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Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the Sun
An indeed Japanese novel.
The first thing there is to say is: if it weren't for the Japanese names and the Japanese author, one wouldn't necessarily know that it's a Japanese novel.
It's an ordinary "big city novel", it's a novel about a first love and about a last love,
it's a novel about a young man who studies literature but can't amount to nothing with it, who then meets a woman
whose father is rich and probably a little crooked who bestows him a couple of night clubs which he manages excellently
where he mixes great cocktails ... and then the following happens to him: He's 37 years old and meets his first love whom he met with 12 back in school,
a girl that slightly limps, that he loses without ever "having her"
that he dreams about all his life the way one dreams about youth.
In this process of becoming older and becoming ordinary she then becomes what he's yearning for and he then actually meets her again.
This encounter is also an encounter with death, and with chaos because his early love would tear him out of the system and order that he meanwhile achieved.
And that's how the book ends. The author is, by the way, a Chandler interpreter and that's why big parts of the plot take place in bars, with cocktails and stuff
it has this Chandlerish melancholy. It's a crime novel without a crime because all the thriller elements end up nowhere
and it's a book that shows that meanwhile there is a "global culture" which isn't any different in Tokyo than it would be in Berlin, New York, Los Angeles or Paris.
Mrs. Löffler.
I would like to ban this book from the show because in my opinion we are not dealing with actual literature but, in the best case, with literary fast food.
Reich-Ranicki: Fast food?
Löffler: Fast food. McDonald's. But not a three-star restaurant.
And that's because the story is completely lacking language.
It could be that this is due to the translation, I don't want to decide that; in fact I can't.
But the language that we're dealing with here is no language at all. It's a gibberish that's totally lacking art and literature.
I don't think it can be called literature at all.
Now if someone says that's because it's an *** novel then I have to bring up a quotation. I'm sorry for not remembering it from the top of my head, it's just too horrible.
About an *** encounter: "Es war eine Naturgewalt, es hat uns umgehauen." ("It was an act of nature, it blew us away" - can't find the corresponding passage in the English translation - sorry!)
Another one: "Ich wollte sie bis zur Hirnerweichung vögeln." ("I wanted to *** her brains out." - again, no corresponding passage, sorry!)
Well, I don't think this is related to any kind of literature, that it's any kind of *** language.
That part is purely about mechanics!
The other scenes deal with something completely different.
Let me bring your attention to something else:
This book is right from the beginning, and I know you will be outraged and offended by the word that I'm going to use
made of exceptional gentleness. Oh yes! You're missing out on it, Mrs. Löffler, on the tenderness of this book.
This book is an extremely *** climatic novel that is step by step heading towards the great ending chapter, the final chapter where the main character makes a trip with the female lead, goes with her someplace,
and it's a long way to that, it's a very long scene before they sleep with each other, and the scene right prior to it is written FABULOUSLY
I haven't read a love scene like this one in years (some guy in the background: "Me neither.")
it's a brilliant scene.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to object what you delight in. It's probably related to age. But I have an objection to writers who totally miss the point they're trying to write about.
Reich-Ranicki: Not at all!
The topic that we haven't really mentioned yet is the encounter with "Madame La Mort", the woman he met as a child and now meets again, who is supposed to portray the "Goddess of Death"
and how is he trying to portray the encounter with death by bringing a certain "courtesy" into the dialogues between the two main characters?
Reich-Ranicki: NO!
There's no special courtesy.
Löffler: Yes there is!
Reich-Ranicki: You misunderstand EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE!
Löffler: I'm sorry, let me give you an example. There's an absolute ritualization of the language by the two characters always using the sufix -san. Shimamoto-SAN.
Hence, the polite term of address.
Reich-Ranicki: That's common in Japan, I'm told. I can't estimate that.
Löffler: Yes, but when this term of address is used in every single sentence between those two that means that the author is trying to ascend to a higher level of language.
I'll admit that he's doing so unsuccessfully, but he's trying to.
Mrs. Löffler, would you try to remember the chapter in which the male lead is taking her to the mouth of a river, where they get snowed in, where they take the ashes of their child, if you're really saying that this isn't
at least suggesting the encounter with death, or take the scene where he's following her around through the city, where he's stopped by a guy who gives him an envelope,
telling him to stop doing this, where the author does a great job letting us in the dark as to if all that really happened or just dreamt up, he's doing perfectly so with the ashtray that still contains her cigarette ...
those are scenes I haven't read in that virtuosity in a really long time.
Thank God I'm not so lonely in this round like I feared I would be.
One more thing! You're always on the side of the woman in society and the like of it, haven't you noticed that this unusually gentle woman possesses all the power?
She is the ruling one, she's ...
Löffler: Oh come on, that woman is not a realistic character, that woman is a phantasm. Reich-Ranicki: That woman is a poetic figure! Löffler: She's a male fantasy.
Reich-Ranicki: Aaah, I saw that one coming. Of course, it's from the male perspective, yeah that's right, Gretchen, Ophelia, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina ....
Löffler: I think you shouldn't always take the great literature for reference while we're dealing with literaric fast food. That woman is a male fantasy and nothing else.
Reich-Ranicki: The question is if that male fantasy is such a bad thing or if it's a poetic fantasy! A fantasy of great and remarkable literaric power.
You have no sense for this kind of thing. It's pointless. Twice a year we discuss a romantic novel and every time you outrageously say they don't belong here.
I don't know, you probably think of love as something obnoxious and naughty but the world literature just deals with that kind of stuff!
Karasek: The American critic said that this author will most likely be one of the next Nobel Prize winners.
Mrs. Löffler, if you meanwhile insist that the book doesn't belong in this show then I think it's necessary we discuss our categories.
Reich-Ranicki: No!
Löffler: I'd welcome literaric categories. But without personal imputations.
Reich-Ranicki: You didn't notice I was talking about a purely literaric ... Löffler: No, you worked with personal imputations. Reich-Ranicki: I have ... Löffler: I think that's unfair and not okay. Karasek: No that's not okay. Reich-Ranicki: I said ..