The Man With The Beautiful Eyes

Max Cairnduff over at Pechorin's Journal got me thinking about Charles Bukowski again.  It's been a few years since I've read Bukowski, but I always liked his loose style and matter of fact prose.  Anyway I was remembering this animated video that was narrated by Bukowski that I posted on my old blog.  I went searching for it and here it is again...

After Reading Miss Rhys

I stumbled upon Jean Rhys quite by accident, after watching a film version of her novel, Quartet.  Born in the West Indies in 1890, she emigrated to England at the age of 16.   She had the good fortune to be in Paris in the 1920's and mingled with the likes of the "Lost Generation."  Ford Madox Ford greatly praised her short stories.  With her husband in jail for currency fraud, she moved in with Ford and his wife and quickly became involved in an affair with Ford.  She later turned the circumstances into a slim little novel, Quartet.

She published her first collection of short stories in 1927 under the title, The Left Bank and Other Stories.  Jean Rhys wrote a series of slim little novels, her most famous being Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).  My first introduction to her came with After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931).

First sentence: "After she had departed from Mr Mackenzie, Julia Martin went to live in a cheap hotel on the Qui des Grands Augustins."

Soon after leaving Mr Mackenzie the cheques stop coming and she must use her fading sexual charms to try to extract money from former lovers or seek new ones.  In her bleak existence she moves from one seedy apartment to another between Paris and London.  While in London her mother dies, after a long illness, during which she was cared for by Julia's sister.  There is a bitter reunion between the two sisters, while Julia fluctuates between hope and despair.

"That night, coming back from her meal, a man followed her.  When she had turned from the Place St Michel to the darkness of the quay he came up to her, muttering proposals in a low, slithery voice.  She told him sharply to go away.  But he caught hold of her arm, and squeezed it as hard as he could by way of answer.

She stopped.  She wanted to hit him.  She was possessed with one of the fits of rage which were becoming part of her character.  She wanted to fly at him and strike him, but she thought that he would probably hit her back.

She faced him and said: 'Let me tell you, you are - you are...'  The word came to her.  'You are ignoble.'

Not at all,' answered the man in an aggrieved voice.  'I have some money and I am willing to give it to you.  Why do you say that I am ignoble?'

They were now arrived at Julia's hotel.  She went in, and pushed the swing-door as hard as she could into his face.

She could not have explained why, when she got to her room, her forebodings about the future were changed into a feeling of exultation.

She looked at herself in the glass and thought: 'After all, I'm not finished.  It's all nonsense that I am.  I'm not finished at all.' "

I liked Jean Rhys' sparse writing style and stark description of the times, usually tracing the decline of fading beauty.  I like her evocation of the time, written from the perspective of someone who was there.

Her collection of short stories, The Left Bank and Other Stories, has been long out of print and hard to find, but I did come across her complete short stories, which I am reading now.

Feasting on Murakami

I've finished reading Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and am now embroiled in a feast of another sort, Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.  The title of the book is a reference to George Orwell's book, 1984, and in fact the novel takes place in 1984.  The letter Q is a reference to the Japanese number 9, pronounced "kyu."

  Murakami's, The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, is the novel that put him on an entirely different plain from those around him and remains his major work.  He certainly took us to places we've never been before, and the book remains one of my favourites.  I suppose I like the kind of journey he takes us on, even if we can't figure out afterwards quite where we've been.

I like the way Mr Murakami writes, his patient writing style, while he slowly weaves his web and draws you ever into his intricate story.  1Q84 is a story of two parallel worlds and to try to describe them would only make the whole endeavor sound more confusing.  Suffice it to say that both worlds are almost identical; one world is basically the world we know, while the other one has a few historical differences and one major difference: there are two moons hanging in the sky.

In each world there is a character we are following.  In one world there is a man, Tengo, who has ghost written a book by a beautiful 17 year old girl that has become a bestseller.  Tengo is also writing a long novel, which may actually be the other world we are reading about.  I am almost half way through the book and Tengo is about to be drawn into a deeper mystery.

In the other world there is a woman named Aomame, who is a hired assassin.  She knows that having two moons in the sky is not right and some historical differences do not make sense to her.  She seems to have entered this alternate reality by accident, or there is a reference that she may have somehow entered the story that Tengo is writing.

We know that Tengo and Aomame knew each other as 10 year old children and have never seen or forgotten each other since, and we know that inevitably their paths are going to cross again.

This is all background.  This is also a story that touches on several topics: violence towards women, revenge, family relationships, the elusiveness of memory, the nature of time, and "story" itself, to name a few.

Each chapter in the book alternates between the two parallel worlds and trying to hold the parallels between the two worlds together can be a challenge, but fortunately, Mr. Murakami is our guide and we have to trust where he will take us.  So far it has been a very engaging journey, and maybe a very engaging journey is all that we can ask for.

The Ruffled Mind Rises Again!

I've been thinking  for some time of reviving my long dormant blog, The Ruffled Mind, but until now have resisted the urge.  But it prods at me on these restless Novembers nights to allow it to arise from the crypt and walk again.  So, for what it is worth, here is the the Ruffled Mind once more...
 

The Ruffled Mind was born of sleepless nights, those nights when, for no good reason you wake up after 3 or 4 hours sleep and random thoughts roll through your mind and sleep becomes elusive and your mind becomes entirely ruffled.

On these nights I arise from my bed and seek the comfort of a good book; one that soothes my ruffled mind and allows me, after a chapter or two, to return to bed and to sleep.

The Ruffled Mind, then, on the web, is nothing more than a way of tracking and putting some form to my reading habits and literary musings, and other thoughts that sometime ruffle the mind.

As Charlotte Bronte wrote, "The ruffled mind is a restless pillow."