after the quake
of the 4 books i borrowed on sat, i have already finished 3 and the last one is almost finished too. i am quite stunned by the reading pace. it's like you are reading with a vengeance, like reading as though all the books in the world will disappear tomorrow. something like that.
someone has to do the shit. like shovelling snow, as the narrator in murakami's dance dance dance said.
coming to murakami: his book after the quake is full of memorable lines. it's a collection of short stories, linked together only by the kobe earthquake. ok, indirectly. cos basically the quake served as a reminder of the characters' past. it's sort of the common link between all of them, whom i feel that are very different, yet similar in that they are basically lost people. you can say misfits. when was the last time i did lit? sec 4.
anyway. right at the beginning of the book:
Radio:...garrison already decimated by the vietcong, who lost 115 of their men...
Woman: it's awful isnt it, it's so anonymous.
Man: what is?
Woman: they say 115 guerillas, yet it doesnt mean anything ebcause we dont know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman, or have children, if they prefer the cinema to the theatre. we know nothing. they just say...115 dead.
jean-luc godard, pierrot le fou
back to the book proper:
shimao: no matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.
Keisuke: the trouble is i dont have a damn thing to do with anything 50000 years ago-or 50000years from now, either. nothing. zero. what's important is now. who knows when the world is gonna end? who can thing about the future? the only thing that matters is whether i can get my stomach full right now and get it up right now. right?
Miyake: but theres such a thing as a way of living thats guided by the way a person's going to die.
junko: theres really nothing at all in here. i'm cleaned out. empty.
meaning itself broke down and would never be the same again, just as the question of whether he could catch an outfield fly had ceased to be a matter of life and death to him anymore.
yoshiya: what i was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me. i just happened to catch sight of it, and followed it, and clung to it, and in the end let it fly into still deeper darkness. i am sure i will never see it again.
nimit: i spent 33 years as anotehr man's shadow.
nimit: i was i a sense a part of him. when u live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is that you yourself really want out of life.
nimit: but still i cannot be sure if i really did hear it with my own ears.
satsuki: are you prepared to die?
"i am half dead already," nimit said as if stating the obvious.
nimit: living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.
Frog: my enemy is, among other things, the me inside me. inside me is the un-me.
what was there left for him[junpei] to decide?
junpei felt an entirely new sense of isolation. i have no roots, he thot, i am not connected to anyting.
tonkichi told masakichi: we are supposed to be friends. its not right for one friend to do all the giving, and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship........and if you and i meet up again somewhether, we can be best friends again.
junpei: i want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.
by the way, i liked the story told by junpei of masakichi and tonkichi, the two bears. it was a parallel of his own relationship with sayoko.
------
philosophical football: the team that plays with strength in depth by mark perryman is very witty and interesting. it really gives us an idea of how those thinkers would have played their football if they had applied their ideas to the field. and not to mention those puns. they were really clever. it is really a clever book.
---
balzac's colonel chabert is quite a depressing book in that it shows us the worst of humanity. yet in stirring our emotions, we realise that we are at heart, still human. herein lay its brilliance.
from the book:
"Monsieur!" but it was at one and the same time a reproach, a prayer, a pardon, a hope, a despair, a question and an answer. this one word said it all. you had to be an actress to put so much eloquence and so much varied feeling into a single word. truth never expresses itself so completely; it doesnt show everything on the outside, it leaves you to guess at what lies within.
derville: do you know, my friend that there are three types of men in our society- the priest, the doctor and the lawyer- who are quite unable to view the world with any esteem? they all wear black, perhaps because they are in mourning for all virtues and all illusions.
---
futebol: soccer, the brazilian way of life
there is one particular section which really caught my attention. the part about this guy who lived close to the uruguayan-brazilian border, who designed the first version of brazil's playing kit, yet felt a closer affinity to uruguay. oh and he is a novelist, albeit an uruguayan one; brazilians dun read his books. it makes you wonder about identity. the contradictions of living on the frontier: whose side do you belong to?
someone has to do the shit. like shovelling snow, as the narrator in murakami's dance dance dance said.
coming to murakami: his book after the quake is full of memorable lines. it's a collection of short stories, linked together only by the kobe earthquake. ok, indirectly. cos basically the quake served as a reminder of the characters' past. it's sort of the common link between all of them, whom i feel that are very different, yet similar in that they are basically lost people. you can say misfits. when was the last time i did lit? sec 4.
anyway. right at the beginning of the book:
Radio:...garrison already decimated by the vietcong, who lost 115 of their men...
Woman: it's awful isnt it, it's so anonymous.
Man: what is?
Woman: they say 115 guerillas, yet it doesnt mean anything ebcause we dont know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman, or have children, if they prefer the cinema to the theatre. we know nothing. they just say...115 dead.
jean-luc godard, pierrot le fou
back to the book proper:
shimao: no matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.
Keisuke: the trouble is i dont have a damn thing to do with anything 50000 years ago-or 50000years from now, either. nothing. zero. what's important is now. who knows when the world is gonna end? who can thing about the future? the only thing that matters is whether i can get my stomach full right now and get it up right now. right?
Miyake: but theres such a thing as a way of living thats guided by the way a person's going to die.
junko: theres really nothing at all in here. i'm cleaned out. empty.
meaning itself broke down and would never be the same again, just as the question of whether he could catch an outfield fly had ceased to be a matter of life and death to him anymore.
yoshiya: what i was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me. i just happened to catch sight of it, and followed it, and clung to it, and in the end let it fly into still deeper darkness. i am sure i will never see it again.
nimit: i spent 33 years as anotehr man's shadow.
nimit: i was i a sense a part of him. when u live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is that you yourself really want out of life.
nimit: but still i cannot be sure if i really did hear it with my own ears.
satsuki: are you prepared to die?
"i am half dead already," nimit said as if stating the obvious.
nimit: living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.
Frog: my enemy is, among other things, the me inside me. inside me is the un-me.
what was there left for him[junpei] to decide?
junpei felt an entirely new sense of isolation. i have no roots, he thot, i am not connected to anyting.
tonkichi told masakichi: we are supposed to be friends. its not right for one friend to do all the giving, and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship........and if you and i meet up again somewhether, we can be best friends again.
junpei: i want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.
by the way, i liked the story told by junpei of masakichi and tonkichi, the two bears. it was a parallel of his own relationship with sayoko.
------
philosophical football: the team that plays with strength in depth by mark perryman is very witty and interesting. it really gives us an idea of how those thinkers would have played their football if they had applied their ideas to the field. and not to mention those puns. they were really clever. it is really a clever book.
---
balzac's colonel chabert is quite a depressing book in that it shows us the worst of humanity. yet in stirring our emotions, we realise that we are at heart, still human. herein lay its brilliance.
from the book:
"Monsieur!" but it was at one and the same time a reproach, a prayer, a pardon, a hope, a despair, a question and an answer. this one word said it all. you had to be an actress to put so much eloquence and so much varied feeling into a single word. truth never expresses itself so completely; it doesnt show everything on the outside, it leaves you to guess at what lies within.
derville: do you know, my friend that there are three types of men in our society- the priest, the doctor and the lawyer- who are quite unable to view the world with any esteem? they all wear black, perhaps because they are in mourning for all virtues and all illusions.
---
futebol: soccer, the brazilian way of life
there is one particular section which really caught my attention. the part about this guy who lived close to the uruguayan-brazilian border, who designed the first version of brazil's playing kit, yet felt a closer affinity to uruguay. oh and he is a novelist, albeit an uruguayan one; brazilians dun read his books. it makes you wonder about identity. the contradictions of living on the frontier: whose side do you belong to?
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