Murakami bingo

Ha! Tremendous.

[With thanks to NM.]

12 out of 50 of the 'coolest' books (EVER!!)

Here, according to Shortlist.com are the 50 coolest books in existence.

By which they, of course, mean novels. All but two written in English (I include Trainspotting). All but one written after WW2.

Of which I have read approx. 12. To wit (and in Shortlist's order):

On The Road
Naked Lunch
Slaughter-House-Five
Generation X
A Confederacy of Dunces
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Trainspotting
Fight Club
Watchmen
The Great Gatsby

and halves of Middlesex and The Crying of Lot 49.

I make no apology for the remainder, nor any judgement on the issue of 'cool'. The caveats and small print one might apply to such a list, however (any list of this nature, but this one in particular), would/probably ought to include books I regret bothering with (Naked Lunch); books that have certainly deterred me from reading anything else by the same author (Lot 49) and/or books I have no intention of reading (Dice Man, Fear of Flying, Neuromancer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Wasp Factory, Morvern Callar, The Secret History); authors I have persevered with but whose books turn out all to be remarkably similar (Kerouac, Coupland); authors not represented here by their best work (Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, HST); authors by whom I have read other works (Hemingway, Calvino, Heller, Ballard, Amis, Bukowski, Murakami, Orwell, Capote, Wolfe, Franzen, Chabon, DeLillo); and books I have consumed, instead, as film (American Psycho, Clockwork Orange, Perfume, One Flew..., Nineteen Eighty-Four, and - if it can be counted - Howl).

Non-fiction (cf. 'truth')

The supreme test of nonfiction is that it be interesting irrespective of the reader’s indifference to the subject under discussion.

- Geoff Dyer, New York Times Book Review

Hyphens: 1

Murakami's works have been dismissed by critics as apolitical and a-historical...

- Jay Rubin, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words

Roan words: part 2

1) Murakami's Dance Dance Dance was, in the original, dansu dansu dansu. Do the Japanese have no native word for 'dance'? Or is this a particular (non-native) type of dancing?

2) But Norwegian Wood was Norowei no mori. Even though it's not about some wood from Norway, or a wood in Norway - but, tangentially at least, about 'Norwegian Wood', the song by the Beatles.

Roan words

You know that scene in Crocodile Dundee where Mick knocks out some muggers, stands on them in victorious pose, and has his picture taken by shutter-happy Japanese tourists, one of whom says: 'Iss, ah, Krrrint Eastwood'?

Well, er, it's true. I am indebted to Jay Rubin, oftentimes translator of Haruki Murakami, for the information that the original Japanese title of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is, no kidding, Sekai no owari to hadoboirudo wandarando.

Though why the title is backwards, I can't tell you.

Bad Murakami!

The Little People came suddenly. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know what it means. I was a prisoner of the story. I had no choice. They came, and I described it. That is my work.

- Haruki Murakami, in the New York Times Magazine (in the New York Review of Books)

A brief history of Czechoslovakia

The First World War had ended and the country was freed from the long rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. As they enjoyed the peaceful respite visiting central Europe, people drank Pilsner beer in cafés and manufactured handsome light machine guns.

- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Norwegian Wood

I have just bought a copy of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. The cover spiel tells me that

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko...

but does he - and already this is the only question on my mind - does he, when thinking about her, get Norwegian wood? And would that pun work in Japan (where the novel's title must have been the same?) - or is it not close enough to the bone?

I shall read, and find out.