I was poring over A Wild Sheep Chase - happily, the last book by Japanese author Haruki Murakami which I have not read.
His ability to see through contemporary, day-to-day events, crystallising the abject loneliness of individuals, I said.
His characters have a precious interiority, which I love the most about a writer. I find interiority hard to achieve in a character, without sounding self-centred and indulgent, or even plodding.
They border on the surreal and fantastical - yet he's melded that with the real, everyday dogfest of life.
I disovered Murakami late in life. It was in the university classroom during Poetry, when the lecturer yanked out a passage from Dance Dance Dance. It's easily my favourite of his works - hard to say whether it's because it's the best, or because it's a sentimental bridge to My First Murakami Encounter.
Even later in life - just right now - I discovered that Dance Dance Dance is the sequel to Wild Sheep Chase. In the same way that Murakami's writing is off-kilter and yet straight-to-the-nose, I guess I got it the right way wrong.
There is this heady straightness to everything, in his writing. This optimistic hopelessness that endears.
Reading Murakami is like reading the Book of Ecclesiastes.
There is nothing new under the sun; whatever we're doing now has been done before. But we do it anyway. We eat, sleep, shit, work, go home, and do it all over again the next day.
Why?
What are we looking for?
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I really like Kinokuniya. It's been a long time.
H. and I paid the bookstore a visit yesterday. It was a wonderful, deliciously slow day. We took a day off to have brunch, chat, browse through books, have tea with J., buy a belt.
The atmosphere at Kinokuniya is different from Borders. I like the white clarity of space, the book ladders, and the smell of Kinokuniya. The books give off a chocolatey warmth that's comforting.
So I bought Wild Sheep Chase, a cookbook by Jamie Oliver: Ministry of Food, and a two-year membership to Kinokuniya.
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