Too much trouble to cling to the rest

Some of the work bored me to tears. Still, I didn’t mind the job, and the company was a relaxed place. Because I had seniority, I was able to pick and choose my assignments, and say pretty much whatever I wanted to do. My boss was OK, and I got along with my co-workers. And the salary wasn’t half bad. So if nothing had happened, I probably would have stayed with the company for the foreseeable future. And my life, like the Moldau River would have continued to flow, ever so swiftly, into the sea.

(…)

At work the next day I handed in my letter of resignation. My boss had heard rumors and decide that it would be best to put me on extended leave for the time being. My colleagues were startled to hear that I wanted to quit, but no one tried very hard to talk me out of it. Quitting a job is not so difficult after all, I discovered. Once you make up your mind to get rid of something, there’s very little you can’t discard. No- not very little. Once you put your mind to it, there’s nothing you can’t get rid of. And once you start tossing things out, you find yourself wanting to get rid of everything. It’s as if you’d gambled away almost all your money and decided, what the hell, I’ll bet what’s left. Too much trouble to cling to the rest.

Man-eating cats

Haruki Murakami

Notes On Haruki Murakami Style, 08052011

Haruki Murakami always stops the narration to describe new characters as they appear first time. These descriptions are apparently physical and make the Murakami’s style very visual, filmic. I think that thanks to these physical descriptions (which implied the choice of suitable adjectives) and thanks to the description of the way they dress, the author gets a excellent way to describing their personality. Prejudices are not good but everybody have them. What I have found is that prejudices can be a effective literary tool for sketching characters.

Murakami_What I Talk About When I Talk About Writing

Hi everybody,

The following excerpt is from the book "What I talk about when I talk about running" by Haruki Murakami. I recommend you this amazing book because Mr Murakami doesn't only talk about running but about the way he writes too.

As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don't necessarily write down what I'm thinking; it's just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination. Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true. All I do is present a few hypotheses or paraphrase the issue. Or find an analogy between the structure of the problem and something else.

This has been the fourth book written by Mr Murakami I have read. All of them are really good though  for different reasons.

The first one was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. A magic novel about love and mistery.

The second one was Norwegian Wood. The same rithm, the same music behind the words,... excellent.

Then I read a really hard essay about the terrible terrorist attack in Tokyo (The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche) . (I talked about it in a post of this blog on XXX),

And this autobiographical text has been the last one (until now).

Underground by Haruki Murakami

In the morning of Monday 20th of March of 1995 a group of members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo put several packs of sarin, a poison gas, in the Tokyo’s subway system.

As a result twelve people died and hundred were wounded.

The Japanese well-known writer Haruki Murakami, author of novels such as The Wind Up Bird Chronicle or Norwegian Wood, was shocked by this news and decided to write about it.

This book is the result of his work. In my opinion the book is divided in three parts. The first one is shaped by the testimony of some of the victims. The second one is a transition between the first one and the third one. In it Mr Murakami explain his

reasons to write this book and try to justify why he has included the last part. As the writer says since the subtitle of his book “The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche” he is not only interested in knowing more about the terrorist attack but he want to make the following question: Does all Japanese society reflected in what happened this day?

Moreover he, as a novelist, is interested in the fact that people need to built “narratives” to explain their lifes. This idea has interesting consequences as the following paragraph shows:

“Haven’t you offered up some part of your Self to someone (or something), and taken on a “narrative” in return? Haven’t we entrusted some part of our personality to some greater System or Order? And if so, has not that System at some stage demanded of us some kind of “insanity”? Is the narrative you now possess really and truly you own? Are you dreams really your own dreams? Might not they be someone else’s visions that could sooner or later return into nightmares?”

The last part of the book is shaped by the testimony of some members of the group Aum Shinrikyo. It is not about to understand their reasons. It is only for knowing how ordinary people can join an organization like this.

Although I recommend you this book, I have to warn you that this is not another Murakami’s novel but an essay really hard because is about a terrible terrorist attack.

I wait for your comments.

Thanks in advance