— 1Q84: Book 3, by Haruki Murakami

If you haven’t read my articles on/reviews of 1Q84: Book 1 or Book 2 then;

a) Shame on you and,

b) You should know that these posts talk about plot points that have occurred up to the end of the book being discussed.

Aside from everything else that’s great about Murakami, I think unpredictability ranks pretty high. Since Book 3 is the conclusion of 1Q84, only click on the Read More link if you’re finished or if you’re the kind of wild, devil may care type that just doesn’t mind knowing things about a story before experiencing it firsthand (the type who will never be asked to watch my cat while I’m on vacation).

The first thing worth noting is that 1Q84: Book 3 has the lousiest pacing of the entire story. After praising how beautifully the story unfolded in the initial two thirds it was disappointing to end the book on such a low note. Despite the fresh energy provided by the addition of a third character to the alternating perspective changes (the unfortunate lawyer cum private eye, Ushikawa), Murakami spends much of Book 3 in almost complete inertia.

The perspective shifts from one dull event to another. Aomame remains in a safe house, Tengo shuffles back and forth between a coastal sanitorium and his apartment and Ushikawa retraces every plot point, carefully explaining what the reader already knows. It’s really strange. The characters are just as interesting as ever and the time spent in their heads certainly helps to develop them further but, with the plot’s momentum grinding to such a halt, it’s difficult to press on toward the end. There’s a sense that, maybe, Murakami had planned a three book structure and agreed to the format with his publishers before something changed in the writing process and it became too late to back out of the arrangement.

That’s the only explanation that seems to make any sense to me considering how strong Book 1 and 2 are.

The English translation also switches from the wonderful Jay Rubin to the slightly-less-wonderful Philip Gabriel with this book as well. While his prose can be a bit awkward from time to time, his take on the original text is great at the climatic moments of the book, making it difficult to let the blame rest on his shoulders (he also did an excellent job translating Kafka on the Shore). It ultimately boils down to a plot that has been stretched far too thin in one place.

The actual conclusion is stunning, though, and the last 50ish pages pack in an extremely rewarding pay off to the seemingly endless chapters preceeding them. Whether or not I properly interpreted the last moments the characters spend in the world of 1Q84 seems (as it always does with Murakami’s work) to be somewhat besides the point when the emotions and thoughts evoked are so powerful. Book 3 isn’t quite the ending that such a fantastic novel deserves but, despite its faults, 1Q84 is still a staggering accomplishment that deserves recognition.

— Reid

Tengo cocked his head in puzzlement. If an author succeeded in writing a story ‘put together in an exceptionally interesting way’ that ‘carries the reader along to the very end,’ who could possibly call such a writer ‘lazy’?”

— 1Q84: Book 2, by Haruki Murakami

Here we are at 1Q84: Book 2 which, if you’re familiar with high-concept mathematics, follows 1Q84: Book 1. I’d like to continue this series of reviews but, as before, don’t want to give anything away (the above quote doesn’t spoil anything, sensitive readers) so will encourage anyone who has read to the end of Book 2 to follow the link below to the full article whereas everyone else should . . . not.

1Q84‘s second book does what the middle segment of most longer stories does — pave the way for the conclusion while keeping up the momentum generated from the opening. This takes the form of Murakami throwing the sheet off of many of 1Q84‘s central mysteries, laying bare some of the more puzzling aspects of Book 1. This may sound uncharacteristic. Murakami’s stories are typically filled with plot devices that rely on the reader to perform the interpretive legwork but, while the main expository moments are perhaps more direct than anything else in the author’s body of work, these revelations are carried out in a way that still require the audience to grapple with immense conceptual explanations.

Rather than unpack the many riddles of Book 1 in a dry fashion Murakami wisely uses climatic moments to relate essential information. As we finally get to see Aomame confront Sakigake’s enigmatic Leader and Tengo resolve the strange psychosexual tension he feels in proximity to Fuka-Eri, we’re also given naturally revealed insights that function beautifully within these scenes. The fact that all of this occurs in a manner that feels so inevitable is evidence of a staggeringly talented author who, decades of experience having refined his skills, is operating at his current peak.

The slow delivery of a melancholy love story here also works extremely well. Reminiscent of Dance, Dance, Dance‘s void hotel room and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle‘s abadoned well shaft, 1Q84 sees Murakami, again, using the idea of “lost spaces” — sort of everyday purgatories where the rational systems that order our minds cease to exist — as a heart-rending contrast to the sense of communtiy we need to maintain our sense of self. It’s done here in wonderful slow burn, Aomame and Tengo slowly understanding just how intrinsically wrapped up in one another they are. Once again Murakami explains (in his most elaborate manner yet) how this perception of love — a paradoxically selfish binding of two people, alone against the chaos outside of themselves — may be the only way to survive a Dionysian world.

From my viewpoint, that’s what he’s also been writing about all along: an insane reality that is only made bearable by the strength of human bonds. That 1Q84 seems to be detailing this point more clearly than any of his other work probably makes this book the easiest to recommend for someone who hasn’t read Murakami yet and is wondering what all the fuss is about.

— Reid

1Q84: Book 2 also introduces the best euphemism for having sex I’ve read to date: “going to the town of cats”. Despite the fact that putting it like that is a pretty gross oversimplification of one of the book’s most fascinating concepts, I’m going to stick to it anyway.

Obviously there will be some discussion of plot points up to the end of 1Q84: Book 1 so, if you’d rather not encounter them, don’t continue reading. Otherwise, take the long, long scroll down to the Read More button.

Murakami’s body of work is distinctive for its thematic concerns and stylistic choices and 1Q84, in many ways, reads like a culmination of his past efforts. It is a story of religious fanaticism, the act of writing, coming to terms with Japan’s militaristic past as a child of the post-years and, of course, the ability for reality to quietly merge with surreal events as a matter of course. These elements come together naturally to form the backbone of a piece that (up to this point) seems most concerned with discussing gender inequality, something that is primarily illustrated through a character who assassinates abusive men (don’t worry: it’s similarily dramatic but thankfully not as heavy-handed as Larsson’s Men Who Hate Women/The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

1Q84 is also written in the strange blend of highly readable/highly clumsy prose that may put many new readers of Murakami’s English translations off — but which I’ve actually come to find kind of endearing. This may change in Book 3 (Books 1 and 2 are both translated by Jay Rubin while 3 is handled by Philip Gabriel) but fair warning to those who can’t handle some rocky dialogue and narration. The main draw to Murakami, for me at least, has always been his plot development and the genius of his ability to handle the introduction of surrealism in his stories — absurdities finally turning into revelations by a book’s end.

1Q84‘s first book definitely demonstrates this strength, thanks to it being, perhaps, the most well-paced of any of his books. Each chapter alternates between the viewpoints of his protagonists, Aomame and Tengo, while gradually interweaving the threads of their narratives. In many of Murakami’s books his characters have acted as a kind of tabula rasa for Japanese women and men of his age (he was born in 1949, coming of age during Japan’s university uprisings) but 1Q84 pleasantly bucks this trend, resulting in more complex characters and a level of mystery that envelops both plot and cast (as opposed to the grounded, first-person narrators of, say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Hard-Boiled Wonderland). It’s all handled beautifully, urging the story forward through the promise of future explanations of vague organizations like the Sakigake cult and puzzling characters like 17-year-old writer Fuka-Eri.

I’m extremely impressed so far and excited to see what’s coming next.

— Reid

“I dropped my eyes and my face gone hot.”

“I flushed.”

“Her face had gone savagely red.”

“I flushed.”

“I could feel the heat emanating off my face.”

“I flushed.”

“My whole damn body flushed.”

“Hell. Hell and hell again.”

- Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

Ugh.

Ughhhhh.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhh.

Half Blood Blues is not a very good book. With a good editor it might have been. But it’s not.

The quotes above represent a random sampling of lines resulting from a flip-through of roughly 20 pages of the text. Though the back of the library copy I’ve just finished (the UK edition) will tell you to expect “subtle characterisation” don’t be fooled — Esi Edugyan’s awards-darling sophomore novel (currently up for the Giller, Man Booker and the Governor’s General) is about as nuanced as having your foot run over by a Mack truck.

Though the plot and setting promise great things (Half Blood Blues follows a handful of black jazz musicians living in Berlin and Paris as they struggle to make music during the beginning of the Second World War) the book’s prose is completely hamfisted. This fault is exasperated by a story that wants to be everything all at once– a historical romance, a tribute to a fascinating era of music, an examination of racial inequality and a look at the intricacies of friendship — and, because of this, spreads itself so thin that no single element comes through sufficiently. The best parts of the book have to do with playing music but readers should not expect much of this. Nominally a story about up-and-coming musicians, Half Blood Blues sadly devotes only a handful of paragraphs to this aspect of its story.

Instead we’re supposed to be content with some of the clumsiest writing on love in print, a few name-checks of contemporary jazz artists (including a horrendous, watery portrayal of one of the genre’s greats) and characters that can’t seem to stop blushing, flushing and not knowing how else to portray embarassment on most every page. Edugyan’s first chapter comes out of the gate so strong, full of knife-sharp dialogue and the hints of, what could have been, an intimate portrayal of insecurity, art and prejudice. The author uses all of her tricks in these first 18 pages and never recovers. Interesting turns of phrases that help to paint the vernacular of her cast (men are jacks, women are janes, the SS are Boots, a light colour is blond) are successful at first but overly relied on to the point of bemusement after 100 pages, grating annoyance by 343.

It’s also full of painful jokes. The characters are always laughing at one another’s quips — quips that come off unnatural and don’t make enough sense in the best cases and are simply unfunny in others. We’re obviously meant to be splitting our guts at the hilarious cast but instead the lot of them come off more like that socially awkward person at a dinner party, the only one laughing at their own incessant gags.

If Half Blood Blues was just another release it would be easy to talk only about the promise that Edugyan shows — the rare passage is delivered well and her talent in inventing, realizing and pacing an interesting plot is undeniable — but the fact that it’s so well-acclaimed makes the book both perplexing and aggravating. It is the Avatar of this fall’s Canadian book awards; much hyped and interesting at a glance but, after being viewed, a hard thing to imagine anyone getting so excited over.

— Reid

To preface this review:

I drink my coffee black and I’m perfectly happy to stay inside on a beautiful summer’s day. This doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy sweetness and sunlight, just that I’m the kind of person that can take or leave these things depending on my mood. One day I’m glad to read a book while it thunderstorms but on another I’d like to actually feel the warmth of the sun. To make this come ’round better I’ll put it this way; sometimes an Interpol record sounds perfect, whereas, at others, Bloodsugarsexmagik‘s Californian positivi-funk is preferred.

That’s why my recommendation of The Sweet Mack’s debut full-length, First Cut, comes as a conditional one. If you’re not in the right mindset for sunshine-filtered vocal harmonies and playful guitar solos then you’re not going to like it. But if you are, The Sweet Mack is a mainline blast of good vibes — a pleasant hit of aural seratonin.

The band’s sound seems, appropriately enough, to be drawn from sources as disparate as the Beatles (three part ooos and aaahs pepper the majority of tracks alongside some delightfully melodic basslines reminiscent of The Cute One), John Mayer (a song isn’t finished unless it’s got at least one electric solo) and even a little serving of Sloan (trade-off vocals and an unfailing concentration on writing about the ladies).

Most of the songs are tightly constructed affairs that immediately establish a central riff, briefly expand on its form through earworm choruses then come to a close before the novelty gets a chance to wear itself out. In this way — more than anything else — The Sweet Mack proves itself to be a group of highly capable pop writers, able to identify the catchiest hooks established in a given tune and exploit them for maximum effect.

Sometimes this success comes in the form of a penetrating riff (Stray‘s jagged refrains of scrappy guitar chording) and, at other times, it’s an exceptional vocal melody (Shades of Grey) that ensure a song will remain in the head for a long time after it’s played out. Regardless, The Sweet Mack possesses maturity enough not to run any proven result into the ground by repeating it, developing a record that changes tones with almost every song without losing sight of the underlying sonic glue that keeps the whole thing sounding cohesive.

And because of this committment to variety, First Cut carries itself exceptionally well, really stumbling only around a few tracks at the mid-album mark, but maintaining momentum before and after this point well enough to make for an enjoyable and repeat-friendly listen.

The Sweet Mack’s first effort is a good one that evidences a band with talent enough to write well-crafted pop nuggets for some time to come. First Cut is condensed pop-rock — a unique brand of sacharrine with a reception that will always be based on the listenener’s current attitude — but it is openly, unapologetically poppy and it knows what the audience wants and how to give it to them.

— Reid

Another one of the greats is dead. Friday, August 6th saw P-Funk, James Brown and session guitarist Phelps “Catfish” Collins pass away at the age of 66. Yeah, I’ve already written a few of these now but really, never before in my life have I been witness to so many dudes I admire dropping dead. It feels wrong somehow not to write a quick little note in commeration or try to point both of Sasquatch Radio‘s readers toward their work in order to understand how badly it sucks for any of these guys to go.

Catfish, older brother of (the more widely recognized and celebrated) bass player, Bootsy Collins, was a massive influence on a guitar style that helped define the ’60s and ’70s and his legacy is still felt in and outside of the genre he performed in. His work with James Brown and P-Funk can’t be understated. With Brown, Catfish neatly demonstrated his technical ability by playing in an infamously strict (and undeniably tight) live act and with Parliament and Funkadelic he showed that his guitar work could surpass neatly composed, scratchy funk riffs and fly out to stratospheric abstracts.

Modern funk guitar would not be what it is if Catfish hadn’t played. His style continues to be emulated and sampled in rock, hip-hop, funk and soul today and his death should be noted by anyone who cares about music.

Read Bootsy’s statment here and do yourself a favour by watching the short clip (at the bottom of the page) of Catfish doing it right.

Also check out a vintage video of Catfish playing on James Brown’s “Give It Up or Turn It Loose” along with Bootsy.

— Reid

People I admire keep dropping like flies. A while back it was J.D. Salinger. Now it’s Harvey Pekar.

In case you don’t know him (and you should), Pekar is the pioneer of autobiographical comic books and one of the pivotal figures of the comix movement. He was a jazz-head and a full-time hospital clerk that happened to get into comic book writing when his friend Robert Crumb turned him on to the non-superhero, underground revolution that was helping to redefine the medium in the 1960s. While others continued to use this new genre of comics (or comix) to tell larger than life stories, Pekar chose a different route and focused instead on chronicling his own day to day thoughts and experiences.

His long-running American Splendor series is a work of art that will probably never be surpassed for its astonishing candor, intelligence and cultural value. Pekar was unflinching in describing himself and showed the world that one ordinary man, no matter how neurotic, can kick-start  something important and entertaining by just wanting to do so badly enough.

Harvey Pekar was married three times and he adopted a kid and he had cancer and beat it and wrote consistently excellent comic books about himself, his friends, race relations, working nine to five, war, literature, jazz and American life throughout most of his life without ever making enough to support himself on it. There are few artists that are so willing to contribute to our cultural landscape without hardly a return in critical praise or financial security and we are all pretty lucky that he did what he did.

It’s pretty rare that I hear about a celebrity (or near celebrity) dying and it actually affects me but, honest to god, hearing of Pekar’s death has put me in a real funk all day. I suppose you just get to thinking that some people are institutions and that they’ll keep putting out material because they’ve been doing it for so long. That’s unrealistic and maybe it’s just the obscured relationship between artist and consumer but anyway, it’s sad just the same.

Do yourself a favour and read an issue of American Splendor. Each issue says something great, is highly entertaining and will make you realize that it really does suck that he’s not going to be writing them anymore.

— Reid

From the publisher:

In Cities of Refuge, Michael Helm’s keenly anticipated new novel, a single act of violence resonates through several lives, connecting closeby fears to distant political terrors. At the story’s centre is the complex, intensely charged relationship between a 28-year-old woman and the father who abandoned her when she was young.

One summer night on a side street in downtown Toronto, Kim Lystrander is attacked by a stranger. Thrown deep into turmoil, in the weeks and months that follow, she confronts her fear by returning to the night, in writing, searching for harbingers of the incident, and clues to the identity of her assailant. The attack also torments Kim’s father, Harold, an historian of Latin America. As he investigates the crime on his own, the darkest hours from his past revisit him, and he gradually begins to unravel. Entwined in their story are Kim’s ailing mother, Marian; Father André Rowe, whose mission to guide others involves him in a decision with troubling consequences; Rodrigo Cantero, a young Colombian man, living illegally in the city; and Rosemary Yates, a woman whose faith-based belief in the duty to give asylum to any who seek it, even those judged guilty, draws Harold to her, before a fateful choice changes the future for them all.

As you can tell from the catalogue copy, there are a lot of perspectives and stories going on in this book. But Helm manages to weave them all together deftly, never leaving the reader confused and forced to flip back a few pages to sort out who’s who. I appreciated this very much. I also appreciated Helm’s fantastic prose, that was in one moment dreamlike and ethereal and in the next visceral and hard.

Throughout the novel, Kim attempts to rediscover herself after the attack and her relationship with her father — who is, at the same time, struggling with his own life’s purpose. The way their stories were so tightly entwined and full of discovery was a joy to read. Don’t get me wrong — this book is not joyful, it is dark — but it can be a pleasure to read about despair and hopelessness when it is done well.

Perhaps the thing I found most interesting about this book was the way Kim deals with the memory of the attack. She begins to write about it, slowly, until she is able to write in the voice of her attacker — this eventually develops into a separate narrative voice within the text (I think this was Kim’s voice telling his story, or perhaps he was real? This is left to our imagination, I think.). I really enjoyed how this played with the ideas of what’s real and what’s not, what we remember and how we remember it, and what is left in our minds and bodies after a traumatic experience and how we can bring that to the surface.

This is definitely a book that leaves the reader with a lot to think about. If you’re looking for playfulness or whimsy on your summer reading list, this isn’t the book for you, but I can tell you that I’ve already picked up another of Michael Helm’s books (In the Place of Last Things) to take with me on vacation later on this week. Cape Breton, here we come!

(For more: read a review of the book and an interview with the author in the Globe and Mail.)

— Trish

I am very pleased to report that, despite one of the worst covers I’ve seen on a work of contemporary literary fiction (sorry, but seriously! What were they thinking?), Making Light of Tragedy is just as good — if not better — than Come, Thou Tortoise. The stories are vibrantly, powerfully written, with a quirkiness of style and fluidity of language that is unmistakeable. There is no way to compare Jessica Grant’s writing with anyone else’s — she is truly an original.

It seems to me that Jessica Grant — in her writing, at least — feels most drawn to characters who function slightly outside of the social norm, who do things in their own way, who have difficulty understanding the world around them. It was in the strange minds of these odder-than-normal characters that I felt the pulse of Grant’s writing, and that I found humour, beauty, and sweetness. Take, for example, this passage from the story “Humanesque:”

Dr. Tiplitski and I sit on a bench.

He is different on Sundays, I think. So am I. Days are places we inhabit. Tuesday, for instance, is a tower. Friday, a schoolhouse. Saturday, a runway. Sunday, an empty park. The light is different in each. We are different in each.

I try to explain this to Dr. Tiplitski, expecting him not to understand. But he smiles and says, Wednesday is a laboratory.

I nod. Thursday is a brand new car.

This is a passage I have been unable to get out of my head — in fact, I read it aloud as I recommended this book to a roomful of friends in publishing at last week’s KIRBC meeting. I sincerely hope those people — and you, dear reader — will pick up this lovely, lovely book. It will make you feel so awake as you read, but it is like reading a series of dreams. It will take you somewhere surreal, somewhere immaterial, somewhere you’ve never been but somewhere you feel at home. It is a beautiful book and I am so happy that Jessica Grant has had so much success of late. It’s silly, really, how talented she is. We are lucky to have her.

– Trish

P.S. Sorry for the obligatory plug, but please don’t forget to vote for one of my other Newfoundland favourites, Lisa Moore, in the Atlantic Canada Reads Competition! The poll closes on June 30th, so don’t delay!

I guess not.

Philip Pullman, a longstanding opponent of organized religion and the creator of the His Dark Materials trilogy (a better written yarn and a deft refutation of C.S. Lewis’ heavy-handed Chronicles of Narnia set of Christian allegories), continues the grand tradition of secular misinterpretation with his latest work, a book that is already being attacked for the author’s appalling gall to ask reasonable questions of the devout.

Essentially, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a retelling of the Gospels that functions along the same line as Rushdie’s brilliant Koran sections in The Satanic Verses. The novel follows roughly the same period of time as the beginning of the New Testament, starting off with Mary’s marriage to Joseph and ending after the resurrection.

By playing within the confines of the Gospels, Pullman is able to take something highly familiar and twist it enough to allow for a clever argument on the facts behind the basis of Christianity. In The Good Man Jesus . . . the author sees Mary giving birth to twin boys, Jesus and the man that becomes known as Christ. Throughout the novel, Jesus becomes reminiscent of the religious figure we all know— a teacher and scholar that gains a following of disciples and is inevitably crucified for heresy— and Christ records the history of his brother’s life, adding in flourishes that emphasize miracles and Jesus’ divine nature. If you’re following me, “Christ”, the Messiah, the founder/inventor of Christianity, is a version of St.Paul.

The book uses this framework to construct a story that criticizes the machinations of man when dealing with a philosopher (Jesus) with some really great things to say. Essentially, Christ/Paul wants Jesus’ teachings to be remembered and, to this end, he is responsible for the “resurrection”, the birth of an organized church and many other fallacies regarding his brother’s life and death. Christ/Paul is not depicted as bluntly as the work’s title may suggest and Pullman beautifully captures a man’s struggle to balance the preservation of good thinking with the embellishments that capture people’s imagination. This leads to a nice kind of thing wherein neither Jesus, Paul, the rest of the disciples, the Jewish authorities or the Roman occupiers come off looking like one dimensional jerks. Probably like how the real thing would have happened, right?

Well, haters gon’ hate.

Pullman has already started to draw fire from Christian fundamentalists and it gets me to wondering just how many of his opponents have actually read the book. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is, at its base, a loving argument that is not unlike the type of debates that makes up church-approved theological courses and discussions. Renowned scholars have bickered about subjects like transubstantiation, the literal interpretation of the Gospels and much more for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Why is it that when a publicly atheist writer like Pullman enters the foray he must be hung up on the rack for his “insensitivity”?

OK, well, how is the book itself? It reads nicely enough. The writing and thematic conception are very well conceived. But it also lacks some zing (how’s that for a clarified, well-argued criticism?). The Good Man Jesus . . . doesn’t have the same level of passion that you find in Rushdie’s retelling of the birth of Islam, nor does it have the vigour that Hitchens’ displays in his spoken and written arguments. This, ultimately, makes it a less interesting but still worthwhile text. Pullman may have taken this approach in order to attempt access to a wider audience— to make some on the fencers rethink a few things or at least soften the hardliners— but this, sadly enough, seems to have made little difference.

That makes The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ kind of a hard sell. The people that might have been influenced by it most are probably just going to go on ignoring it, threatening Pullman with hellfire and damnation in the meantime, while atheists may be bored by the book’s lack of piss and or vinegar.

This upsets me.

I’d like you to read it, whoever you are or whatever you believe, if for nothing else than to engage (the hard-wired religious part of) the brain and to be able to defend the man as he is sure to continue taking flak for being a nice guy with good ideas.

OK?

— Reid