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Order No. XXX-831-4257162061 placed 23 Jul 2011 (02:48:31) on BookDepository.com
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"1q84"
by (author) Haruki Murakami
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$22.88
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Item status: Awaiting publication

1Q84

The opening paragraph of the long-awaited English translation of Murakami Haruki's latest novel, 1Q84 (due out on 25 October 2011):

The taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janáček’s Sinfonietta—probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn’t seem to be listening very closely, either. With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents. Aomame settled into the broad back seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the music.

Patong Beach

Patong Beach on the Thai resort island of Phuket certainly has its fair share of sleazy bars. If I had a hundred baht for every fat foreign bloke in a wife-beater I saw sitting on a bar stool with one hand glued to a bottle of Singha beer, the other hand glued to the thigh of the young Thai lass on the stool next to him, and his eyes glued to the footie playing on the bar's flat screen TV, well, I'd be several hundred baht richer. And this is in the middle of the day. Heaven knows what it's like at night.

Actually, I probably would have spent the money shopping. Or on a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. That's another thing Patong Beach is famous for. The shopping. They sell everything from T-shirts and hats to DVDs and sunglasses. At first I didn't realise you had to barter. So I probably spent way too much on stuff to begin with. But I soon got the hang of it, and ended up getting a real good deal on some of those Bay-Ran sunglasses. Just like the ones Michael J. Fox wore in that movie Big Lights Bright City.

That was a great movie, by the way, except I didn't really understand the bit at the end where the Michael J. Fox character swaps his Bay-Rans for a loaf of bread. I mean Bay-Rans are worth a lot more than a loaf of bread. Even second hand ones. Maybe it was just to emphasise how much of a loser he was. He sure couldn't barter.

Kunzru on Herzog and Haneke

In two separate pieces for the Guardian (one a couple of years old), one of my favourite novelists, Hari Kunzru, assesses the films of two of my favourite directors: Werner Herzog and Michael Haneke. Enjoy!

Apropos of nothing

The other day I was hurtling down Curletts Road at close to the speed limit of 100km/h on my way back from the airport, near the Canterbury A&P showgrounds where the 350 campervans hired by the government as emergency accommodation after the February earthquake at a cost of $1.5 million sit empty, when a man, barefoot and naked apart from a flimsy pair of blue shorts, darted out onto the road a few hundred metres in front of me like some startled wild animal. At first I thought he must have been fleeing something, but as he crossed the road and turned and ran past me on the grass verge between the road and a row of tall trees I realized he was simply going for a run.

My mind went back to the incredibly warm Northern Hemisphere spring day in June 2001 (hard to believe it's nearly ten years ago) when Erik and his then partner drove Mrs Fool and me from Erik's apartment in Jersey City where we were staying to West Point, where I ate catfish for the first time in my life and marvelled at the might and sheer beauty of the Hudson River, and then on to Woodbury Common, where I bought a Brooks Brothers shirt. Anyway, along the way - I believe we were on the New Jersey Turnpike - we saw a deer wandering along the strip of grass separating the lanes of traffic going one way from the lanes going the other. I forget his exact words, but Erik said something including the expression "roadkill" that left me in no doubt as to the animal's probable fate.

The night after seeing the near-naked runner on Curletts Road I dreamed I was running effortlessly over rolling fields of grass, and I was barefoot.

By any other name

Excerpt from a letter to the editor published in this morning's edition of The Press complaining about student behaviour in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake (emphasis added).

Not only were the students running down the middle of Ilam Rd against traffic, some decided to pick up and throw the orange road safety witches' hats down the road, while many strolled over the road, en masse, through traffic, making drivers stop.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Among my latest trove of purchases from the Book Depository (free shipping to most of the civilised world) is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Mitchell, who featured in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2007 (see here), lived in Japan for many years, and skimming through the synopses of his earlier novels, it's clear that his time there has had no small influence on his writing, with at least two boasting Japanese settings and/or Japanese characters. Mitchell also has a Japanese partner, whose first name just happens to be the same as Mrs Fool's.

Anyway, I'm nearly half way through The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. It's set during the Edo period on the island of Dejima (which I'm sure you all remember from this post about the Nagasaki Kaido). The eponymous hero is a clerk with the Dutch East India Company. This morning I came across the following passage. Jacob is riding out a typhoon in the company of the intriguing Dr Lucas Marinus, physician and botanist.

Each time Jacob is certain the wind cannot rampage more maniacally without the roof tearing free; the wind does, but the roof doesn't, not yet. Joists and beams strain and clunk and shudder like a windmill rattling at full kilter. A terrifying night, Jacob thinks, yet even terror can pale into monotony. Eelattu darns a sock whilst the doctor reminisces about his journey to Edo with the late Chief Hemmij and Head Clerk van Cleef. 'They bemoaned the lack of buildings to compare to St Peter's or Notre Dame; but the genius of the Japanese race is manifest in its roads. The Tokaido Highway runs from Osaka to Edo - from the Empire's belly to the head, if you will - and knows of no equal, I assert, anywhere on Earth, in either modernity or antiquity. The road is a city, fifteen feet in width, but three hundred well-drained, well-maintained and well-ordered German miles in length, served by fifty-three way stations where travellers can hire porters, change horses and rest or carouse for the night. And the simplest, most commonsensical joy of all? All traffic proceeds on the left-hand side, so the numerous collisions, seizures and stand-offs that so clog Europe's arteries are here unknown. On less populated stretches of the road, I unnerved our inspectors by slipping out of my palanquin and botanising along the verges. I found more than thirty new species for my Flora Japonica, missed by Thurnberg and Kaempfer. And then, at the end, is Edo.'