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is nigeria that is driven by bribery we get a foretaste of it when a bus he is riding in is pulled over by young military officers ostensibly checking the driver s license obi asks the driver why he agreed to pay the bribe the reply na so dis world be the novel draws out the complexity of nigeria s state of flux morally spiritually and psychologically more importantly achebe manages keep authorial distance in a calm wise voice obi sees himself as a pioneer for cultural adaptation his ideals are tested in a city that his ibo kinsmen have warned him hold temptations too great for him achebe does a skillful job of balancing our perspective of the opposing cultural forces at play examining the very human consequences at the intersection when two culture s world views misunderstand each other as in the earlier novel wrestling is associated subtextually with confrontation on the deeper level of struggling with old ways obi is seen by his clansmen as challenging his chi personal gods to personal combat his clan s forbearance with him is tested its important to remember the blood ties here he is under obligations to meet their expectations as their bright hope at one point they call him a beast o no nation obi s moral courage his dignity of holding to his ideals is challenged by choices he is finally forced to make he bears the shame and guilt of a betrayer but he can be only be a betrayer of either his ideals or his clan s tradition in moment of epiphany obi reflects on his mother and father and compares his mother as woman who got things done to his father who is a man of thought these thoughts seemed to release his spirit he no longer felt guilt he too had died beyond death there are no ideals and no humbug only reality the impatient idealist says give me a place to stand and i shall move the earth but such a place does not exist we all stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace what i took away a new appreciation for an author and his culture s struggles also an opinion that the two novels complement and resonate off each other increasing understanding of each achebe s prose mastery is more apparent when comparing tfa s adaptation to english the simple music in the language of ibo s tribal world held against the varied dictions he captured in the characters who came from heterogenous backgrounds of the modern colonial africa of nlae one is struck by achebe s amazing ear to depict all achebe does not resort to tricks and ploys so often encountered in contemporary literature no sensory overload no heaps of ironic aphorisms here his muted voice moves at the pace of the earth his controversial essay on conrad is a hot button topic and no matter which side of the fence your sensibilities lie on this it should hopefully not influence a certain swedish academy 2 comments filed under chinua achebe tagged as africa nigeria august 18 2009 6 16 pm a wild sheep chase haruki murakami disclaimer to fans a wild sheep chase is the only novel of haruki murakami i have read so back off but seriously i kept thinking something was missing from the book a day after i had completed reading it granted there were other distractions going on in this narrative to keep my figurative head on a swivel but besides the engaging storyline ambiguous animal referents cool aphorisms etc it occurred to me and i did a thumb lift fanning the pages and there it was murakami forgot to name the characters i felt sheepish murakami by my reckoning along with roth mccarthy and atwood is one of the most widely read of the possible 2009 nobel candidates go to any major chain bookseller and you will likely find at least five of his novels in translation there are those literary brow elevation types that find popularity off putting i guess their equation goes widely read trite petty superficial dunno about math but i think umberto ecco manages to carry some weight in both popular and literary camps viscera a wild sheep chase was first published in japan in 1982 it was a third novel in the so called rat trilogy and the first two have not been translated into english as murakami felt they are weak efforts after boiling and simmering it can be reduced to a linear plotted mystery slash adventure slash quest that takes place in tokyo and the wilds of northern japan in the 1970 s the holy grail of the quest is a singular sheep of unknown breed bearing a star shaped mark on its back bones the first person narrator the unnamed protagonist has been recently divorced and suffers from mild boredom to full blown angst his is a highly sensitized imagination and allows murakami full freedom in his narrative to range from miniaturist attention in painting details to opening up into the too abused term magic realism terrain disarming and droll reading the dialogue parts out loud the tone is something i could imagine hearing in personal casual conversation among friends its what we lit crits like to call to use a highly refined term laid back cool our erstwhile hero has the uncanny ability to frame things in glib generalities this is even pointed out to him by other characters as mentioned earlier there are no proper named characters in the novel two peripheral character friends are referred by a single letter j other than the narrator the characters have titles the rat the boss the strange man the chauffeur my girlfriend the sheep professor the dolphin hotel owner and so on our disabused hero is in a state of spiritual resignation we can if we choose wonder aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze nonetheless we can at the same breath deny that there is such a thing as coincidence what s done is done what s yet to be is clearly yet to be and so on in other words sandwiched as we are between the everything that is behind us and the zero beyond us ours is the ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence or possibility in actual practice however distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little buried under the petty surfaces the multitude of references to mass consumables beer wine 2 packs of cigs a day the icons of popular music is a sense of a disconnection and isolation imagery of solipsism fancy word meaning the theory that the self can only know its own reality abounds a severed whale s penis in its own glass case the aquarium images all speak to each entitie s having a self contained reality enter the mysterious star backed sheep into this vacuum it is only until the strange man functioning as a mephistopheles of sorts drops a figurative bomb to our hero that the sheep s function on a uber level is apparent its so tempting at least with my lazy readers mind to quickly file it under sheep allegory for_______ and stow for later use like kafka to whom murakami has openly said is a starting point for his fiction and like an earlier reviewed tatyana tolstaya novel the slynx its incorrect to pin the allegory badge to these works these associations are ambiguous and suggestive of multiple meanings they are totally open to individual interpretations rather than a set of instructions the associations are not meant to be find the hidden idea institution concept puzzles put in by the authors i disagree with one reviewer who has claimed the sheep stands precisely for right wing evangelical christians i made that last part up that s actually what my knee jerk find the meaning in the symbol reader self did what i found most interesting is the book s last section that takes part in the remote northern mountains as our hero and his girlfriend with the portentous ears trek up to the last leg of the quest their journey up the mountain to the high meadow is like a spiritual passage they had to pass by the treacherous windswept dead man s curve where they topped out into the peaceful vast mountain meadow there are several associations with shinto in this section the animism of the sheepman time is in temporary suspension the grandfather clock needs winding and the suggestion of a portal the bedroom mirror i am not up on my knowledge of buddhism but i am guessing digging in that direction would be fruitful what i took away first a mention must be made about this translation by alfred birnbaum it is excellent i have gathered translators of some of his other englished novels is a mixed bag and there is a controversy about how much finally was edited out of the english version of his most acclaimed novel the wind up bird chronicle i have no problems with murakami s famous western pop culture references indeed without a few place names the lion s share of this story could have taken place in california murakami s narrator s voice and sensibilities hit close to home particularly the tone and take of his humor and his zany more than slightly askew entry points into observations about his culture s traditions yet at the same time showing a tenacity in the face of gloom gloom is a direction on murakami s compass but using its magnetic point as a reference we think there are ways around it just stay away from those ancient cave openings 3 comments filed under haruki murakami tagged as japan august 14 2009 1 25 am aura carlos fuentes you open the thin book you have heard much about this writer this giant of latin american fiction disciple of cervantes and borges in the first page you meet the protagonist historian felipe montero you read further into the story you find that you are walking into the old section of the city after seeing an advertisement in a local paper offering 4000 pesos a month plus room and board to edit an old crone s late husbands memoirs wait you are felipe montero not having read a novel narrated in second person since robbe grillet i took readily to being the hero of the story i am reading for a change carlos fuentes novella aura was the start of his named cycle of novels el mal del tiempo dealing with the problem of time in an early interview fuentes declared that this part of his vast cultural historical project was to examine and negate western linear time i want to announce that my concept of time is linear also cyclical also eternal returns or sometimes a spiral once armed with this and a bit of biographical snippets hinting that fuentes spent a lot of his life in libraries and has whole rows of cultural history probably committed to his memory you may be right to assume therefore if a mention is made by the narrator that the street number of the decrepit mansion has been crossed out and changed to 815 then a faceless voice tells you in the unlit hallway that you must take 13 steps to the left and then 22 steps up the numbers probably have symbolic importance and all the seeming innocuous details species of plants colors of the character s dress more than likely point to a subtextual layer a bit of delving may point to associations with the white goddess allusions to hecate and artemis and the tripartite aspect of the moon goddess of birth death and rebirth you felipe montero have already decided that this place and its widow crone are beyond creepy and weird but the niece aura well that will be another story the editing of the old general s memoirs is gravy you want to milk this to last long enough to pay for some me time later but there is the matter of interior lighting or lack of it along with the fact that consuelo the ancient widow is often found kneeling down waving a fist in the air in front of a christ figure carved in black wood surrounded by votive candles is a bit bewildering but 4000 pesos a month you can put up with some infirmities but then you have those dreams or are they dreams there was or wasn t something beheaded as if in a sacrifice the senses are gradually less sure of the interiors of this place that moonlight you have exchanged the gaze mirada with the crone and aura its as if its a portal between two worlds and you know you are eternally bound to find out the rest of the plot by reading aura what i took away the narrative reads like a story by poe the characters other than felipe of course are as ethereal as they are of blood and flesh which is anyway integral to the dual world fuentes creates when the jolt to our senses occur when the realm of the fantastic intrudes on our reality we are called to question which world we fuentes you are located in disoriented by the intrusion of another reality the question of sanity even becomes a matter of perspective but then again it may have only been a nightmare 2 comments filed under carlos fuentes tagged as mexico august 12 2009 11 47 am in the skin of a lion michael ondaatje lured by rumors of michael ondaatje s heady prose and some popular as well as critical success i had no qualms in grabbing his 1987 in the skin of a lion next out of the nobel prize candidate stack there are other worthy canadian candidates alice munro and margaret attwood come to mind but as a sucker for poetic leaning narrative i took the bait putting to rest the lame fishing metaphor prior to opening this michael ondaatje s second novel i was aware that its sequel the english patient had won a booker prize and also that he is noted to be an accomplished poet one sentence bio born in sri lanka he moved first to england and then finally to canada in1962 where he became a canadian citizen viscera set in ontario and primarily toronto of the 20 s and 30 s the novels characters the six stars and a moon referenced in the opening authorial aside are immigrants who have roles to play out in the construction of the city this aside to the reader is key to the conceit for the narrative s style this is a story a young girl gathers in a car during the early hours of morning she listens to the man as he picks up and brings together various corners of the story attempting to carry it all in his arms and he is tired sometimes as elliptical as his concentration on the road it gives ondjaate s narrator a license to freely work and shape his memories to suggest order to the chaos and create a history out of the backwoods immigrant patrick lewis s story as a young boy we learn early on that he is acutely aware of minutiae in his surroundings nah too much plot summary for this blog you can wiki here if you want it spoiled bones the narrator is aware that he is linking together fragments of his memories as the narration occurs ondaatje uses a technique of narrative pull backs of creating two present tenses in the story time present in the darkness of the car ride as well as the present tense in each storyworld scene as it occurs the modal verb would as in years later he would facilitates this pull back device and is exploited freely to extend details in the story to bestow historical significance since the narrator is aware of his role as a teller of a tale a choreographer of fate i found what seems to set this novel apart beyond its stylistic elements is its extreme ontological awareness apologies for the pretentious term the cogniti...
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