"In aiming for a vision of fitness that avoids overemphasis on masculinity, I gravitated away from influencers and biohackers toward strong artists..."

"... who had prioritized physical strength in their daily routines.... There is the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who in her book 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength' could not talk about fitness without also talking about her private history of romantic relationships and the role exercise played in managing stress and quashing depression.... The novelist Laura van den Berg turned to boxing to combat destructive anxiety patterns.... And I spoke with the poet Hanif Abdurraqib about how running... was about stress relief and managing clinical depression... In a recent interview with Haruki Murakami, the singer Harry Styles credited Mr. Murakami’s book on running with freeing him 'from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession and I had to be this tortured soul.'... These artists weren’t going on about perfect blood panels or maximum efficiency or tracking immense protein intake. They cared about feeling alive in their bodies, sleeping well and having the stamina to do meaningful work.... Rather than follow the voice of one supposed strongman, rattling off advice, I learned to favor a chorus...."

Writes Sebastian Langdell, a professor of medieval literature, in "Men Need Better Fitness Role Models" (NYT).

Langdell is rejecting the "fitness bros." He names a few of them — Peter Attia, Tim Ferriss, Andrew Huberman — so aren't the bros, too, a "chorus"? The distinction is not between a "chorus" and "one supposed strongman" but between the practical rules you ought to follow to achieve better fitness and the psychological motivation to pursue it. I don't see why the "chorus" wouldn't include both voices. Even if you feel inspired by Harry and Haruki and Hanif to go running, you'd still want to know if running long or short and fast or slow is more beneficial to your body and your mind.

"I’m not good at socialization and so I don’t like to attend parties or give speeches, but sometimes I have to do that. The rest of the year I’m at home, just working. I’m kind of a workaholic."

Said Haruki Murakami, quoted in "Haruki Murakami Isn’t Afraid of the Dark/The author, who brought Japanese literature into the global mainstream, grapples with aging and his place in the world of letters" (NYT).

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.

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.”

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."

He wasn't complaining. He was cogently critiquing.

I'm reading "Donald Trump’s latest Nobel peace prize effort? DRC and Rwanda/Foreign ministers from the feuding east African nations joined the president on Friday after he complained last week that he would not receive an award" (London Times).

What a misreading! Trump is vindicated when he doesn't win the prize, especially as he racks up more achievements.

And headlines like that one also vindicate him, by the way.

How about an article that's not about his imagined effort to win the prize but on his ostensible effort to end a war? Isn't "war" the right word? Or does the London Times regard wars between African countries as "feuding"?

As Trump described it: 

"A cat goes missing, a marriage breaks down, a large, extravagantly boastful frog visits a meek bank-teller and stresses that he must assist in the defeat of a destructive giant subterranean worm."

The Guardian summarizes "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" — an animated movie based on Murakami stories.

Because Mieko Kawakami’s novels "look squarely at the times she is living through, with an emphasis on gender and class"...

... the NYT Magazine writer thinks "Western readers may once more be ready for contemporary Japanese fiction that embraces the magic of realism itself."

I'm reading "'Breasts and Eggs' Made Her a Feminist Icon. She Has Other Ambitions. Will the Japanese novelist Mieko Kawakami’s stark explorations of class translate to American readers?" by Joshua Hunt.

What is meant by "once more"? Did something happen to us "Western readers" that alienated us from realism when it comes to work by Japanese writers? Well, that's actually the article writer's idea:

"It’s a real pain to carry a pad around, and I have found that once I have jotted something down I tend to relax and forget it."

"If I toss the bits into my mind, on the other hand, what needs to be remembered stays while the rest fades into oblivion. I like to leave things to this process of natural selection. This reminds me of an anecdote I’m fond of. When Paul Valéry was interviewing Albert Einstein, he asked the great scientist, 'Do you carry a notebook around to record your ideas?' Einstein was an unflappable man, but this question clearly unnerved him. 'No,' he answered. 'There’s no need for that. You see I rarely have new ideas.' Come to think of it, there have been very few situations when I wished I had a notepad on me. Something truly important is not that easy to forget once you’ve entrusted it to your memory.'"

Writes Haruki Murakami in "Novelist as a Vocation" (Amazon link).

Speaking of notebooks... my other favorite writer, David Sedaris, carries a small notebook everywhere and writes something in it about 10 times a day. In "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls," we see him explaining his practice to a 7-year-old boy. When he encounters a headline, "Dangerous Olives Could Be on Sale," and writes it down in his "a small Europa-brand reporter’s notebook," the boy asks why, and he says, "It’s for your diary.... You jot things down during the day, then tomorrow morning you flesh them out." Of course, the 7-year-old boy still asks "why?" The reader knows why!

Speaking of memory... I've been working on a Spotify playlist I named "Memory"):

 

The songs need to have something to do with memory and to be things I'd enjoy listening to in sequence... in case you're thinking of making suggestions for my list, which you can see is very small.

Alternatively, tell me what you think Einstein would have on his Spotify playlist.

As for Murakami, I'm picturing this.

ALSO: Here's the Einstein playlist I made (based on "The story of Albert Einstein and the music he loved"):

   

Einstein quote about music: "If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy in life out of music."

"In my considered opinion, anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist."

"That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace—in low gear, so to speak. Faster than walking, let’s say, but slower than riding a bicycle. The basic speed of a person’s mental processes may make it possible to work at that rate, or it may not... .This is quite a roundabout way to do things.... Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words—it’s much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience. A message or concept that might take six months to turn into a novel can thus be fully developed in a mere three days. Or in ten minutes, if the writer has a microphone and can spit it out as it comes to him.... In the final analysis, that’s what being smart is really all about. In the same vein, it is unnecessary for someone with a wealth of knowledge to drag out a fuzzy, dubious container like the novel for his purposes...."

Writes Haruki Murakami in "Novelist as a Vocation" (Amazon link). 

"He writes for five hours a day and spends the evening at home listening to music. On top of this he gets up at dawn to run every morning...."

"... 'To keep writing for 30, 40 years is not easy,' he says. 'It’s very difficult to keep up your standards. I did everything to keep on writing books, so I sacrificed other things in order to do that. Other pleasures — for instance, nightlife. I didn’t make so many friends, especially in the literary world. I don’t want those relationships and connections. I don’t like dinner parties.... I try to imagine there’s another Haruki Murakami... He’s famous and popular and has many fans. But I’m a different Haruki Murakami and I live a quiet life. Most of the time I forget that I’m a famous writer. I ride the subway or take a bus and go to some used record shop or bookstore, and in those times I’m just nobody. When I write fiction I’m somebody else, but when I’m not writing I don’t feel any ego. Ego is a kind of burden to man, and I don’t like those burdens. I just want to live lightly.'"

From "Haruki Murakami: ‘Ego is a burden’ new/For decades the Norwegian Wood novelist rejected fame. In a rare interview he reveals why he has quit the quiet life and answers accusations of misogyny in his writing" (London Times).

I see there is a new Murakami book coming out in 3 days — "Novelist as a Vocation." 

I've curated 8 TikToks for your pleasure tonight. Let me know which one (or ones) you like best.

1. That fish!

2. The dog's delicate care for a plant.

3. Sounds you don't hear anymore.

4. Do you pronounce these words correctly?

5. A designer food experience.

6. How to dress for a work meeting.

7. Her not understanding any critically acclaimed film.

8. The jazz they play in stores in Tokyo. (And here's his "In-Store (Tokyo Jazz)" playlist.)

"Audience members were treated to author Haruki Murakami serving as a disc jockey while playing the works of jazz great Stan Getz and talking about his music."

"Murakami played records from his own extensive collection during a session held Nov. 13 at the Waseda International House of Literature in Tokyo.... In the shadows of his spectacular and extensive musical career, Getz continued to suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction his entire life. 'Music is there like an independent form of life unto itself,' Murakami said. 'It keeps evolving even if it lives in a host who is so messed up.'"

From "Murakami spins best of Stan Getz while he talks about jazz great" (The Asahi Shimbun).

A reader sent me that link, and I greatly enjoyed reading it here at my computer with access to Spotify to listen to, notably, “Corcovado” from “Getz/Gilberto."

 

I made a bookmark for The Asahi Shimbum, where I was pleased to see that the biggest front-page item was "Pigeons figure the odds to perch where safety is assured"...

The unusual sight of 30 or so pigeons perched on the rooftop of a parked car on a road in central Tokyo, rather than an adjacent small park, seemed like an unlikely place to congregate. But in fact it made perfect sense.... It turns out that pigeons take two factors into account when they pick where to perch, according to Shigeru Watanabe, professor emeritus of animal behavior at Keio University who won... the Ig Nobel award, which honors “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think,” for showing that pigeons can distinguish between paintings by Picasso and Monet by showing 10 pictures of each to them.

I who was lost and lonely/Believing life was only/A bitter tragic joke, have found with you, the meaning of existence, oh my love....

"This T-shirt has a straightforward message: 'i put ketchup on my ketchup.'"

"Now, that’s the statement of somebody who is seriously in love with ketchup. It kind of teases those Americans who put ketchup on everything, but I find it interesting that one of the companies that distribute these shirts is none other than Heinz. A little self-deprecatory humor going on here, but you can’t help feeling the American spirit in it, the optimistic, cheerful lack of introspection that says, 'Who cares about being sophisticated! I’m gonna do what I want!'"

From "An Accidental Collection/How I amassed more T-shirts than I can store" by Haruki Murakami (The New Yorker).

I appreciate Murakami's appreciation of Americans, and I just used the rhetorical device the T-shirt uses. It's something I talked about before, back in 2019, prompted by a quote from Walt Whitman: "I live here in a ruin of debris—a ruin of ruins." 

I blogged that because I'd recently seen the idea of a cult following with a cult following:

This could be the kind of joke I've seen many times over the years. I remember hearing it long ago when some character on TV (I think it was Gidget's unattractive female friend [Larue]) said she was so excited her "goosebumps have goosebumps." 

That made a big impression on me when I was a teenager — "My goosebumps have goosebumps." Even at the time, I think, I wondered Is this a good template for humor or is it too dumb? 

One answer is Who cares about being sophisticated! I’m gonna do what I want!

"It might not be the best metaphor to use, but a book I have finished writing feels kind of like a pair of underwear I took off and flung into the laundry."

"Actually, that may not have been the most appropriate metaphor here (haha). What I was trying to say is that when you’re wearing your underwear, they’re very important to you. However, once you’ve worn them, that’s it — you discard them and have no more use for them. It’s the same with my novels."

 Said Haruki Murakami, when he was asked "Is Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World still your favorite of your own books?" 

Quoted in "My Conversation With Haruki Murakami Never Really Ends/Sean Wilsey chats with the prolific novelist about music, racism and a writing process that never stops evolving" (Inside Hook).

"All of us, more or less, wear masks. Because without masks we can’t survive in this violent world."

"Beneath an evil-spirit mask lies the natural face of an angel, beneath an angel’s mask lies the face of an evil spirit. It’s impossible to have just one or the other. That’s who we are. And that’s Carnaval. Schumann was able to see the many faces of humanity—the masks and the real faces—because he himself was a deeply divided soul, a person who lived in the stifling gap in between the two."

From the story "Carnaval" by Haruki Murakami, in his new short story collection "First Person Singular."

If this post makes you want to listen to "Carnaval," you may be interested to know that there are 2 characters who decide that "Carnaval" is the greatest piece for solo piano. They meticulously study recordings of "Carnaval," and one, the man, decides the very best is Arthur Rubinstein’s RCA recording, which you can listen to here. The other person, the woman, takes the position that the best is Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, available here.

My reason for posting this isn't really to push the Schumann piece on you or to get you trying to figure out which is the best interpretation. Of course, I'm more interested in the subject of wearing masks. Masks come up in the story because masks are worn at the pre-Lent festival called Carnival (AKA Carnaval). Notice the "carn" — "Carnival is literally the festival of thankfulness for meat, and a farewell to it, as Lent begins." Is there some connection between masks and the loss of meat? The face is meat? 

I'm simply offering this as something to add to your reflection on the subject of mask wearing.

For the Annals of Lateral Thinking: Ohio makes vaccinating into a million-dollar lottery.

Governor Mike DeWine announces on Twitter: 

Two weeks from tonight on May 26th, we will announce a winner of a separate drawing for adults who have received at least their first dose of the vaccine. This announcement will occur each Wednesday for five weeks, and the winner each Wednesday will receive one million dollars.

The pool of names for the drawing will be derived from the Ohio Secretary of State’s publicly available voter registration database. Further, we will make available a webpage for people to sign up for the drawings if they are not in a database we are using. The Ohio Department of Health will be the sponsoring agency for the drawings, and the Ohio Lottery will conduct them. The money will come from existing federal Coronavirus Relief Funds.

To be eligible to win, you must be at least 18 years of age or older on the day of the drawing. You must be an Ohio resident. And, you must be vaccinated before the drawing. We will have further, specific details tomorrow and in the days ahead.

I know that some may say, “DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money.” But truly, the real waste at this point in the pandemic -- when the vaccine is readily available to anyone who wants it -- is a life lost to COVID-19.

You could spend $5 million on ads cajoling people — or shaming them — into getting vaccinated. One way or another, it costs money to complete the vaccination project. The great thing about the lottery idea is that it's an effort to reach minds that are not primarily oriented to science — people who are emotional and transrational.

Am I making up the word "transrational"? I had to look it up. I can't credit myself with coinage. There's a whole Wikipedia article, but let's see if it means what I — in my thwarted word-coining effort — had in mind:

The new Murakami book is out today.

"First Person Singular" — a story collection. I put the text in my Kindle and the audio in my iPhone. It was already a great afternoon for a walk, and now....

Here's an interview with Haruki Murakami (at NPR). Excerpt:

When I'm really focused on writing, I get the feeling that I shift from this world to the other world, and then return to this world. Kind of like commuting. I go there, and come back. Going is important, but coming back is even more important. Since it'd be awful if you couldn't return.

At the beginning of the ninth century there was a nobleman in Kyoto named Ono no Takamura. During the day he worked in the imperial palace, and it was rumored that at night he'd descend to hell (the underworld) and serve there as secretary to Enma Daio, the ruler of hell. Commuting, as it were, every day between this world and the other. His passageway to travel back and forth was an old well, and it still exists in Kyoto. I love that story. Though I don't think I'd ever like to climb down inside that well.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email. I'll use only your first name unless you let me know you want something else.

"I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism."

"I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."

Said the novelist Haruki Murakami, quoted in "How To Wake Up at 5 A.M. Every Day/An unconventional and compassionate guide to becoming an early bird" (in Medium). The author of the essay, Brian Ye, likes this idea of repetition as mesmerism and describes using it to become an early riser.

I liked this piece because I love repetition. Sometimes I puzzle over why I'm so happy to live another  day composed of the same elements, so I'm interested in the suggestion that repetition itself is mesmerizing. I've had some success introducing new elements — notably breaking up the morning writing with a venture outdoors at sunrise.

Are we taking a break from Trump-hating?

Here are the "Editor's Picks" on the front page of the NYT website this morning. Click to enlarge (not that you need to enlarge Pamela Anderson's breasts, but you can make the small print clearly readable by clicking):



1. "How the ‘Baywatch’ Swimsuit Became a Summer Classic/Athletic. Flattering. Red. Who needs a string bikini?" Yes, ladies, it is okay and maybe even cool to wear a one-piece bathing suit. But don't expect support from Pamela Anderson: "Ms. Anderson said modesty was not an issue for her but confirmed that the suits were pretty fitted. 'Some people bring me bathing suits to sign autographs on and they are these big bathing suits and I say, "Listen, my bathing suit was tiny. It just stretched and pulled onto your body,"' she said." If you want support, get a structured brassiere.

2. "They Met on the Court. They Both Won in Love. Eric Wankerl and Paige Marquardt first connected in 2013 during a Special Olympics event in Minnesota." This article could be #1 on the all-time list of feel-good stories in the New York Times. If you're hoarding your free reads for the NYT and you have any heart at all or you just want to try to have one, click through to this wedding story. Tears are running down my face as I give you this advice. Excerpt from the article: "We were told he’s never going to be the doctor or lawyer or engineer that you might have hoped for, so prepare yourself.... His dad and I had to go through counseling, this sort of grieving stuff where they tell you, 'This is the child you were given.'... I thought, the more people who are seeing him in town, the more people who are going to know him and look out for him. And that turned out to be true." Beautiful wedding photos.

3. "The Week in Books/Téa Obreht’s new novel, Barack Obama’s summer reading list and more." Oh, my lord! It's time for Barack Obama's summer reading list again! Topping the list is the collected works of Toni Morrison, so that's some serious homework for you. Or is that what he's reading? The book on the list I think he's most likely to actually be reading is the one that I've read, "Men Without Women" — the Haruki Murakami one. There's also an Ernest Hemingway collection with the same title, and that's actually the audiobook I've been walking to this week. Excellent performance by Stacy Keach. Recommended!

"... an especially apposite response..."

"Go fuck yourself" sounds like an especially apposite response here https://t.co/aW8ZjCq4tb

— Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) June 28, 2019

ADDED: Rothstein's question made me think of something in that book I recently read twice, "Kafka on the Shore," by Haruki Murakami:

“Is it okay if I imagine you naked?”

Her hand stops and she looks me in the eyes.

“You want to imagine me naked while we’re doing this?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to keep from imagining that, but I can’t.”

“Really?”

“It’s like a TV you can’t turn off.”

She laughs. “I don’t get it. You didn’t have to tell me that! Why don’t you just go ahead and imagine what you want? You don’t need my permission. How can I know what’s in your head?”

“I can’t help it. Imagining something’s very important, so I thought I’d better tell you. It has nothing to do with whether you know or not.”

“You are some kind of polite boy, aren’t you,” she says, impressed. “I guess it’s nice, though, that you wanted to let me know. All right, permission granted. Go ahead and picture me nude.”

"Thanks," I say.

"As an avid spelunker and one who also ventures into dark underground places thought abandoned, the geek in me looked forward to this book. Alas..."

"... it never really conveyed the way I feel when in these places aside from a Rick Steves-tourist aspect. It's cool...we all see the world differently and maybe this book is for those who would never dream of going into the crawlspace under their house"/"I bought this book for my husband and it did not meet his expectations. He said it mainly covered the gruesome underground swampy creepy areas under cities. I expected that it dealt with underground facilities that were ancient but no."

Those are the 2 one-star reviews at Amazon for "Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet." I like to read one-star reviews of books that have, overall, great reviews. Sometimes the dissenter is right. A "Rick Steves-tourist aspect" felt like a serious warning, though "I bought this book for my husband and it did not meet his expectations" was not. What do I know about her husband? He sounds rather peevish. Let him buy his own books.

Ah, well. I bought the book anyway. I was moved to buy it after I stumbled into it while searching for another book with the title "Underground." There's also the highly praised novel "Underground Railroad" and the great classic "Alice's Adventures Underground."

I can't think why one would want to go on a reading spree of books with a distinctive word in the title, but maybe you've done that once. If so, what was your word? If not, and you had to do it, had to read 4 books with the same distinctive word in the title, what word would you choose? (Note: distinctive word. No joke answers in the "the" category.)

From the 1-star reviews of "Underground Railroad": "Readers are expected to credit a literal Underground Railroad; too feeble an authorial imagination for magic realism, so result is confusing anachronism"/"It is obvious that this book won the Pulitzer because of politics, not the quality of the writing. It was so disjointed. I also object to his altering of history such as portraying the Underground Railroad as an actual railroad. The story of slavery is poignant enough. I know it is a novel but there are some facts with which you should never take liberties!"

From the 1-star reviews of "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche" (the book I was originally searching for): "this review has nothing to do with content, but im pretty furious that i have found MULTIPLE typos in the kindle version....."

"In optimistic appreciation of everyone's artistic potential, I am a staunch advocate of completing a book no matter how unenjoyable the experience may be."

I'm reconnecting with my old practice of reading 1-star reviews of books I have read and liked. The quote above is from a 1-star review of "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" (by Haruki Murakami).

I find this review super-quotable, because it doesn't say anything specific about this book.* Almost.**

The dissatisfied reviewer continues:

This book wanted to be picked up and desired with anticipatory giddiness, but it did not want to be read. In fact, it did everything it could beyond page 1 to be unpleasant.

Sometimes books take a little while to warm up; stretch the legs; get a lay of the land. This book demonstrated a game face no defense would worry over. Uninteresting background information, bland writing style, no "hook" to catch interest, etc. Right before giving up, I had the sense I was reading the first draft of somebody's daily journal recorded for their own personal posterity...never to see the light of day...some words to reflect on an average life--a life, by the way, that seemed like it was going to last 300 years. None of it was leading anywhere. I finally tapped out when a chapter started off with a paragraph about fish from a restaurant...not an eating contest, rare delicacy, celebrity sighting, or bad wait-service tale in sight....

I like the humor of asserting you're a "staunch advocate" of something and then proceeding to do complete opposite.
___________________________

*It reminds me of the essay I wrote in 4th grade to be handed in the next time I did something wrong in school that earned the punishment of having to write an essay. It's hard to write well and generically, specifics being the usual spice of writing — it's always a girl in a white dress with a white parasol or something like that. It seems interesting because it's specific. Try being interesting without any specificity.... Dear teacher, I acknowledge and bewail the misdeed which I have grievously committed, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation. I am heartily sorry... Am I getting away with that? I'll just say that if you ever try and do seem to be getting away with it, do not laugh or brag.

**As you'll see if you read the indented text, there is the fish, and that's specific, but not that specific. Here's the paragraph that begins Chapter 2, where the dissatisfied reviewer tapped out because of the fish, the fish that didn't do anything: