goddam Catcher in the Rye, goddam crumby Norwegian Wood
SEATTLE – 2008.01.20
So I left Korea with kind of a massive reading list. It’s gonna take like 50 quadjillion years to get through it all though, but reading sure does beat sitting and staring at people on the bus commute to school and back everyday. Korea surprised me by awakening a, as Ryo put it, “huge reading boner”. I was also excited that it was for books with more than 50% words vs. picture content unlike my typical reading material of the past, oh, my whole life.
Anyway, I read the goddam Catcher in the goddam Rye, and realized talking like goddam crumby Holden Caulfield really is better then talking like all you phoney regular people. Also, like everyone on the planet is doing right now, I read a Haruki Murakami book, Norwegian Woooooood(as per Hannars suggestion). I’m going to now type giberish that falls out of my goddam mouth as I think about these two books::::::and then kill myself. Not really, they were good.
Regarding the Murakami, ok. I think I shouldn’t have read this one so recently after Pat’s copy of “South of the Border, West of the Sun”.. I’ve only read those two Murakami’s, but they were really damn similar (same 1st person jazz enthusiast male character, who even though he has a really boring personality somehow channnels reading and listening to jazz alone in to attracting crazy suicidal/nymphomaniacal women to have sex with him before they kill themselves). That isn’t to say their journeys, are the same, or in any way less beautifully described along the way. That middle hundred page chapter 7 of Wood, where he leaves Tokyo to visit Naoko in the country at her hospital was serene as all hell. If the first third was a little too much deja vu, by that middle section in the country I started to get in to it much much more. Some of these characters were great, I especially enjoyed this Hatsumi character, who treats every facet of societal interaction as a game, from academia, to making money, to sexual conquest. Understanding the rules in these worlds, he does exactally what is needed to suceed, and then delights in winning the game. He easily scores a job with Japanese government right out of school, and has just as easily slept with in excess of 50 women or something like that. His human interactions are never seen as immoral in his eyes, and he has good intentions for society at heart. When you listen to his philosophy in conversations with our protagonist, instead he looks at the relative discrepencies in morality as simple differences of life philosophy, all of which should have a voice and are equally correct for whichever person is practicing them. Side note: Danny, hurry up and come home from China for crissake. Woah, actually this book is more complicated than I thought..lots of really realistic slice of life passages as Toru, or whatever the main guys name was, carries on his day-to-day in between the jolts where he gets laid, or finds out another person he knows just commited suicide. Haha, no Norwegian Wood is actually a LOT better than I’m describing right now. Seriously.
Rye Catchers was short and sweeeeeeeet, I definitely could have just read Caulfield narrate himself walking around Manhattan island for another three hundred pages. Too bad he turns out to actually be just insane. Cmon dude, life really isn’t that bad, and there are plenty of people wayyyy cooler than your kid sister. And your teacher? He wasn’t trying to get with you, IDIOT, he just thought you were interesting and a good possible life apprentice. He wanted to HELP you and you ran out on him at 5AM with a couple “goddam crumby”s. Also, why does the dude cry so much. But beside all those things that depressed me, not to the point where I thought about just running in to the country and building a shack mind you, the book’s tremendously enjoyable, fast as f to read, and you laugh out loud (lol) at least like 8 times. Those are good times. I like how this 16 year old dude is willing to just go up to people way older than him like taxi drivers with families and stuff, and ask them to get drinks with him, while sarcastically deriding them for being boring personalities. I like every time he describes the reasons of how girls “knock him out”, those parts were soo truly put it was like Seinfeld or something. I like how he had hypo tendencies, like Seth, and was all convinced he had cancer after having a cancur sore on his lip for a week. And I guess it’s pretty endearing that his sole life aspiration is to catch kids falling off of cliffs. Fucking Lemmings for DOS addict.
Oh, and that goddam girl in Norwegian Wood who asks Toru, “are you trying to speak like the guy in Catcher in the Rye?”. F no, he doesn’t sound at all like Holden Caulfield. –> I am goddam crumby Holden Caulfield. And that makes me depressed, and then I cry.
Hahahahahaahhaah, ok that’s all. Next up: House of Leaves. Actually, some comics instead.