Grant Oesterling
3.5
I gotta say, after the incredible first couple of chapters, I was fully out on this book for a long stretch until the end. This is the Murakami I thought that would have matched my taste the most: surrealist sci-fi noir with a philosophical bend? I mean come on!
But a lot of it I found slow, or eye-rolling, or both. When I was younger I think I found Murakami's incessant references to music/film/lit exciting and charming; now I tend to find them a bit irritating and taste-flex-y. And I know I know - there is something to be said for the references in the Wonderland section here being indicative of the material reality of the world blah blah blah.... but whatever
I came back around in the last act of the book, and actually found it pretty moving. But still, it made me pretty nervous to revisit the other Murakami's that I thought were some of my favorites of all time
4.5 bordering on 5
total masterpiece. can't be understated how important this is as a foundation for the postmodern canon. Almost all of my favorite books are all indebted to Moby Dick in some way, ESPECIALLY Pynchon's work and House of Leaves
score may jump up as i listen to lectures and continue exploring this tome ☺️
Pale Fire meets Ficciones meets Annihilation meets (the good parts of) Skinamarink meets Infinite Jest meets I don't know what. if there exists anything more up my alley than this, I have yet to find it
I did have some issues with a lot of Johnny's digressions and found some of the shape poetry stuff a little gimmicky, but god I love this book
highly recommend this as a starting point for DFW
lacks the scale and mastery of IJ (what doesn't?), but nonetheless an obscenely brilliant and clever book. insane that he wrote this at 24 - what a talent
lots of building blocks for IJ to be found here - you can tell IJ was the culmination and logical conclusion of what he was trying to do throughout his early work
Unlike anything I have ever read. Insane, manic, wild. Certainly a book I will never read again, but I am glad I had the experience. The best description I think comes from the final pages of the book itself:
“This book spill off the page in all directions, kaleidoscope of vistas, medley of tunes and street noises, farts and riot yipes and the slamming steel shutters of commerce, screams of pain and pathos and screams plain pathic, copulating cats and outrages squawk of the displaced bull head, prophetic mutterings of brujo in nutmeg trances, snapping necks and screaming mandrakes, sigh of orgasm, heroin silent as down in the thirsty cells, Radio Cairo screaming like a berserk tobacco auction, and flutes of Ramadan fanning the sick junky like a gentle lush worker in the grey subway dawn feeling with delicate fingers for the green folding crackle....”
Side note: wild that the band Steely Dan got their name from a series of Yokohama dildos described in this book
The misogynist and racist overtones pretty unfortunate (to say the least), but man this book really is somethin' else
Kesey's prose is gorgeously simple - poetic and powerful, yet effortlessly readable. It has been quite awhile since I have been this engrossed in a book - not to mention the profound emotional impact it had on me throughout
McMurphy, for all his problematic traits and antics, might be my favorite character in all of fiction. You better believe I was grinning like a fool anytime he did or said basically anything - even laughing out loud half the time
I won't deny that, as a white male, I'm sure I am much more predisposed to liking this than other people may be. And I certainly don't blame people for not enjoying this book and/or finding it offensive - no doubt this book has some issues. But hooeee I sure did enjoy it
about 35% of this is like wow 5 stars - super profound, incredible philosophical insights. the other 65% are (in my opinion) pretty boring musings on the depth of Walden Pond, instructions on how to farm beans, cost accounting, etc etc. I'd only really recommend this if you are really interested in Thoreau and his way of living
recommended album pairing: Hiroshi Yoshimura - Green (SFX Version)
bonus section: favorite quotes! (mainly for my own future reference)
“if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way”
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn from what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”
“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude”
“Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations”
“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation”
“Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography”
“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe”
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names ... Love your life, poor as it is”
there are definitely some really good tips in here: remember and use people's first names, don't be conservative with giving compliments, show interest in what other people are interested in, etc
but, as you might expect from reading the title, a lot of this book comes off as “How to Manipulate People 101”, which sort of left a bad taste in my mouth
my first Pynchon. mysterious, enthralling, confusing; have to admit i don't think i got this one entirely (although i think that is precisely the point). A fun read nonetheless: the way Pychon's prose reads is fascinating - looking forward to, and also sort of dreading getting to Gravity's Rainbow (hopefully later this year?)
Recommended album pairing: Tarzana - Alien Wildlife Estate
just a real joy to read. hilarious, clever, biting: the truest embodiment of postmodernism i have read thus far. and after reading DFW's (brilliant) “E Unibus Pluram” essay where he breaks down the “Most Photographed Barn in America” scene, I know I only got like half of the deeper meanings here. looking forward to rereading this again and again in the years to come
side note: really love the idea of a supermarket-as-sensory-experience. also Murray is one of my favorite characters in fiction, ever.
I have a big soft spot for Ready Player One - it kinda blew my mind when i read it all those years ago. But this book... why was it written? Really did not need to be made. To me it seems like Cline was like “Oh Armada didn't sell that well, guess I gotta go back to the ol RPO cash cow!”
Breezy Internet-age pulp (though I did find the post-humanist stuff near the end kinda interesting)
“08/15/0840h. A Macy's-float-sized inflatable Ronald, seated and eerily Buddha-like, presides over the north side of the Club Mickey D's tent. A family is having their picture taken in front of the inflatable Ronald, arranging their little kids in a careful pose. Notebook entry: ‘Why?'”
Brilliant collection of 7 essays ranging from erudite meditations on irony and television to in-depth tennis talk to the absurdity of a midwestern State Fair to the works of David Lynch to the Luxury Cruise Experience™
God he was truly just an incredible writer
Brilliant, exceedingly clever, and achingly poignant - Infinite Jest might be the greatest book I have ever read. While it is definitely super long, it is much more readable than I had been lead to believe. I can't wait to read his other stuff
This book has made me seriously reevaluate the way that I live my life.