After Dark, after Japan

After Dark was the first Murakami book I read after visiting Japan. I had the quiet delight of being able to recognise the restaurant spoken of in the opening paragraphs and understanding very well the concept of the Love Hotel. This is one of Murakami's shorter books, and follows the events of Mari over the course of a single night.

The characters are all as we would expect from Murakami, and it is one of those semi-unconscious fantasy stories. One of the things I liked about it (which others mightn't) was its reasonably unresolved ending. Some things are never explained, so we can just focus on the images and feelings that come through. I think, as long as this is done well, leaving out details is a nice way to keep a novel tidy. It avoids sections that would be reminiscent of Plan Nine from Outerspace "Funny how the humans, who can think, are so afraid of those who cannot: they are the dead. Luckily our positron emitting guns enable us to control them, otherwise we too might be attacked" or something like that.

St. Exupery's Other Books

As I loved The Little Prince, I thought I might also like Saint Exupery's other works. Namely: Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre de Hommes), Night Flight, Southern Mail, Flight to Arras.

The first one of these I read, Wind, Sand and Stars seemed to be quite dense at first, requiring a lot of re-reading - however I think this was just my own mind being a little preoccupied. All of these books focus on flights, usually those to transport mail or to discover new flight routes. There is a beautiful image in my head that gets evoked each time, of flying at night, just being able to see the horizon, and seeing the stars above. It reminds me of driving home in the country, that serene and humbling experience of feeling alone in a vast open space.

I can't fly a plane, and I don't fly often, so there is nothing here that need only interest pilots. Saint Exupery has a lot of existential/absurdist ideas concerning the meaning of friendship, love, freedom and these notions all come through in these works. He was someone in love with the sky, not making a particularly good or faithful husband, which a lot has been written about (including The Tale of the Rose, by his wife). So what we hear more about is his adoration of friends and comradeship.

One particularly nice story, in Wind, Sand and Stars involves a crashed pilot, walking across snow covered mountains in search of rescue. After each kilometre he has to stop, open up his shoes to deal with the swelling, and continue on as his feet gradually become more and more useless. What keeps him going is the thought that if he is missing, his wife will not get the insurance payout until they find his body. After finally making it home, the first thing he says (admired so much by Exupery) is "I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through."

Exupery is loves the triumph of the human spirit, and of the modernist consolations of existence which come from freedom, friendship and love. One reads these books and can't help but admire the pioneer in him. He is still very popular in France - there is a nice big picture of him in a hotel in Toulouse, which the owners only thought it semi-odd that I would wander in only to look at it. (I mention this to show how much I am fond of Saint Exupery, not to offhandedly mention that I was once on a trip).

Americans hate happy endings!?

I saw A Clockwork Orange at some point when it seemed necessary to watch Kubrick films. Although it was old, I was still fairly uncomfortable with the in-your-face violence. The book, on the other hand, was written with a conscious attempt to avoid anything like this. The invented slang of the book (based on Russian) is so well done that it really does seem like a "glossary" would be a bit vulgar. As well as giving the book a timelessness to it however, the slang also functions to give distance to the violence described throughout. One settles in quite nicely.

I found it interesting to read that the Beethoven reference was meant to present an antithesis to the idea (popular at the time) that in interest in decent culture was incongruous with violent acts. Most interesting however, was the last chapter of the book - absent from the film. Apparently the US version of the book was released without this last chapter, because it gives the book a "happy ending". Burgess saw it as bittersweet, rather than just a convenient conversion on the part of the protagonist, however the philosophy he wished to propagate, indeed, depended on these final few pages. I think the book works well with this final chapter, leaving the reader less confused about what one should take from it - however I think the aesthetic of the film requires it to be left out. Hmm... interesting interesting

Virginity at Hanging Rock

I read Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay as part of my general goal to read more women writers (having very few encounters, one of which was Winterson... who I disliked, probably a little too much). Joan Lindsay was related to the great print-maker Norman Lindsay from central Victoria, who despite doing some fine nudes and lovely prints, also drew a great many cartoons to promote the White Australia policy and a few other undesirable trends of the time. So, written and set at this time, it has the realist style - lots of description. Lindsay also mentions many of the fashions of the day, without irony, such as the tendency for women to be pretty useless. Reflecting only on the narrative, I'm not quite sure one is meant to get out of this book.

However ... : before reading the book, I had seen the film and discussed it with my father (who at some stage managed to be an English teacher... despite failing in Year 12 because he didn't like the teacher). Whereas I had seen the movie, thinking about whether it was a true story and getting caught up in the mystery, he drew my attention to a few of its subtler themes: specifically, that of sexuality.

The story, is of course set during a fairly conservative period in Australia's history. Girls were meant to be proper, deferring sex to their eventual marriages. So what seems like a fairly trivial outing to the Hanging Rock, is made more significant by the fact that these young girls will be leaving (temporarily) the confines of the school, interact with the male driver, and potentially even more males. So an important concern of the head mistress, once the strange event occurs, is whether these girls will come back "in tact". Abduction, rape and murder are scarcely considered as possibilities, and the town, to some extent seems to accept that the girls strangely disappeared, and isn't it a shame because a couple of them were quite pretty and now they won't become wives and if they come back their reputations won't be so hot anyway.

Tied to the importance of sex (and lack thereof) is the properness of the head mistress and her absurd lack of compassion for the girls in her school, focusing as she does on the potential reduction in numbers that might result from the rumours concerning the picnic at Hanging Rock - she drives a young girl, who likes drawing to suicide, because the girl doesn't fit her conception of a young, proper and pretty girl.

Also of note is perhaps the banality of the male hero, deciding that since the girl that missing was so pretty he must set out to find her - himself being terribly disappointed when a different, slightly less pretty girl does happen to turn up!

So although I remember the book as being reasonably dry, there is certainly plenty to take in, and it will always perhaps be an important book in Australia's - particularly Victoria's - history. I have never been quite able to articulate it properly, but the book reminds me a lot of The Virgin Suicides. These undercurrents of young, female sexuality seem to be present in both - with an eventual notion that no-one really does quite understand what it means to be a young girl (paraphrasing from the film). Both stories seem to focus on young girls and that imposed notion of "womanhood". The girls are not so caught up in challenging this notion, but rather seem to quietly continue outside it, shaking their heads in pity at the idiots who think they have any idea.

Forgiving Anna and Emma (Tolstoi and Flaubert)

Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary each tell the respective (unhappy) story of women in marriage. The writing of such stories is indicative of the deeper development of female characters, and indeed, the acknowledgement that women are also capable of independent thought (as well as the obligatory service of their husband). The act of adultery means different things in different societies, so both these stories are often reinterpreted to fit in with popular trends - e.g. Madame Bovary is sometimes seen as a feminist triumph, the realisation of the female sexual desire that exists beyond the satisfaction of men.

Despite the loaded issues that form the focus of each story, it should probably be kept in mind that neither author is out to make a point. Anna Karenina, written during the realist era, seeks as much to give the reader an insight into late 19th century Russia, its society and decor, as it does to make its many observations concerning happiness and how we ought to live. Flaubert, known for abhoring high-society and its excess, makes no indigtment against Emma Bovary, as either a product of this society or as an adulterous wife. We are rather presented the lives of two women and those around them, complicated with many happinesses and unhappinesses along the way.

In reading Anna Karenina, I guess I began by making this mistake, and focusing on how Tolstoi was supposed to justify the actions of Anna. A woman, with a boring and unappreciative husband is seduced by a pretentious git. She doesn't deserve sympathy - she's an idiot. Of course, what becomes apparent is that happiness is so complicated. We are brought up expecting that things should fall into place, but nothing does and we are given insufficient resources to cope with the fall-out. The tragedy in Anna's case, is that she has an unrealistic faith in men to protect her from the society they drag her into.

Madame Bovary is a much more complex story, affected as it is by unmistakable mental illness. Similarly to Anna, Emma is married off with expectations that children, happiness and balls will ensue. This may not be an accepted reading, however what seems to happen is that the disillusionment with her marriage triggers a depressive episode, which later develops into what could possibly be Bipolar disorder. Madame Bovary becomes fixated on a friend of her husband, risking so much to see him and neglecting her baby and husband. At times, the love of M. Bovary is again recognized, however she is becoming more and more unstable as an individual.

The difficult thing to deal with in this story, is the confusion and difficulty faced by Emma's husband. He adores her, but is oblivious to the thought that she could act any other way than how she intends. Responsibility, agency and thought behind one's actions characterises any framework of ethics that exists today (and indeed has for a long time), so the thought that anyone around us could be acting against their desires and outside responsibility is not one we accept - not that we should accept it, but this means that such cases of mental illness become that much harder to deal with from the outside - because we can't reconcile someone's actions with who they seem to be.

A particularly powerful observation made here is that M. Bovary is so tentative around his wife, he wants to hold her and comfort her and make her happy, but he is afraid of how she will respond. This captures well that mixture of fear and longing that one faces when seeing someone experience this sort of difficulty (whether it's mental illness, drug addiction etc).

In a way, it felt like Madame Bovary contained everything important that was in Anna Karenina (and only a third the size), however that may be because Anna Karenina has many religious excursions as Tolstoi attempts to reassert the importance of God in 19th century europe. It certainly didn't excite me to go out and read War and Peace as quickly as possible.

Both books deserve to be read.

The strange case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde and a picture of Dorian Gray

Reading these stories, one after the other, I was surprised at the similar themes. Both stories explore the dark nature lurking in man that is only overridden by the ego during a process of individualisation. For both protagonists, that dark nature is alluring and disgusting simultaneously.

Despite the far-fetched nature of the stories, set around the 1900s, the stories have a lot in them in terms of self-exploration. After reading Jekyl and Hyde, i'd been told that it was one of the first novels to have homosexual overtones (which I didn't really pick up on), but this was perhaps mentioned to me because of its similarity to the Wilde book rather than anything else. It is a pity, in a way that Jekyl and Hyde has been retold so many times that many are unlikely to return to Stevenson's original (short) story, with so much depth to it. The writing style is one that makes me feel more intelligent just having read it, reminding me that there is a limit to what one can get out of simple writing styles like that of Murakami.

Some of the description in these two books is done so well that one is left quite disturbed, especially with the respective central scenes of bludgeoning violence. I found myself more uncomfortable in the presence of Dorian Gray than of Hyde, the latter being more straight forward and less insidious, but this is deliberate on the part of Wilde.

The version I had of Dorian Gray also had a review at the end that severely criticised the book - quite an emotive attack. It was interesting to read. Essentially it thinks the idea is executed dully - I disagree, that that is the extent of my enlightened review.

Gatsby, Meaulnes and Nagasawa

I read The Great Gatsby - that classic American Novel - well after reading Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) and shortly after Le Grand Meaulnes (Alain-Fournier). The former had reidentified it as one of those books I should read, while the latter's title (obviously) reminded me to get to it. The similarity between the titles apparently might not have been accidental, with Fitzgerald having recently read Le Grand Meaulnes but I'm not sure of the facts here - the stories are different enough, however they do share the first person removed third person perspective - i.e. the title character's story is told from the perspective of a friend.

I think it's this narrative device that might be why Gatsby is so important as a text - beyond its essential Americanness. What this enables is a projected authenticity concerning the plight of the subject (e.g. think of the difference in impression one gets from "i am good" and "he is good"). Gatsby and Meaulnes are similar characters, sharing a similar friendship with the respective narrators. Both are talented, driven, and caught up in a romance that has strayed from the more genuine feelings of love to those of obsession and objectification. The narrator's friendship is undervalued (which is accepted gracefully in both cases) and it just seems to become more and more clear that these admired men, have somehow missed the point (sort of a Kurtz-esque fall).

In Norwegian Wood, Watanabe befriends Nagasawa, and what they share is a love of Gatsby. Nagasawa is of course, a reincarnation of the Gatsby character, and so reading Fitzgerald's novel fleshes out their friendship and allows us to better understand his function in the novel. This is my favourite thing about intertextuality, so much is inferred just from a deliberately placed reference... I think it's why I want to read so many of the "classic" texts - so that my reading of everything else can be enhanced.

I loved Gatsby, but mainly for a passage at the end, which I think justifies everything that precedes it (I didn't find the style to really flow so well... lots of re-reading to work out what's going on - but that's probably my fault - who am I to say it's not perfect?). The passage is this:

"It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."

Sometimes books will use 150 pages of description and skeleton story, just to allow a reflexion like this to make an impression on the reader, so powerful and beautiful, that might not otherwise have been made.