I shall start reading Murakami as soon as I finish Umberto Eco’s new novel,
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. It is a story of a man in his 60s (very much resembling the Master himself), who after an accident lost his explicit memory, i.e. the one associated with emotions. As a result, he remembers everything he’s ever read and speaks in quotes, but when looking at a wedding photo of his parents, he doesn’t remember who they are. All feelings brought up by drinking hot tea and brushing teeth are new (although he’d definitely experienced those before). The book, hence, is the story of a man in search for his lost emotional memories (shall we call it
experience?)
Although I already find the book interesting, I couldn’t help pitying myself that I’m reading it in English translation. I should’ve read it in Italian. The problem with translation of this particular text (or rather, its first chapter) is that all characters speak similarly. Now and again I was catching myself on a thought that there’s not much difference between how a doctor, the protaginist (an antique book dealer) and his wife (a psychologist) speak. It’s like one person talking all the time. The wife is particularly disturbing, her speech is so scholastic and unnatural, I began to ponder if I might sound like her at times – which, if I do, is pretty dreadful. [I’m also absolutely sure that I never sound like her, but literature has indeed manifested its power by confusing me]. Anyway, I’m looking forward to next chapters. Oh, there are many illustrations in the book, some in colour.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is published by Vintage Books (London, 2006), translation by Geoffrey Brock.
For some reason, I wasn’t impressed with anything I saw on the ‘Recommended’ bookshelf in the new Waterstones in Manchester. I know I nearly bought a little book by Jerome K. Jerome, but put it on the shelf, went elsewhere, and eventually forgot to buy it. But the books on the ‘Recommended’ stand didn’t hook me. Ten years ago, when I was attending an English class with a native speaker (twice a week, in addition to my normal school hours), one of the topics we once discussed was our reading habits. One member of the group, a medical student in his final year, said that he’d normally read first 10 pages, and if they failed to impress him, he’d put the book back on the shelf.
Back then, being incorrigibly romantic and untarnished by much experience, myself and two other students protested ardently against this student’s ‘erroneous position’. Ten years later, and especially after visiting Waterstones last week, I’ve begun to feel that 10 pages is sometimes too long. Needless to say, when you read exclamations like ‘I couldn’t put the book down!!!‘ coming from a critic writing for a very old and respected edition, you kind of feel confused and even disturbed, if you fail to appreciate the book’s ingenuity. But it’s not my fault that of about seven books that I went through five (!!!) started with a similar exposition. I know definitely that in two of them a protagonist found himself waking up, and in another two the protagonist was riding or driving somewhere.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that before an author writes the first sentence, s/he has to go through their entire library, to check if this first sentence is totally original. Equally, I don’t know why those phrases and even styles in which they are written look and sound so similar to one another. I’ve recently gone through several publications of the new Russian poems, and I couldn’t help noticing that most of them are even written in the same metrical foot. This is something I have to say about The Da Vinci Code – although it was a dull and dragging reading at times, it was at least captivating in the beginning.
So, I’m looking for originality, and whilst I’m looking for it, I’m also engorging on the good old classics. I’m going to reread Das Parfuem by Patrick Sueskind. I read the novel ages ago, when I was still a student, and I know it impressed me a lot, and I’d love to read it again before I watch the screen adaptation by Tom Tykwer. I have to say, few adaptations impressed me in the past, the most disappointing being One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Milos Forman. Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange also wasn’t particularly pleasing.
I guess it has to do with how we read books. Speaking of A Clockwork Orange (which deserves a different chapter altogether), for me the most important part in the book is when Alex leaves prison. Everything before the book’s final is important, of course, but Alex’s rampages and his time in prison are not what the book is about. It is about human violence, insincerity and indifference, which start in the family and society and the physical expression of which is only the tip of the iceberg. Burgess’s novel (like all good works of literature) depicts – sometimes in a very detailed and painful way – the tip, but the base of the iceberg is always to be found by the reader, providing s/he is attentive to the hints and keys scattered by the author throughout the book.
So, I’m going to reread Das Parfuem, I’m reading the new book by Eco, and I’ll be reading Murakami. And I’ll also be keeping my fingers crossed for Mario Vargas Llosa who, as some tabloids have reported, is in the long list for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I’ll be way over the Moon (and over Aisa Tanaf, perhaps), if he wins it.
Also, this Sunday I’ve been to my first rugby match at the Halliwell Jones Stadium in Warrington. I’ve seen lots of rugby on TV since 2003, but I’ve never been to the rugby stadium before this Sunday. Both teams for which I was supposed to cheer (one of them was a local team, Swinton Lions) lost, and I left half-deaf, without finishing watching the second game. Well, hopefully next time it’ll be better. In the meantime I’m following the football leagues and championships – sporadically, when I decide that the only thing I want to do in my free time is to knit and to listen to the TV.
