Killing Commendatore

I have been a fan of Haruki Murakami’s books for more than a decade now, and I have read almost all of them. I was excited by the promise of this one, and indeed it seemed to contain all the things that make his writing so great, namely the blurring of realism and fantasy. Yet this was in fact a terrible book and I regret having wasted so much time reading it.

Killing Commendatore is the story of a painter whose wife suddenly leaves him. He drives around Japan for a while before settling on a mountain in the home of a famous painter who is now in an old folks’ home. The young painter, whose name we never learn, befriends a mysterious man who lives across the mountain, and finds a mysterious hole out back of his new house. In fact, as with most Murakami books, there is a whole lot of mystery. Even the somewhat normal things that happen are imbued with a certain mystery because the narrator views them that way.

Throughout the book, the narrator brings up the same ideas and events over and over, making you – as reader – wonder what they really mean. There is the whole outside his house, his odd neighbour, a girl he once slept with, a dream, a guy he saw in a café, and much more… All of these appear to be filled with magic and meaning because the narrator presented them that way.

I shan’t given any specific spoilers, but I will say this: nothing actually happens. Nothing is explained and no significance is given to any of the things that the narrator observes. This is a very long, winding book that goes nowhere. All the things that he makes you have interest in are in fact ignored by the end of the book. It seems to me that Murakami was just writing weird stuff and hoping that the book would come together by the end, but it didn’t.

If I was being kind, I might say it was a deliberate choice. In the book, the painter has a painting he doesn’t finish. The elder painter has one whose meaning is lost. Perhaps Murakami was echoing one or both of those in his own book that seems very much unfinished and lacking in conclusive meaning.

Or maybe it was just a rare terrible book by an otherwise talented author. I am more inclined towards this position as there are some genuinely terrible passages. The sex, for one thing, is poorly written (although Murakami was always hilariously bad at writing sex). But sometimes the grammar is just awful. I don’t mean that he is using a particular style that allows sentence fragments, but rather it is sometimes just plain wrong:

·         It seems as if, year after year, the world becomes a more difficult place to live. 

Don’t you mean “live in”? Or “a more difficult place in which to live”?

I suffered through this book because the story was at times quite engaging, but I feel tricked. It went nowhere and it was poorly written. I am sorely disappointed in one of my favourite living writers.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

Looking at my last blog post, I see that it has been more than a year since I posted to this blog. For that, I am sorry. I've not stopped reading. No, on the contrary, I've been reading quite a lot. In fact, I posted some rather good - if I do say so myself - reviews to the Beatdom website. However, this blog sort of lost interest to me. I felt pressured to write reviews and I wasn't enjoying it very much. However, now I'm back in that frame of mind and ready to review once again. 

So here goes. 

A few weeks ago I was in Edinburgh and I found a book called Ikigai. It sounded interesting, and I could see from the reviews that it was highly regarded. The book professes to hold the secret to happiness and longevity, and though that it is a bold enough claim to assume impossible, I was quite attracted by the book's design and the fact that it was based upon Japanese philosophy. I've long been attracted to the Land of the Rising Sun. 

I didn't buy the book, but I did download it on Kindle later. The reason I didn't buy it there and then in the shop was because, although it did look beautiful and did sound interesting, whenever I opened it, the text was a bit... well... a bit wanky. That's a British way of saying it sounded like bullshit. 

Unfortunately, when I got into reading the book some days later, I found that my initial ideas about the book were correct. It was terrible. The book is a mix of the most awful pop science, some bullshit spiritualism, and advice that is so patently obvious that it is not worth saying unless you are teaching small children. It seems that half the sentences in the book start with "According to expert scientists..." and end with "... can improve your mind-body-chakra connection." 

Ok, I don't think that they ever actually said "chakra". This is, after all, based upon Japanese ideas. However, there is a liberal dose of hippie bollocks smeared through the pages. The text jumps from idea to idea like a badly organized meditation retreat, and backs up idiotic claims with things that no one could deny: eat healthily, get some exercise, avoid stress. In these, they of course hide elements of nonsense, adding that eating healthily should include superfoods and that exercise should definitely include yoga! (I have nothing against blueberries and yoga, but don't pretend these are some fucking magical elixir.)

The book definitely contains good advice, and I assume it's so popular because it targets the average idiot pretty well. I can think of a good hundred people I've met in my life who would read this and find it absolutely wonderful. But for me, it was genuinely difficult to finish, even though it's a very short book. It's like sitting through a kindergarten class as an adult. "No, I wasn't planning to eat that glue... and give me back my fucking scissors." 

If you have any self-respect, avoid Ikigai. I don't mean the concept (which, by the way, I forgot to mention means something like "finding your passion and sticking to it"). No, avoid this book. Go to Japan or read Murakami or something instead. This book will do nothing good for you. 

Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall

I’ve recently powered through this fantastic book during my rare downtime studying a CELTA course in Thailand. I’m usually quite a slow reader, but Prisoners of Geography is so engaging that I reached the end in no time and was left wishing there was more of the world to cover.

The premise of Tim Marshall’s new book is simple: our world is governed by geography more than we know. Perhaps that seems obvious; perhaps it seems an overstatement. Yet Marshall makes a good case that our present geopolitical situation is dictated by largely the same forces that ancient nations abided.

Geography has always been a prison of sorts – one that defines what a nation is or can be, and one from which our world leaders have often struggled to break free.

He goes from Russia to China to the USA, visiting India and Pakistan, Korea and Japan, and even the Arctic, explaining why our world is shaped the way it is. References are made, fittingly, to Jared Diamond’s work, which I reviewed here last month. His observations on politics and history are astute, and his descriptions of planet’s geographical features are wonderful.

Often Marshall acknowledges the absurdity of the nation state, which is fundamentally a prison of its own, applied forcefully to the world by the European powers, and which chokes us and causes untold destruction today. One passage I loved from this book illuminates that point:

The notion that a man from a certain area could not travel across a region to see a relative from the same tribe unless he had a document, granted to him by a third man he didn’t know in a faraway town, made little sense. The idea that the document was issued because a foreigner had said the area was now two regions and had made up names for them made no sense at all and was contrary to the way in which life had been lived for centuries.

Marshall seems pre-occupied with the potential for cataclysmic global war and points out numerous places on the globe where it could happen, although he does end on a more hopeful note, looking off into space – where we are finally free of our geographic prison.

The Worst Motorcycle in Laos, by Chris Tharp

This fantastic collection of travel essays takes its title from a shorter piece near the end of the book. The author details a comedic journey through Southern Laos on a motorcycle that may very well be the worst bike in the whole damn country. The essay is typical of Tharp's style - witty, descriptive, and no-holds-barred. He barely manages to get the bike through a trail called The Loop, suffering a series of comic misadventures, before coming to the realization that sometimes we need these calamities in order to see the real side of a place.

Throughout this short and enjoyable collection, Tharp takes us off the beaten track to a number of weird and wonderful locations across Asia, from Western China to the Philippines, from Japan to Thailand. In every instance he presents the world as fascinating, colorful, and mysterious. He lopes around drunkenly for the most part, stumbling from misadventure to misadventure, but never forgetting to clue us in on his surroundings. The result is a very funny, very informative, and strangely poignant book.

If you love travel or are interested in the food, the culture, or even the landscape of Asia, check out this cool book. If you're sick of Lonely Planet and sugary-sweet travel blogs, I'm pretty sure you'll get a kick out of Tharp's tales.