1Q84: Part 1 of many

The blurb of the book promises: "Something extraordinary is starting." Starting? Does this refer to a point within or beyond the covers? Because this thing is 1300 pages thick, sir. I am a fan. A fan strong enough to blow back the strings of a willow tree. But 1300 pages? I'm not sure I could generate more than a whiffle. A wheeze. A not-quite sigh. So please, by the alveoli of my heaving lungs, let the extraordinary something start, happen and resolve itself with enough space for a conclusion.

Ok, resolution and a conclusion is asking a lot from an author these days. But this is Haruki Murakami. If anyone can bend a convention until its toes meet its scalp, he can. But this is Haruki Murakami. He's allergic to resolution.

1Q84 came out first in Japanese in, wait for it, Japan. Writing in his first language? He's just contrary like that. The English translation came out a year later. Sorry, translations, because three's company - no, wait, that isn't how it goes. Yes, a trilogy. If people started having triplets at the same rate as they write trilogies, the race to inhabit deep dark space (which, fyi, we already do) would intensify out of necessity.

The benefit of having to wait for the translation(s) was that we could read all three together. Like Game of Thrones which I read consecutively. All five and some halves of consecutive.

At 1300 pages, we're talking slightly more than 400 words per book. (I worked that out in my head.) That's a decent length, unless you're a new author and the publisher isn't prepared to waste reams of paper on your mad skills. Then you get 200 pages and really big font. It's a decent length in which to resolve the "something extraordinary", I'm thinking like an amateur allergic reaction.

Kafka on the Shore is my favourite of his books (all three and a bit that I have read). That book has a conclusion. Of sorts. The conclusion being that we make meanings out of symbols we happen to latch on to, like a spiderweb in that willow tree. This has a twin benefit: you can write anything you want and call it literature, and you don't have to commit to anything afterward. Luckily for us readers, Murakami is not anyone and his books are not anything. But still, it's annoying.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is more contradictory. There are episodes that are so symbolic they shine, but  apparently no one else can see them. Just to make sure we know no one can see them and that the symbols are actually dull and ugly, more shiny symbols show up, like rival gangs in West Side Story. Only one can survive. Or neither, but that's another book.

As usual, I'm being facetious, because that is so much more fun than simply liking something. This way, my resolution and conclusion are more surprising, as if I had jumped out from behind your bathroom door first thing in the morning. (This depends on you being there, in both cases.) My readings are imposed, which is the point of all of Murakami's writings, after being entertaining.

I started 1Q84 about a month ago. Today I am 204 pages in. (That's part of Book One, just fyi.) I knew, but still only just remembered, how overwhelming every scene is. Every scene shines, whether the radioactivity spills from people's hands, the material they are wearing, the appliances in the kitchen and their purposes, or a family in a car in traffic. You can't tell whether you are supposed to notice them, you notice them because of your particular neuroses or you are being paranoid. Your neck muscles lock in defence, but you can't be sure you aren't imagining that too.

I haven't quite reached this point in the book, but forewarned is forearmed, and paranoia is a kind of arm.

Another kind of arm is to read other books between chapters. Not Neil Gaiman because I have made the mistake of parading Gaiman (whose plots and characters are so consistent he could write Mills & Boon novels. Maybe he does) in front of Murakami. Murakami wasn't mean, which made it all worse. He was like a Buddhist faced with the pacing and ranting of a fundamentalist. He listened and smiled, and went on adventures in his mind.

Terry Pratchett has survived scrutiny well so far. Maybe because he's so far off in his own direction that he caught up with the Buddhist in his mind. (Which is not to compare them directly, no. But the metaphor ran away with me.) I have read one new Pratchett and reread an old one. Which I realise is probably double what I have read from 1Q84. So it's more like I am reading Terry Pratchett, with some Murakami on the side. Murakami would listen to this and smile, and skip stones across the Amazon River until an alligator came by to debate vegetarianism.

I am trying to describe what I have read so far and what shines and what it shines on and whether perhaps I am imagining it. There are events that stick out, but honestly I would sound crazy if I wrote them here and told you they are a legitimate part of a legitimate novel. There's this and the fact that I am less than one-sixth of the way through the novel, which hopefully is the start and not something else but I cannot guarantee it. I cannot guarantee that page 867 doesn't tell me to go back to the beginning or that it begins to repeat on page 292 and then again on page 1287.

You guessed it, this "part 1 of many" cheat is a device meant to keep you reading. But I could be setting myself up for failure here if I give up just like I did Ulysses (which is not to say I have given up - I am just making a point). James Joyce also swanned around, making faces at meaning, but he also made faces at sentences and the English language. Murakami may have written in Japanese, but this novel (so far) is still easier to read.

[Insert your name here] is a...

"Camilla is a hag." (For those of you with limited memory, that is my name - or my assumed name. Psych.) Followed by "Camilla is a commoner". The self-inflicted cruelty of asking Google who I am was sparked by Facebook. If Facebook says to do something, you do it. Or don't it, depending on your stance towards social media. In which case this cruelty is news to you. I didn't do it, not for any political reason, but because who has never Googled their name before? Apart from that new village of pygmies that discovered us recently. Or more accurately, discovered a race of helicopters.

Which makes me wonder about the helicopter maker. Upon discovering the helicopter hovering above them like she was going to lay ginormous eggs, did the men defiantly waving spears at her guess the object is human-made? Or would they have to take a closer look to pull apart wires and empty fuel tanks? Or would they assume the forest (being the source of all and named Djengi) created this really big dragonfly, like the Khoisan men in The Gods Must be Crazy who only showed up everyone's lack of sophistication.

They may have Googled their names having discovered us, because no doubt they are now clothed in Hawaiian shirts and begging poverty, while the forest is being cut down at a rate of one football field a day (I assume this is big, being (still awaiting its status as a standard unit) untranslated into soccer fields).

The Camilla referred to is Parker-Bowles. Even as a child, people used to tease me with that and think they were the first ones. To adults, I laughed and made a face. To people I didn't have to be respectful to, I asked if they thought I looked like a horse. So if I were Googling her name, that would be my contribution. How terrible, I know, but I don't know her and I was scarred by the whole Charles-love-letter thing as a child so I feel justified.

It's a silly game meant to point out the silly things people ask Google, as if Google were Djeni, the creator of the helicopter. I hope. But also we're saying who we're not and (in those cases where the result is blush-worthy) who we are, in our lifelong search to chisel out our identities. (No, I'm not saying you're Michelangelo. Or a sculpture.) Just to clarify, I am not a hag. Yet. I may be a commoner, but I think Marx and Engels had a point, before they wandered down the illogically violent path of Robespierre.

Most people know what their name means, even if it is so old we no longer use the name to mean what it means in normal (or in my case any) conversation. I am neither Russian nor more than one half (going back three generations, so ok, some fraction on either side) British. My name means 'attendant at a sacrifice', suggesting it's really old, because we don't sacrifice anything except our integrities these days. I could have done worse - I'm just there holding the sacrifice down and mopping up the blood.

Although, two things occur to me: I am more disturbed by the thought of sacrificing a sheep or something, and as with Robespierre, attending these things usually puts you on list to be sacrificed. When the winds change, they don't only bring the stench of the things you have done.

At this point I must remind myself (and you, you) that I have never participated in or sanctioned blood sacrifice (except of integrity). This chisel is faulty.

My name is not a common one (score). So there is only one other cultural reference to my name, but it is (mostly) worthy of one's pride in the character of someone who isn't you. Chisel-stuff.

This Camilla is a warrior princess favoured by the gods. One of them at least. She only takes up a few lines in Virgil's Aeneid, but she is almost totally who I wish I were. Kind of. If I could stay me and be those bits of her. Without any sacrifices. Because, as I think about it, there is at least one in this part of the epic poem. To clarify, deity of the helicopter, before you award me what I wish for and whisper be careful underneath your breath, I would like to still be me, as I am now, with additional qualities from the warrior-princess, as enumerated below, in a context-appropriate way (I don't own a bow or a horse), without sacrifices, except ones of integrity, but only if sacrifices are part of the deal, which I don't want them to be.

"Woodcut illustration of Camilla and Metabus escaping into exile - Penn Provenance Project" by kladcat - Woodcut illustration of Camilla and Metabus escaping into exile

She is a tot in swaddling blankets when the commoners run her father, a king, out of town for being a tyrant. He runs like a bat out of hell with his daughter until he comes to a river that he can't cross with the little one in his arms. Instead of looking for a more rational mode of transport, he appeals to the goddess Diana, promising her his daughter if she arrives safely on the other side. Well, lands safely, because (yip) he throws her across, tied to a spear, and then follows doing doggy paddle.

She lives. (Don't try that at home; this is mythology.)

Diana was one of those multi-tasking goddesses: she liked to hunt and could talk to animals, as well as being obsessed with the moon. Camilla grew up wild and hunted a lot, so she looked impressive when she rolled into the town of Ardea to fight the Trojans: "her hair/Bound in a coronal of clasping gold/Her Lycian quiver, and her pastoral spear... and her, the maid, how fair!"

Camilla and her band of merry hunters ride into battle without fear (a healthy emotion) and she proves why: she lays half a horde of men low with bow and arrow, and then ducks back when she sees the other half are intent on revenge. She is so effective in battle that the narrator asks: "Whom first, dread maiden, did thy javelin quell?/Whom last? how many in the dust lay low?" Then he enumerates them and their bloody deaths. Let's skip the sacrifices.

Then she forgets herself. She sees a man who looks like one of the Clegan brothers from Game of Thrones and gets greedy. She spears him and taunts him as he dies. "Yet take this glory to the grave, and say/Twas I, the great Camilla, made thee die." The blood-lust has her and the taunt becomes a battlecry. Instead of striking and then retreating, she chases her prey, yelling: "Fie! shall a woman scatter you in flight?/O, slack! O, never to be stung to shame!" Granted, the horde of dead men is piling up.

One of the Trojans who escaped her spear, stalks her and stakes her. These guys were more talented than modern mafia henchmen and zombie killers, because every soldier dies on first hit. She dies and Diana despairs. Because a goddess is involved, the story doesn't end (the epic is an epic for a reason, but this sub-plot too). Diana dispatches one of her nymphs to revenge the man who killed her (for all intents and purposes) daughter. Complaining about the waste of an arrow on such a cretin, the nymph kills him. He dies quickly, because we're distracted bemoaning Camilla's fate.

This goes on for a while, so I'm making an executive decision to end the story here.

Camilla is all the things a warrior should be, with all the merits of a princess. I'll take that thanks: speed, determination, bravery, strategic skills, beauty, poise, with the patronage of a goddess. But in the midst of battle, she becomes greedy and cocky. She yells taunts that are beneath her - what does she need to prove? And why?

There's something I haven't told you yet. Why are they fighting if Camilla's father lost their kingdom yonks ago? Who are they fighting for? Camilla and her soldiers needn't have marched into battle. Ostensibly, the king of the Rutuli is a good friend of hers (platonic, if you know anything about Diana), so they are marching to his aid. He has a kazillion soldiers of his own with those of other kingdoms - she and her crew are not a host, even if you squint, even if Camilla is pretty terrifying.

She goes to battle partly because she wants to prove something but also because she has fallen in love with the bloody end of the hunt. She wants to experience the power of taking the life of a man equipped to take your own. She imagines that, as a woman, she is underestimated and proving each man otherwise is part of the thrill. And remember that she survived being thrown over a river on the back of a spear. Who wouldn't feel immortal?

Trust me, I know this all because I share her name. I signed the contract assuming her identity (but I didn't check the clause about the sacrifice). Really, I did some reading, and some of it is just me and my chisel hacking away. The line between the two is made of salt and it just started raining. I don't feel guilty for misinforming you, because isn't that what reading is about? Making something out of clues? Carving yourself out of marble? Or making a helicopter?

For years, I disliked my name, because I thought it was out-modish and staid. Learning the meaning of my name cast it in a different light: a bit mystical - for ages, I struggled to understand what 'attendant' meant: someone who simply attended, was part of the crowd, or someone who participated but was not the ringleader or the actual sacrifice. I still don't know, really. That in itself is revealing, right? But would you rather be the one watching or the one doing something? There may be a strain of Camilla in me yet - be careful what you wish for.

PS. The Aeneid is an Epic Poem, in the sense that it is part of a genre and in the sense that it is Very Long. It ranks up there in the ratio between efforts and results with Chaucer. Or Franzen's The Corrections. Choose wisely.

Dover Beach

I always associate winter afternoons in a school classroom with warm toes. Oh no no, that's not a good thing. It was cold - frost holds on to the air and your digits until lunch time - and now it is warm. Basic science, er, biology or life sciences - whatever you call the rose, it smells like a rose. Unless it's genetically engineered to smell like something else. Skinny toes contract in the cold and swell in the warmth, birthing chilblains. Chilblains are itchy and sweaty and both things are worse in stockings. Trust me.

More specifically, I associate English class with warm, itchy, sweaty, swollen toes against fabric that feels like sandpaper due to all of those things. There was A Tale of Two Cities, which a teacher believed would be less painful read on tape than by us. Gerunds and participles. Dover Beach, which our teacher (and principal) tested us on in our first week in Grade 12. Our marks hovered around 50 per cent and her temperature around 50 degrees Celsius. Because clearly we were all the problem.

I remember my toes, that I was sitting next to a window and heater, which only made things worse, staring at a single piece of photocopied paper, wondering if I was the only one who couldn't see the connection between a stupid beach and whatever she was talking about.

I have never liked poetry about nature: yes, thank you, clouds are fluffy, the sea is azure and birds flap around without ever once thinking about how interesting it is they are there, right then, when they could be not there any time, which is true the rest of the time, when it's not there. "The sea is calm tonight"? Keen observation. I'm pretty sure that's not intentional, unless we all clapped our hands and Mother Nature sprang into being and asked us to call her Tinkerbell before she calmed the raging seas.

"Listen! you hear the grating sounds of pebbles..." I don't like beaches and seas (or dams or lakes or, especially, reservoirs and ships), mostly because there is a lot of water and a little bit of me, so the odds seem stacked in the ocean's favour. I don't gamble. There is also a lot of water, and carnivorous and just creepy things hiding under the water, that I can't see while flapping like a seal and where I can't breath. But many beaches I have visited have broken up seashells that cut the underside of your feet and don't grate, or at least, I couldn't hear it over the crashing waves filled with jellyfish.

True story, I also once saw a Mako shark beach itself, from about 20 metres away. 

You're nodding as you read this post, I know. English poems are deceptively short and magnificently tedious. If Mr Matthew Arnold had just written "The sea is calm but the tide is high against the cliffs of Dover", I might have understand because the three things are juxtaposed (one mark), in a row, in one sentence, using conjunctions and other parts of speech. There is some conflict between the "calmness" and "fullness", and the bloody cliffs (one mark).

When you get the end of the poem, thinking it's about a beach, the poet changes the topic: "Ah, love, let us be true". Sorry, what now? Wait, it gets worse, the poem's not even about love, or so They allege. On the upside, the poem rhymes, which is more than you can expect these days.

Five years later, I am sitting in a lecture room, reading this poem again. My toes are cold and then warm and all the other stuff, but I am wearing socks and not stockings. I know I have read this before, because the mention of Dover makes me think of the white cliffs of Dover. (Or is that the horse?) But I cannot remember what our teacher alleged it was about. My heart sinks because I have learnt that teachers usually choose the more boring (and conventional and safe) pieces of literature.

Except this time when I finish the poem, I think I understand it, and don't really care what my lecturer says it is about, because I am learning how to read metaphor not regurgitate allegations. See, this is what my Grade 12 teacher should have said:

Way back when, the illiteracy rates were 99 per cent or close enough, because the church didn't want anyone to read and know they were con artists stealing what money people had away and calling it donations. Along came Martin Luther (the German one) and tacked a piece of paper (he could read) to a door. This piece of paper said everyone should have access to the Holy Writ. Or at least the pictures. 

They killed him but these ideas made sense, even to people who couldn't read. There are revolutions all over Europe, and although people keep getting slaughtered, they pass on the spirit of rebellion until it finally sticks like the fur of a cat brushing up against the walls. In particular, the rights and responsibilities of humankind, and the right to education. 

While people are getting slaughtered for the right to read, other people are making things from metal and steel, and sending plumes of environmentally irresponsible toxins into the air, and still others are lining up to work in factories for those people. The Industrial Revolution is slaughtering the craftsman and the sense of community, and the working man's spirit. 

But, see, now people have the right to education (mostly, there's still some spirit to pass on) and they worship at the altar of said metal, steel and carbon monoxide - oh and money. That's basically Chaucer through to the Brontes, just much more quickly. 

As one might expect, disillusion sets in. Some writers start writing poems about clouds (Wordsworth), horses (Hughes) and assorted birds (all and sundry), reminiscing about simpler days or suggesting that living like animals is preferable to hot water or that at least one deity has possessed the countryside. They do not like cities and these are complicated days and the plumes of smoke are the breaths of a devil but at least they have hot water. It sets in and then settles in, in the form of Modernism.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we get the point!

I've said before (and I'll overlook those who don't remember) that I have the nature of a Modernist but the cynicism of a Post-modernist. This explains a lot, I know. The Modernists have had belief stripped from them, but they refuse to believe it. Every time they look at the world, they see evidence of tragedy, lit by an ill-defined transcendence. And tragedy lit by transcendence makes for wonderfully depressing but thought-provoking poetry.

Read verses 2 and 5, and you will understand the poem. Nature represents the newly discovered truth of life: that it is meaningless, but if we find love, maybe we can pretend it isn't so awful. Existence has always been this awful, but even so, isn't this a lovely view. Juxtaposition tells us what the poet isn't saying: that there is some kind of meaning to be had in beauty and time passing, even though there isn't, technically.

Even at 18 I would have understood the conflict of belief and meaninglessness, because after the Modernists came us, and we lost the plot or found it depending on your point of view. Anyway, melancholia is cathartic, except when you have some of it weighing you down. According to the movies, we all look at the ocean and are dismayed by the vastness of it, even if we don't hear the pebbles grating. Or we look and see possibility, but that is not very interesting, unless it is a made-for-TV movie staring the Olsons.

"We are here as on a darkling plain..."

That comes close to how I felt that day, reading the poem. If only I had known... And not only because I was bored and probably doodling (usually dragons seen from above, because it's easier than from the side, any side), and because I thought it was another useless poem saying things that needn't be said, but also because my toes ached and the only way I could stop them aching was to place one heel over the other set of toes and press, so I felt very sorry for myself. It would have helped to know that someone else felt worse than me.

The Postman

A few days ago, a man riding a bicycle with a plastic red basket held tight to the front handlebars, swerved in front of my car. He was wearing a vest (even though it had just been raining) and looked docilely at me as I granted him his life, as if he knew something about the rules of the road that I didn't. He was either a postman or a thief who had stolen a postman's bike. The latter, I think, because it was Sunday.

We are going to stick with postman because, when I think of post-people, I think of the Borrowers riding spools of thread.

In the bad old days, when explorers were subjugating land, animals and other people, the postal workers were right behind them. The backbone of commerce, society and subjugation. According to various Western (in the Wild Wild sense) TV series, the postmaster doubled as the editor of the local daily; was tongue-tied but honourable and trustworthy; and unfortunately tended to die or be horribly maimed unless he had a heavy-duty rifle behind the counter.

Also unfortunately, the postmaster was never the hero.

Also featuring in the Westerns of long pauses, long stares and short lives, was the 'Pony Express', a service with the Olympian flavour of the ancient Greek scout who ran through war for days and days to tell someone something important. These men swore an oath, wore uniforms of blue and white, and raced across rivers and semi-arid regions carrying letters. Believing in the power of the pen over that of the knife, arrow or rifle, but never learning to wield it as a weapon, some lost their scalps... and their letters.

One day, our children won't be able to make heads nor tails of a story in which someone risked their life carrying words on paper vast distances.

Speaking of: in 1985, when David Brin wrote The Postman, the internet was still being molded as a security solution to international war, secretaries used carbon paper to make copies of memos and wireless referred exclusively to radios. As a science writer and physicist for NASA, Brin no doubt saw further into the future than most, but he and I still imagine the 2011 restoration of the United States from as far apart as the northern edge of the prairie to the southern.

The letter was under threat from the fax and photocopier (the 2-in-1) (and yes, I'm old enough and young enough to remember this) in 1985. Now the letter and the fax - nevermind the typewriter - are novelties. The last time I received a letter was a 'Seasons greeting' card. Does a postcard count? I have cards from Chicago, Hong Kong and the Grand Canyon, sent in between IMs and smses.

No, this isn't completely true, because last Sunday I almost ran over the shade of a postman. I receive my post at home (account statements, sale pamphlets and the occasional plea to take out a loan) so sometimes I catch postmen and -women mid-posting. They always have a bike, with a branded basket, and uniform. (Usually also post.) They are always polite, but perhaps this is because I always greet them first.

The Postman is a post-apocalyptic tale of hope set in 2011. The apocalypse was a sewing basket of the things the media warn us about: nuclear war, technological war, disease, starvation, natural disaster and human nature. Ten years later, only wanderers and small villages have survived, by avoiding all other people - oh and the so-called survivalists, not the reality show kind whose backstabbing (accurately) looks like the games of little girls.

Survivalists believe literally in the survival of the fittest: the strongest band together to pick off the weak who also band together to become strong. Those they don't kill they subjugate, or put aside to play with later.

Gordon, the hero, is a wanderer. He wanders from village to village, scavenging and trying to discard the flabby manners of civilisation. But really he wanders looking for a hero (cue the Bonnie Tyler song) who will restore his civilisation to him. One day, he scavenges the leather jacket and cap of a postman. In the last days of the apocalypse, post became the last frontier of communication. The jacket and cap bear the badge of the Pony Express (except they drove Jeeps).

Misunderstanding upon misunderstanding later, Gordon is hard at work spreading the word of the Restored United States and a renewed postal service. The implication being that what makes civilisation civilised is a network of communication. Before you judge him (or not) he's not a different kind of survivalist, feeding people's hopes (and himself) with lies. He believes his own lies - or he believes in hope, at least.

The (un)reality of The Postman is additionally unreal with thirty years between us and Brin. Thirty years of the evolution of the portable phone from a bulky home phone to slim gadgets that structure our lives and fit into our pockets. During which people forgot how to spell anything but phonetically. During which dictionaries of new words have been coined. During which Pluto was demoted. Populated with Dolly and Curiosity and Obama and Bieber.

The book is set in 2011, three years ago (perhaps people have forgotten how to count as well as spell, huh?). This post-apocalypse seems more charming than apocalyptic: a nostalgia for small-town values without losing the best of modern life. It imagines computers as thinking feeling judging beings, able to hold meaningful conversations and evaluate data sets.

And most importantly, it assumes that postmen are an everyday sight.

Compare this with the terrifying landscape of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. There are survivalists; their camps of subjugated lambs - I mean, subjects - are the only pockets of, um, civilisation; but no representatives of technology, communication or organised government. Instead of wandering from place to place, the reader is confined to the steps of the merry band of two and their - shudder - trolley.

The contemporary imagination is not more bloody or more cynical - Dante wrote the Inferno in the 14th century and the Nordic pantheon includes a one-eyed combination of god and devil. The Incas sacrificed people in the thousands, depending what they were praying for.

But choosing a postman as your hero seems naive. Even the character acknowledges that more than once. He does so because postmen had become cartoon regular, getting chased by dogs, bitten by dogs, soaked by sprinklers and so on. Today, postmen are made-for-TV regulars and that is mostly how we know them. If my door didn't open onto my postbox, I wouldn't know postmen and their bikes existed (I don't have dogs or sprinklers, luckily).

This is a very superficial review of a book I enjoyed. I enjoyed it, but it didn't make me think. It didn't make me think because a lot of this has been thunk. So much has passed between a date when the letter held at least a third of the written-word market and a year when there is one cellphone for every person in the world (there's a tip for the 1985 stock market) that the past seems more absurd than the horrifying future.