demagogue on 24/8/2017 at 14:55
I actually went to the big Kinokuniya book store today in Shinjuku (only one with an entire floor for English books, not just a section), and picked up a book on philosophy of action. John Hyman's Action Knowledge & Will.
There's a reason this book was the obvious choice. Along with everything else I've been doing, I've slowly been trying to hammer out my own theory of everything. The physical sciences are pretty much covered by the Standard Model. It's the human sciences and human being that I want to understand. After reading around for a while, a couple of ideas keep coming up over and over and have started to coalesce. One of them is that Action Theory is at the center of everything else, either the hub through which everything is connected or the keystone that at least keeps everything from flying apart, depending on your perspective on it.
I actually think this book isn't completely square with my own thinking. It is maybe compared to the classic line out there it's trying to rework, which I'd agree with, but my way of thinking pushes out even further on some points. But in any event, it has really interesting things to say about it that I think will challenge me to think through anyway. Maybe at some point I could give you a thumbnail lowdown of what I've come up with, but that'll probably have to be its own thread.
Also I guess worth mentioning, at this point I'm a bit past the tipping point where I'm reading more non-fiction now ... history, politics, physics (particle & cosmology recently), and quite a bit of core philosophy like this. Fiction practically has to be able to offer me some new perspective for me to feel it's worth it anymore, it feels like. And even then.... I remember trying to read the postmodern tromp House of Leaves not too long ago, thinking it was going to give me some really new perspective on reality or whatever. Although it had a few sort of interesting formatting quirks, a few legit lol zingers, and the concept might have felt fresh in the 90s, but the idea of a Euclidian-space breaking house that has endless 5th dimensional hallways in some interminable maze and paranoiac-supernatural stuff going down is actually kind of passe by now. It's like a Frictional game put to print, and not even half the action. Scifi and cyberpunk books have had a better record for me, but their tropes are at threat of being even more worn out.
Sulphur on 24/8/2017 at 16:14
Depends on what you read for, dema. At some point I suppose fiction loses its sheen if you're looking for it to excite and invigorate you with new information and perspectives that inform your own viewpoints on life. Certainly non-fiction can be more adept at that because it's not looking to reel you in, either you're interested in learning what an author has to say on the subject, or you're not.
My general expectation from any fiction is for it to rouse and shake me and at some point say to my face, 'Are you not entertained?' If the answer is 'yes', it has served its purpose. If a book does that along with teaching me a thing or two about life and the universe at large, well, it's a very special thing then indeed.
Yakoob on 24/8/2017 at 20:34
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Right. I wrapped up Murakami's 1Q84. Can't say I enjoyed my time with it; for all the magical realism that it could evoke, it's still a glacially paced non-adventure full of wordy meanderings leading from a terminal lack of focus. Philosophically, it's about motherhood along with the act of writing being an act of creation. Stylistically, it's a ponderous shaggy-dog yarn. Thematically, it's a romance story held at gunpoint by its POV abstractions. I also couldn't escape the feeling that any poetic sensibilities in the text were probably obfuscated by the translation: maybe it reads beautifully in Japanese, but in English it's plainly described mundanities existing side-by-side with the fantastical, which through some sort of linguistic osmosis renders
all of it pretty unspecial.
Anyway. On to the next thing.
Eh I kind of felt the same about Kafka on the Shore. So much meandering, so much symbolism and stuff... but it just kind of fell flat and uninteresting.
Thirith on 24/8/2017 at 20:46
Have either of you read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle? If so, what did you think of that one? I like it a lot, so I'm wondering if Murakami isn't your thing or if those two novels are simply not as good.
demagogue on 24/8/2017 at 23:56
He famously writes seat of the pants. Leaving people wandering through the fog of his linguistic maze is pretty much the feature not the bug.
Sulphur on 25/8/2017 at 03:24
I haven't read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, but I did read Kafka on the Shore, which I thought was decent if not particularly fantastic. It's less of a blank fug than 1Q84, at the very least, because Kafka is an interesting personality, and the plot manages to travel to an interesting place or two. Overall, his style -- which I'd affectionately call 'semiotic mayonnaise' -- doesn't quite work for me, at least from these two books.
I'm still interested in TWBC, as I hear it's one of his best, so maybe it has the spark these two are missing. Your thoughts on it, Thirith?
Starker on 25/8/2017 at 04:01
Jay Rubin is an excellent translator, so it's likely Murakami is just not your cuppa. I wonder how you'd react to Kobo Abe or Kenzaburo Oe, though.
Thirith on 25/8/2017 at 04:08
It's been a while (i.e. at least 10 years) since I last read TWBC, but I liked it a lot. My first Murakami was Norwegian Wood, which some of my friends loved, but that one didn't do that much for me. TWBC, however, got under my skin. I like the writing style, I like how reality is intruded on by weird shit; it's got the dreamy-to-nightmarish quality that my favourite David Lynch scenes have, without becoming entirely random. Not sure the plot as a whole is all that memorable, but it absolutely worked for me on the strength of its mood and atmosphere. I've read and enjoyed some of his other books, but none of them made as much of an impression at the time as TWBC. (I just realised that I read Kafka a few years ago, but I remember nothing at all about it.)
Sulphur on 25/8/2017 at 04:32
Quote Posted by Starker
Jay Rubin is an excellent translator, so it's likely Murakami is just not your cuppa. I wonder how you'd react to Kobo Abe or Kenzaburo Oe, though.
My point wasn't that the translation was
bad so much as the sense I get that the original text's linguistic cadence and sensibilities haven't carried over, which is most probably the case because the languages don't share the same roots.
Thirith: I do enjoy that sort of thing when it's done well, as it is in a fair few PKD stories. I'll keep a look-out for TWBC.
Starker on 25/8/2017 at 05:30
A good translator will absolutely recreate or compensate for the author's unique style. From what I have read of Murakami in Japanese, he actually does write pretty mundanely. Or at least the emphasis is clearly more on plot than prosody. There's repetitions, kind of robotic dialogue, etc. In fact, some of the translations have felt better flowing than the original.