like night and day

[spiderpig]

"I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times."
Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, "It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character."
— Haruki Murakami (After Dark)

Why and how is he able to write like this. It's as though I can reach out and touch those words and feel them with my arms wrapped around them.

Comments

[aerianta.livejournal.com]

awww i'm a murakami fangirl but i didn't like after dark! i thought it started off strong but sort of tapered off at the end. but of course, i'll always be partial to norwegian wood :)

[spiderpig.livejournal.com]

XD yeah, after dark was kind of lacklustre after kafka but i have a completely silly reason for liking it! it's like the first book my brother read and liked and he hardly reads so murakami triumphs again!

[aerianta.livejournal.com]

hahha it was the other way round for me, my brother converted me to murakamism with norwegian wood (which is why that book will always have a special place for me in my heart, it is like my bible). funnily enough even though that made me go on to read his other books and like murakami more and more (dance dance dance - how brilliant?! i would give my kidney to write a book like that), my brother kind of stopped at norwegian wood and kafka on the shore. but he's always been a more voracious reader (with a shorter attention span) than me, i'm lazy and normally i just (TRY to) read books on my course. and failing spectacularly anyway because i'm very picky about what i read.

[spiderpig.livejournal.com]

my brother is like, he reads NOTHING -- even labels on bottles and things -- so when he picked up after dark (it was the cover that he liked XD) and started talking to me about it, i was like "okay, this is awesome" and he went on to read every single murakami book i have. it's absolutely wonderful what murakami did for him because he started reading franz kafka because of kafka on the shore? so yes, murakami is very very awesome for making my brother read. i was in despair because he was so anti-reading!

i used to read really fast so i managed to read nearly all the stuff they had in my jc library, but university has killed whatever braincells i had and i read so slowly now. ): yesss, dance dance dance was the first book i read and it sealed the deal for me. :D most of my friends who've read murakami don't like norwegian wood, and i have no idea why. D: