #1 is one of my favoritest peoples, so I decided to start reading it.  One free LFPL download later, I commenced to reading.

And it was good.  I almost immediately lost my Thomas Pynchon compulsion (which had recently been reignited because I'd watched Inherent Vice) and focused on  村上 春樹.  And of course, being me, I started Googling about and looking up things that the narrator of the story referred to, and that often led to other things completely outside of the text.  Which is why I'm standing on this oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.   

That would be scanned.

Which is why I'm now watching The Thick-Walled Room (Kabe atsuki heya) 1953 / 1956, and why I have three other Masaki Kobayashi films from the library in the on deck circle, and why I got very excited when I found that all three of the films of The Human Condition are available on The You Tub.  (And if your idea of fun is watching a 3-part, 10 hour long Japanese movie, then you should probably get a bag of chips and a two litter of water, pop in a catheter, and go Googling.

Pictures at eleven.




P.S.  I read a review of The Human Condition which ends with these two lines:  "If aliens came to Earth and witnessed these events firsthand, they wouldn't hesitate to destroy the planet, figuring they were doing us a favor. But if they saw The Human Condition, they might pause for a minute, assuming that any species capable of such grim beauty might be worth a second chance."  Well played, Grady Hendrix, well played.