FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

 On 4/2/2012 I wrote a review of Haruki Murakami’s bestseller, 1Q84, and stated that this Japanese author writes in a semi-abstract way aimed at the artsy crowd and that he may be starting his own genre. Well, that might still be the case, but not with this novel of eight short stories. Like Seinfeld’s show about nothing, this novel also seems to be about nothing. Most of his stories in this work are very pedestrian...un-Japanese for the most part. You can change the names of the cities he uses in his book to American cities without changing the theme or flavor of the story. Two of his stories were somewhat entertaining and displayed a smidgen of Japanese writing. The other six could have been aped by any American or English author of note. There are two things that I observed to be typical Murakami. The first one is the overall feeling of loneliness in his eight stories. Secondly, I noticed the familiar suicide motif lurking in the background. Japanese writers have committed suicide fifty-four times since 1900 (I’m not saying Haruki is suicidal). The attitude in Japan is still muddled with the past actions of the Samurai Warriors and Kamikaze pilots. If you think you have failed in life there is always hara-kiri (seppuku) to perform to better yourself in your next life. That kind of feeling is lurking in the backdrop in most of his stories. All narrators (In the first person singular novel) displayed despondency and estrangement. I think this writing style is the direct result of losing WWII (especially how it ended), for most Japanese authors, who write with a “Woe, is me” slant (consciously or unconsciously). 

In the middle of the With the Beatles short story, Haruki writes, “...That was how I ended up that Sunday reading part of Akutagawa’s Spinning Gears to my girlfriend Sayoko’s eccentric older brother. I was a bit reluctant at first, but I warmed to the job. The supplementary reader had the two final sections of the story Red Lights and Airplane--but I just read Airplane. It was about eight pages long, and it ended with the line, ‘Won’t someone be good enough to strangle me as I sleep?’ Akutagawa killed himself right after writing this line.” Later on in the story, Haruki runs into the brother again, “Sayoko passed away,” he said quietly. We were in a nearby coffee shop, seated across a plastic table from each other. “Passed away?” The brother responds with, “She died three years ago.” “I was speechless. I felt as if my tongue were swelling up inside my mouth. I tried to swallow the saliva that had built up, but couldn’t”

In the short story, Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey we finally come to a somewhat amusing story. Haruki finds himself in a town too late to go home. All the inns are full except a shabby one at the end of town. He checks in and finds that he is the only guest (In each story loneliness crops up). “I was soaking in the bath for the third time when the monkey slid open the door with a clatter and came inside.” “Excuse me,” he said in a low voice. It took me a while to realize that this was a monkey. All the thick, hot water had made me a little dazed, and I’d never expected to hear a monkey speak, so I couldn’t quickly make the connection between what I was seeing and the fact that this was an actual monkey.” “How is the bath?” the monkey asked me. “...hold on a second. What was a monkey doing here? And why was he speaking in a human language?” Haha, you will have to read the story yourself to find out what happens next. I think that I’m used to Stephen King-type short stories or collections of novellas like Four Past Midnight (1990) that spawned the scary movie, The Langoliers. There just wasn’t any guts to Haruki’s novel.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Japan is not alone with authors that wrote depressing short stories and committed suicide. The USA’s main offender would be Ernest Hemingway, who shot himself with his shotgun in Idaho after years of being treated for depression. 

His short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) is filled with death, isolation, and estrangement. Nothing to cheer about here.

His Hills Like White Elephants (1927) is another depressing story about a man and a woman in Spain discussing an operation believed to be...abortion.

And there is nothing happy about the slaughter of bulls (bullfighting) he wrote about in Spain during the 1950s for Life magazine.

As he was dying, he reportedly said to his wife Mary, “Goodnight my kitten.” 

the EFFORT

 It’s not just another story about a comet hitting earth...well it is in a way, but for all intents and purposes, it’s about how the hoi polloi would react when it gets the news (fake news or true) of an impending collision? It doesn’t matter if the news is inaccurate or true. Once the cat is out of the bag...the poop hits the fan. Will China and Russia pull in their horns and not help until they find out where the comet will hit. Would they be less cooperative if they think the comet will hit the USA? How long before the looting starts and grocery shelves become empty? Is it every man for themselves? This story attempts to answer those questions. Claire Holroyde’s novel is a good one with some minor flaws. The prose is solid and mistake-free. The amount of research she put in is questionable, although I personally like the lack of confusing scientific facts. Just give me the story! She escapes my theory of three to five maximum main characters by spotlighting the remainder in separate chapters. And she gets away with having different champions at the story’s end than the protagonists that I thought were the main heroes in the beginning chapters. What I mean by that is the author had Ben, Amy, Love, Jack, and Maya (no surnames needed) dominate the first part of the novel, then they almost disappeared and Gustavo, Zhen, Dewei, Ned, and Captain Weber became the main characters in the waning chapters. How did she do that? Good writing? Am I the only reviewer that noticed the writer's theatrics? 

In chapter one, Dr. Ben Scwartz gets an urgent phone call in the middle of the night. It’s from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It’s the famous astrophysicist, Dr. Tobias Ochsenfeld. He says, “Now, Ben, you need to get to the airport in Los Angeles. Immediately. “Why?” “Because the UN is arranging your flight to French Guiana.” (The author never explains why French Guiana). “I’m not going anywhere until I know what this is about.” “A dark comet was discovered yesterday,” the Professor said. “It just rounded the sun on an eccentric orbit...the comet has no name, only its label, UD3. No one at Spacewatch wanted to put their mark on it.” “I suppose extinction is...inconceivable,” The Professor added. “Extinction? How big is the comet?” The Professor said, “Eight kilometers.” There was silence on the line. Ben could hear his own panting. I’m wondering if a comet of about eight kilometers would make it through our atmosphere since it’s mostly ice? A meteoroid would certainly get partially through. Like I previously said, I’m not interested in the scientific side anyway. Haha. Stop wondering! So how are they going to stop the comet? Once in the French Guiana Spaceport, Ben surmises, “Nuclear weapons weren’t built to vaporize a comet or asteroid flying through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour, they were built to hit static, terrestrial targets.”

In analyzing Claire’s book further, I found two other items to chew on. Why was chapter 24 so hostile compared to the other 35 chapters and so long? Did little Dr. Zhen Liu change into a tiger that fast? And in chapter 31, what did Enrico of Mexico have to do with the story? He came out of left field for no reason. So as usual I found flaws, but as a whole, it was a good yeoman’s effort for her first novel. I know, I know, it’s tough writing a novel. But when you compare the authors I have reviewed over the last eleven years, they pale when I compare them to my two writing pedagogues, Mark Twain and Cormac McCarthy (He of zero quotation marks and very few characters).

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I don’t have a favorite comet crashing into earth movie or book, but I do have five disaster movies that I’ve enjoyed over the years:

1. The Poseidon Adventure (1976) - Great action with Ernest Borgnine leading the way! Score: Tsunami 1, Luxury liner 0. 

2. Titanic (1997) - The Disaster love story for the ages!

3. The Perfect Storm (2000) - Oh my God...that last horrible wave!

4. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - The big chill...Dennis Quaid looks for his son!

5. Jurassic Park (1993) - The first one. The tension after the power failure was awesome!