Haruki Murakami- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Vintage

Haruki Murakami

2007 (Japan)/ 2008 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin
   

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

“The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.”

That this was my third non-fiction book in a row is certainly a personal record that might never be broken, with normal service to resume very shortly. Of course, this work of non-fiction is from one Haruki Murakami, who happens to be my favourite author of fiction in the world, and a maverick writing genius whose mind and methods hold a kind of mysterious aura for me (and surely many other readers too), with works of indescribably strange and magical fiction like the two-part 1Q84 and Kafka on the Shore thrilling a global audience. With that in mind, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running contained an element of intrigue unique to all of Murakami's work, as it promised to provide insight on the man from the man, in the form of an ethereal memoir focused around the topic of one of Murakami's favourite activities; running marathons.

Weighing in at just 177 pages (Vintage edition), What I Talk... is a very curious book, in that it's kind of hard to pin down the genre. Only Murakami's second non-fiction title (the other Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, which I just ordered from Amazon today), this one steers far away from the typically-heavy surrealism of Murakami's fiction, meaning there's a distinct lack of parallel universes or talking cats; instead this reminds me of a book (handily reviewed here) by my second favourite non-dead non-Terry Pratchett author, Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude, in that it's kind of a small window into the personal life of an enigmatic author who turns his every day experiences into a range of philosophical musings. In this regards it's actually not too dissimilar to aspects of Murakami's normal work, where the magical realism often relies on his lead characters having the mundane aspects of their lives exist as the basis for the thoughtful madness that engulfs them.

Murakami, not running.

The lead narrative of these chronologically-mixed memoirs revolves around Murakami preparing to run the 2005 New York City Marathon, though it's far from his first. Murakami has been running for the majority of his life, for at least an hour each day, and competing in at least one marathon per year, as well as a more recent triathlon. There's no preaching or moralizing involved, no encouragement for the reader to join in and get healthy, as Murakami doesn't really know why he started running, nor does he need to justify it; for him, and for this book, it's simply another way of looking at the world around him, allowing him to make gentle observations on the world he views as he runs, and on the nature of his own desires in life. He speaks in very little detail about his literary work, which I found disappointing, and not much more about his own personal life.

Fairly ethereal, but not particularly essential, I casually enjoyed this book as an aside to the author's more serious novels; as a kind of extended essay that offers a carefully-constructed glimpse, but no more, at the man behind so many complicated novels. As a Murakami completest, I was thus both a little frustrated at the purposeful lack of insight but contrarily intrigued further by the few details given that further shaped the personality of an enigmatic figure. It's impossible for an author to write books as distinctive and individualistic as Murakami's without casting the shadow of his personality across the narrative, and Murakami's personal narration is very similar to that of Kafka of Kafka on the Shore, or Hajime of South of the Border, West of the Sun, but obviously the tale never drifts down the same dark paths of magic and mystery, which means ultimately means I can never really love this book on the same level of those fictions.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb- The Black Swan

The Black Swan

Penguin

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2007

“If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.”

It's not very often that I feel tempted to read two non-fiction books in a row, and it's even less often- almost never, in fact- that one of those books happens to be classified by its own publisher (Penguin, if you must know) as a book about economics. In truth, my decision to pick up The Black Swan from the 'miscellaneous' shelf at my local second-hand booke shoppe was merely one built by coincidence that I'm going to explain for no real reason; I'd been reading up on the film Black Swan (which, as everybody already knows, is bloody brilliant), which in turn led me to lightly reading up on the scientific philosophy. When I spotted Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, the topic, the gushing quotes and the snazzy cover tempted me to pick it up.

Taleb is a guy who has plenty of experience working around areas involving risk and the economy; from his younger days as a Wall Street trader to his more recent exploits as a scientific adviser and a university professor, Taleb has met a seemingly-innumerable amount of experts (or idiotic experts) in various parts of the field of economics, and throughout this book offers a very personally-written take on the nature of the black swan phenomena (very briefly for those not aware, a black swan event is any kind of completely unexpected incident that disrupts the field of play; 9/11, for example, or the literal discovery of black swans in newly-discovered Australia), and on the many human reactions to them. Despite having worked around risk and risk advisers his whole career, Taleb's basic message is very simple; black swan events are so inherently unpredictable in many aspects of the world that it's a fools errand to try and predict them, so people should probably stop it.

To achieve his goals, and to ensure his book can appeal to the non-technical reader, Taleb mostly stays away from field-specific lexis and statistics to keep things much more personal; giving the readers lots of autobiographical information  and personal and impersonal anecdotes regarding famous figures in the fields of science, philosophy and business. At times it feels like he's bragging about knowing so many clever people, but Taleb, through years of practice writing essays and his previous book Fooled by Randomness is a talented and charismatic enough author to just about pull off his goals. Later on in the book Taleb does get a little technical, but even warns the reader beforehand so they can skip the chapter if they want to, which is nice.

Like the king of scientific non-fiction (and another name Taleb drops) Richard Dawkins, Taleb is a witty, interesting, and well-written individual, and it this was enough for me to quite enjoy a book that, in lesser hands, could've bored me senseless. Despite finding myself not particularly engrossed by the science, Taleb made me somewhat care about his agenda, which was enough to carry me through. I'm sure there are those with far, far more knowledge of statistics and economic fact who could read this book and absolutely hate it for its opinions, but I am devoid of all intelligence in this matter, and, as they say, ignorance is bliss. Well, not quite bliss, but general amusement nonetheless. 

René Descartes- Discourse on the Method and the Meditations

Discourse on Method and the Meditations

René Descartes
1637 & 1641

"The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts."

Although I really enjoy dabbling in the odd bit of philosophy, picking up famous titles by legendary authors and waving them about in other people's faces so I can make myself look smarter than I am, I'm by no means any kind of expert on the subject. In the past I've picked up some famous titles that I happened to find on the shelves; essays by  Nietzsche, Spinoza and Plato and philosophical fiction from Satre, Camus and Kundera, but if anybody ever tried to quiz me on the possible deeper meanings etcetera of these texts I think I'd crawl up into a ball of tears and embarrass them into going away. I'm explaining this now so when this review fails to tell you anything relevant about René  Descartes and Discourse on Method and the Meditation you can't really complain.

This Penguin Classics edition contains Descartes two most famous pieces, along with a typical haughty introduction and a personal letter from Descartes. The first essay, published in 1637 and fully-titled Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences, is one of the most important and influential works in the history of philosophy and scientific thought, and essentially involves Descartes attempting to address the world of scientific thought in relation to skepticism; by first stripping his thoughts of any preconceived established knowledge so he can tackle the title topic through a supposedly entirely clear and unbiased perspective. Much of this involves the existence of god, and Descartes elegantly argues the proof of the existence of god, though thankfully without the inclusion of typical dogma. Did he convince me? Not really, but I'm a very skeptical person.

The second essay, full and unwieldy title of Meditations on the First Philosophy in which the existence of God and the Real Distinction Between the Soul and the Body of Man are Demonstrated, published in 1641, is a metaphysical exploration summed up by its title- a thematic sequel to Discourse on the Method, Descartes explores through a series of six meditations the logical existence of god as demonstrated by the nature of the human condition. It's a lot more complicated than I can really sum up here in my clumsy prose, and, to tell you the truth, my attention on the subject completely wavered after reading so much concentrated personal logic. Anybody expecting some sort of insight into the subject please refer to the opening paragraph of this review.

Someone who went into this book looking for brilliant insight and mind-opening concepts might find them if they read it about five times alongside an open page of Sparknotes, but otherwise it's certainly not a quick read. While I find it fascinating to explore the extravagant prose and impeccably organized mental thoughts, I wasn't interested enough in the overtly religious and archaic social scientific topics, and therefore didn't really get much out of it and have very little to say here. However, since I'm on a mission to review every prose book I read, I had to do this one as well for some reason.

George R. R. Martin- A Song of Ice and Fire 03- A Storm of Swords- Book Two

A Song of Ice and Fire- Book Three- A Storm of Swords- Part Two- Blood and Gold

Random House

George R.R. Martin
2000

Game of Thrones - A Clash of Kings - A Storm of Swords: Book One: Steel and Snow -  A Storm of Swords: Book Two: Blood and Gold - A Feast for Crows

“The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good. Death and life. Everywhere, opposites.”  

I haven't updated this blog much recently. Much of this is because I exist under the spell of some form of warped writer's block, where even the fairly simple task of writing a short review of something somebody else wrote and then posting it on an amateur blog that nobody reads seems like a task of herculean magnitude. Another reason is that I've been off gallivanting around the globe (well, the Midlands), staring out of the window of trains. Also, the European Championships started, so I've had to watch that. Plus, work. Also, I've read a couple of longer books. And finally, and most honestly, I've been reluctant to sit down and try to write something interesting and new about the latest book I read in George R. R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, to the extent where I've managed to write a whole paragraph of this review without saying anything about it already.

I'm not getting into spoilers, because spoilers are really, really annoying when you accidentally run in to them, and seeing as Martin's series is basically a bloody soap opera for men there's little new to say about each installment. While I do think that the second book, A Clash of Kings was noticeably better than A Game of Thrones in terms of prose style and characterization, the two books that comprise A Storm of Swords were stylistically basically exactly the same, and I have mixed feelings about that.

First of all, Blood and Gold is certainly a lot more eventful than part one, Steel and Snow. Without giving any names. certain things happen to certain characters in ways and times that I wouldn't have predicted, dramatically changing the flow of events across Martin's fictional world. As I said, stylistically it's no more developed than its predecessors, and, four mammoth-sized books into the series, I've started to feel that in a negative way. Martin's prose is so fixed, so unwavering for every character and every event that shocking, dramatic, world-changing set-pieces all read to me as exactly the same, with each one facing the law of diminishing returns. On the other hand, his consistency of quality certainly has done much to allow Martin to capitalize on the legions of new readers (including myself) who first tried this series in print after watching HBO's Game of Thrones TV series (which, it hardly needs saying, is totally excellent).

I'm certainly not going to give up reading the series, since I've come too far now and it's not even finished, I'll be in no hurry to start reading the next installment. This is probably going to make me sound like a bit of a literary snob, but what the hell; there's only so far you can take the same concept without making it a flexible one with more meaning. Despite thousands of pages of character development and interaction, Martin's style just doesn't develop far enough with it to take advantage of the build-up and make the big emotional plot-points of the series as poignant and meaningful as they need to be to justify my interest as much as I'd like. Maybe I'm falling out of love with this series a little bit. 

Terry Pratchett's Discworld 09- Eric

Eric

Corgi

Terry Pratchett
Art by Josh Kirby
1990

Other Terry Pratchett Reviews- The Colour of Magic - The Light Fantastic - Equal Rites - Mort - Sourcery - Wyrd Sisters - Pyramids - Guards! Guards! - Eric - Moving Pictures - Reaper Man - Witches Abroad - Small Gods - Lords and Ladies - Men At Arms - Soul Music - Interesting Times - Maskerade - Feet of Clay - Hogfather - Raising Steam - A Blink of the Screen - Sky1 Adaptations- Dodger - The Long Earth (w Stephen Baxter)

"Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they think they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight."

After eight consecutive full-length novels turned Terry Pratchett into one of the UK's biggest-selling authors and established his fictional flat planet as a melting pot of crazy satirical ideas where anything could happen, the author took a quick break from his normal workload to create a much smaller piece that also happened to be the craziest adventure of them all. Eric returned to examine the fate of the completely non-magical wizard Rincewind, who was last left trapped in a suspiciously familiar demon-filled fiery dungeon dimension. Thankfully, or perhaps not, Rincewind is saved from the lakes of fire through the unintentional efforts of amateur demon-summoner Eric Thursby, thirteen-years-old.

Eric wants only as few meager things that a magical demon should be able to offer; power to rule the world, to meet the most beautiful woman who ever existed, and to live forever. Rincewind explains that he isn't a demon, and therefore can't perform these tricks by clicking his fingers, then, to his ultimate surprise, does so. The result of this is a breath-taking adventure through both time and space, as Rincewind and Eric find themselves flung around the space-time continuum, eventually leading to a meeting with the creator of all life. The plot, as you may have guessed, is a direct satire of Christopher Marlow's Dr. Faustus, or Johann Goethe's Faust, and offers the same sort of moral implications, as Rincewind takes up the role of a rather-more irritated Mephistopheles.

Such is the nature of the novel that the plot is so simple and so-well known that it's not really the point; it reads like an excuse for Pratchett to let loose, to fling his characters into a few different set-pieces that require such a fantastical plot to reach, so that he as the narrator can have some fun exploring and satirizing with familiar twisted logic some ideas that he might otherwise not be able to find an excuse to reach, like The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic or Sourcery on acid. Furthermore, the original, full version of Eric stands out from all  but one other more recent Discworld book (The Last Hero) in that it's an over-sized hardback complete with full single-page and splash-page illustrations from Josh Kirby.

Kirby, who passed away in 2001, had provided the lavishly-detailed cover for each Discworld book prior as well as hundreds of other covers for books and magazines, and film posters. While Eric is available in the regular, non-illustrated format, a reader would be doing themselves a dis-service by skipping over the full version. Without the artwork, Eric is a crazy back-and-forth novella full of fan-service; a slim, poor effort compared to Pratchett's full length work, but Kirby's input changes the project into something a lot more lavish that's much more tempting to look at again

W. Somerset Maugham- The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge

Vintage Classics

W. Somerset Maugham

1944

Other Maugham Reviews- Cakes and Ale - The Magician - The Razor's Edge

"It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them."

When I first picked this book up off the shelf, I had no real idea of what to expect. W. Somerset Maugham was just a name I'd vaguely heard of, but I really had no idea who he was, nor of the type of novels he wrote. The Razor's Edge caught my attention because, and this is somewhat shallow of me, the edition I found was a really nice-looking Random House vintage classic with an eye-catching Leon Benigni artwork cover (the one above, actually), and a back cover blurb describing it as exactly the type of book I'd like to read.

For the first one hundred and fifty pages or so, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to say I enjoyed The Razor's Edge or not. Essentially, the book is a concentrated, dedicated character study involving a small cast of characters, following their lives over a series of important and meaningful character developments. One of these characters is Maugham himself; the author is both the narrator and a character in the book, albeit one whose purpose is to provoke the other characters into personal conversations with personal revelations and private admissions, and who slips in and out of their lives with gaps of a year or more before returning.

W. Somerset Boss Mustache

The real lead character in the book is the enigmatic Larry Darrell; a young veteran of the second world war whose life changes dramatically as he finds a new age direction in it. Larry breaks off his engagement to his fiance Isabel, then moves from Chicago to Paris, and then to the East of the world as he searches to explore his own spirituality and for answers to the great questions of life. Maugham, Larry, Isabel, and Isabel's second choice husband Gray Maturin then all meet semi-regularly in Paris, catching up with the changes in each of their lives.

It took me a little while to get into this book, particularly regarding the style and purpose. Maugham isn't interested in directly exploring the adventures of these characters for the sake of the event, but instead writes reels of conversational dialogue that gets to the heart of each of his characters without being ham-fisted or seeming unnatural. By the end of the book I felt as a reader that I'd been given a brief glimpse into a real life, albeit one seemingly influenced by other notable authors of the era. Maugham, an English writer takes a distinctly American tone with his mostly-American characters, and touches on aspects of The Great Gatsby and other Fitzgeraldian tones with perhaps a hint of earlier George Orwell in the style of the narrative prose. Ultimately I enjoyed the book, but wasn't bowled over by it. I do want to read Maugham's other famous work, On Human Bondage, but there's no rush to persue his bibliography just yet.