January 20, 2005
Some Books
These are some books I liked this month.
Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land is incredibly funny and frank. Evidently he had trouble getting it published in the US - which is yet another reason why the whole book industry deserves to be buried by video games and porn and never heard from again. Still, books still get published somehow, so we all need to do our bit and buy more of them. In paperback this one's a steal. Plus the author lives in Astoria, and we need a famous writer to keep Jonathan Letham and his superheros on the other side of the Kosciuszko bridge.
I also loved Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, and if I have kids I’m going to teach it to them as if it were a bible for atheists. It’s made up of several narratives: a 19th century a seafaring diary, a louche composer’s journal, a Chinatown style novelette, an escape from Alcatraz style story set in an old-folks home, a hyper-consumer futuristic Korea with a clone problem, and everything that happens after that, and it works. I really loved it.
Also,
Last week a friend and I were at a Japanese restaurant and we both ordered the Eel. It turns out we’ve been craving it ever since reading Kafka On The Shore. According to the new Haruki Murakami Website, eel is actually his favorite lunch, which leads me to believe that Murakami is engaged in some advanced hypnosis and mind control in this book. That would explain the appearance of Johhny Walker as a house-cat butcher and Colonel Sanders as a freewheeling pimp - It's some kind of long distance psycho-advertising mind control. Wierd stuff.
(The website is actually pretty cool - be sure to check out the section where the jacket designers discuss the covers on the American edition.)
So that’s it. You'll note from the time below that I have insomnia so sorry if this seems... oh what the hell am I apologizing for, this is a fucking blog.
Hope all’s well.
Update:
Wow - these guys do not fuck around.
Another Update:
Here David Mitchell, author of the Cloud Atlas, reviews Kafka on The Shore.
