I liked: "Fans have created playlists of music he’s referenced and published cookbooks based on the food in his novels. There’s even an account on X dedicated entirely to mentions of spaghetti in his work."
I clicked that spaghetti link: "So I can't talk. The spaghetti will be ruined"/"As a rule I cooked spaghetti, and ate it, alone. I was convinced spaghetti was a dish best enjoyed alone"/"Spaghetti strands are a crafty bunch, and I couldn't let them out of my sight"/"Like a lonely, jilted girl throwing old love letters into the fireplace, I tossed one handful of spaghetti after another into the pot"... It goes on and on.
And it's easy to find those playlists. Here's my screenshot from Spotify:
That's just what I could fit on a screen. There were 2 more screens full of music playlists. The ones that look like audiobooks are actually playlists of the songs mentioned in the book.
Everyone can cook spaghetti and listen to music at home. It's easy to live like Murakami. "Lately, Murakami has been happily enmeshed in his usual routine, waking up early to write, doing chores like washing dishes and ironing, and running."
Posts
24 comments:
And people say The NYT primarily publishes irrelevant BS. Take that, NYT doubters!
A real legend. His writing is pure nostalgia and always leaves me with existential thoughts. Start with The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. And don’t look back.
Of all the pastas, spaghetti is the most difficult to eat. So, why is it so popular? Why is it even still a thing?
It is the Model-T of pastas.
Is he serious about spaghetti, or is he just hinting at Tampopo?
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who break spaghetti in half and those who don't.
YouTube book talk is pretty funny, it turns out that they believe that "literary fiction" is just another genre with "tropes," and I guess that they have identified spaghetti as a trope in Murakami.
Maybe literary fiction is like physics, eventually you run out of things to explore, and you can just classify anything because "it's all been written before" but I like to kid myself that it's like mathematics, where there will never be an end to it. But like I always say "taxonomy is political" and if they want to classify literary fiction by "genre" there is no stopping them.
Here is my definition, if a novel doesn't reward reading it slowly, and it doesn't leave you thinking, and possibly changed in some way, it's not literary fiction. Not every writer of literary fiction hits that bar every time, but they aim for it, or they are just writing upmarket fiction for the book clubs as a marketing strategy.
Murakami's stories are some of my favorites for playing via the New Yorker Fiction podcast. Listening to a mellifluous voice read A Village After Dark or The Shinagawa Monkey is a wonderful way to fall asleep. I think its one reason why I sleep so well 8+ hours a night. The only good edible mentioned in those however are the large cans of Kirin beer.
"Lately, Murakami has been happily enmeshed in his usual routine, waking up early to write, doing chores like washing dishes and ironing, and running."
Missed a trope! "watching baseball"
Somebody here turned me on to Raymond Chandler, (Thanks!) who was trying to write genre fiction, but he was so good that he couldn't help but write literary fiction.
Frankly, since retirement I believe I've turned into Haruki Murakami, without the writing talent, of course.
"“I’ve learned so many things from good music: steady rhythm, beautiful melody and harmony, free improvisation from jazz.”
Cadences. Ask Grok about music theory and cadences. There is really no such thing as "free improvisation" that anybody would want to actually listen to, it's just that the really good jazz musicians have such a complete understanding of the complex rules that to us normies, it seems "free" as they work their way around a labyrinth that really does have walls that we can sense, but don't rationally understand.
I've got 1Q84 sitting on my bedside table. Been there for years, and I keep meaning to start into it again.
It's a good model for someone who someone who isn't getting invitations to parties and other events. Here is this person who gets a lot of invitations and doesn't want them, would prefer to do what people who don't get invitations do.
I really wish I enjoyed reading fiction. So many have gotten so much enjoyment from it for so long. I know I'm missing out on something.
Read "Wind-up Bird" on recommendation of a friend. I didn't get it. Strong workmanlike prose, but a plot that rambled and got occasionally twee. At my age there's the effort to value calculation as I start into any book. Granted it's a high bar to appreciate any novel over 400 pages written later than James Joyce, but that's me.
"Granted it's a high bar to appreciate any novel over 400 pages written later than James Joyce, but that's me"
I am kind of with Herman Hesse in The Glass Bead Game, he said that the "Creative Ages" are over, and all we can do is pick through their legacy of art like archeologists.
Is music important for a writer? HM says, “I’ve learned so many things from good music: steady rhythm, beautiful melody and harmony, free improvisation from jazz.”
Yes. Writing fiction and poetry helped when I wrote songs. All of it has flow and rhythm. Short fiction and songwriting are very similar in their formless beginnings and the skills applied for one complement the other. Similar limitations, too, such as avoiding cliche or jargon. The forms inform each other.
Like Cream's Tale of Great Ulysses.
“I've got 1Q84 sitting on my bedside table.”
1Q84 was one of the best books I have read in a long time. If you haven't read any Murakami, I recommend this one. Then have a look at the shorter pieces later.
I'm only familiar with his works through a movie and and wasn't overly impressed. Was bringing Japanese literature into the "global mainstream" anything to boast about? Is it even true? Hasn't Japanese literature already been there for a century or so?
"I recommend this one"
I'm going on vacation next week from Detroit to Waikiki, so I'll take it along and sunburn my moobs on the beach and try it again. But the damn thing is so thick, I may just reorder it on my Kindle. I like to travel light.
I've read most everything Murakami has written. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore are the best. The latter is perhaps more pleasurable as it's not as heavy as the former.
I'm currently skimming through "The Novelist as a Vocation", which is a collection of some essays he wrote in literary journals about writing. I'd only browse through it if you've read some of his books and are interested how he wrote them.
"Missed a trope! "watching baseball"
In the book I'm now reading, "Novelist as a Vocation", baseball plays a central role in his becoming a novelist. At the time he was working long hours in a jazz bar he owned he would go to baseball games to relax. While watching the US player Dave Hilton Dave Hilton hit a double he got this epiphany:
"The satisfying crack when bat met baseball resounded through Jingu Stadium.Scattered applause rose around me. In that instant, and based an no ground whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel".
He had never written any fiction before that moment.
"Fans have created playlists of music he’s referenced and published cookbooks based on the food in his novels. There’s even an account on X dedicated entirely to mentions of spaghetti in his work."
All I needed to know.
Hmmm…wonder if Stephen King has anything new out….
Hey Chest—if you want something fun and fast-paced to flip through, John Sandford's Prey series is excellent. Daniel Silva's espionage thrillers are another solid choice for beach reading.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.