Current location:	NJ
Current mood:	In Love
Current music:	The Land Between Solar Systems - Mum
Entry tags:	america, dinosaurs, ernest hemingway, great books, haruki murakami, japan, junot diaz, kurt vonnegut, literature, sarah vowell, steven millhauser, vladmir nabokov

I just want to Dance Dance Dance!
Saturday night was a perfect date.  The boy and I ate gyros and then went to the bookstore after.  And I had a gift certificate left over from Christmas.  So I got to do some shopping!  I purchased five books - Dance Dance Dance and Kafka on the Shore - both by Haruki Murakami, Drown by Junot Diaz (who used to live in Demarest!  I read his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and was absolutely blown away; plus about a third of it actually took place in Demarest, so I felt nostalgic reading it), The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell (as opposed to Sarah Consonant :P), and Planet News a small book of Ginsberg poetry.  Good stuff.

Honestly, could I have had more minorities in one bag?  Japanese and Dominican men, a woman and a gay man.  I was considering purchasing a Toni Morrison novel just to have it all.

ANYWAY, on Monday morning, I started Dance Dance Dance.  This evening, I finished it while I was commuting home on the bus.  Oh my god, it was amazing.  I could have easily killed it in two days if it hadn't been for my boss slapping me with an excerpt of a novel but a few minutes before I left yesterday.  But back to Dance Dance Dance.  Oh.  My.  God.  About 70 pages in, I already knew that it was going to be one of my favorite books ever.  I was not wrong.  Easily in my top 5.  It was so good.  About halfway through, I felt heartbroken because I knew it would end soon.

I can barely describe how it made me feel.  I described the feeling to Ben as being like sexual excitement - while I was reading it, I felt so intense and flushed all over - almost like I was intoxicated but without loss of logical thought.  And then when I wasn't reading it, all I did was think about it.  It was fueling me while my body acted like a machine - accomplishing the daily tasks of the day.  But that doesn't quite capture it.  Dance Dance Dance felt like an old lover in your bed.  Full of bittersweet sentiment, humor, and softness.  This might sound weird but I think I actually fell in love with this book in the same way that one would fall in love with a person.

This book was like a great American novel - except it was Japanese.  Written by a Japanese man with Japanese characters and taking place mostly in Tokyo and Sapporo.  Since the bulk of it takes place in urban areas of Japan, the narrative explores landscapes littered with McDonalds' and Dunkin' Donuts', which gives the novel one of it's more peculiar qualities.  You're seeing the most Westernized portions of Japan - a testament to vast globalization.  So in spite of the fact that it's Japanese, it's easy to lose track of that fact and picture America and Americans in place of everything.  Also, it has a Hemingway feel to it.  It reminded me a lot of The Sun Also Rises since there was so much about traveling, drinking, physical love, and alienation.  It even had some Vonnegut-esque moments (random recipes sprinkled in a few places - sort of like Deadeye Dick but not quite).  I also felt like there was a lot of Nabokov in it, even though he wasn't American.  But Lolita took place in America and Dance Dance Dance definitely borrowed heavily from it.  No sex with minors but the main character is a 34 year old male and at some point he befriends a 13 year old girl with clairvoyance.  There's some tension between them and at times it seems vaguely sexual.  But it proves to be a rather innocent relationship based on their mutual understanding of one another.  They're both strange outcasts in their own ways so they relate in spite of the many abstract boundaries between them.

I also noticed some similarities with The Real Life of Sebastian Knight also by Nabokov.  There was a lot of surrealism throughout Dance Dance Dance as well as the juxtaposition of individuals.  Everyone overlapped and slipped through one another in some way.

I also felt there was some homo-eroticism, which I found to be reminiscent of some early to mid 20th century male-centered literature.  Nothing overt, just subtle overtones.

And the ending.  It was incredibly satisfying.  I was getting nervous that it was going to have a flat ending.  That's been happening to me a lot lately - I'll read a book that's crazy good but it will have a pretty piss poor ending.  Sometimes, writers just don't know how to conclude their amazing stories.  But not Murakami.  A great ending to a great book.

In a weird way, I felt like the books I've read most recently sort of preened me for Dance Dance Dance.  Last month, I read 7 books (which is a personal best for me an January - a month that tends to be slow for me reading-wise).  Among the 7 titles, I read The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak.  Barzak wrote this novel upon returning from Japan, I believe.  He lived there for some time just teaching English.  The narrative switches from several characters, both American and Japanese.  That book was really good too, especially since he really picked up on traditional Japanese aesthetic.  And it's loaded with lots of Japanese mysticism.  So this prepped me for Murakami just because the book mostly consisted of stories about love and loss in modern Japan. 

I also read Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser, which was a collection of short stories.  They were stories of obsession, darkness, longing, alienation, memory, and metaphysical happenings.  Lots of great stories.  I also tried to read his other collection of shorts The Barnum Museum but I only finished 3 stories before realizing that I needed a break from his style.  New rule: do not read two books by the same author consecutively.  Space 'em out.  Ok, I'm digressing as usual.  Anyway, The Barnum Museum had an amazing story in it called "A Game of Clue."  It was about the most awkward game of Clue ever played by anyone ever.  There is so much unspoken tension between the 4 players - it actually is uncomfortable to read at times.  Meanwhile, as the game goes on, in another reality that coincides with our reality, the characters of the game come alive in various ways.  Colonel Mustard is an old perv, Miss Scarlet is an apathetic and unintentional seductress, and so on.  So while the game is being played in real life, the characters of the game interact within their own reality.

Millhauser also included an amazing description of the actual board.  Clearly, the game had been in the family for a long time and Millhauser painstakingly described for us every pencil mark, every tear, every faded color.  Also, he mentions how long ago the piece for Professor Plum was lost and had been replaced by a chess piece, I think.  In the game's universe, the character of Professor Plum is finding endless secret passages.  As the game goes on, he just gets lost deep inside the labyrinth of this secret universe within a universe.  He keeps telling himself that he should turn around but his obsession will not allow him to do so.  As if he has no choice but to do this because his game piece is missing.  Loved it.

Dance Dance Dance had some similar themes and devices.  Obsession, metaphysics, coexisting universes, alienation.  So that's how Millhauser prepped me for Murakami.

Normally, immediately after finishing a book I just pick up the next one I have planned.  Not tonight.  I don't want anything to affect this feeling I have.  After I finished it on the bus, I still had quite a bit of my trip left.  I had another book on me, but instead I just held Dance Dance Dance to my chest like it was my lover.  All books should feel like lovers in some way.  Some are bad, some are good, some are great.  Some are so amazing that you never want to stray from it.  I want to hold onto that feeling for at least tonight.  So I'm not reading anything else tonight.  But tomorrow is a whole other story.  I'm thinking Drown by Junot Diaz, which I  mentioned earlier.  It's not very long so it shouldn't take long.  February is usually a bad reading month for me because it's so short.  But I'm going to aim for 5 books.  I'm not going to be a nazi about it, though.  If I don't read that much, then ok.  Either way, 2009 is shaping up to be a pretty excellent reading year.

Also, I've been watching Dinosaurs a lot lately.  I purchased the entire series online.  That show is amazing.  It all flew way over my head when I was a kid, I think; although, I remember some things.

These last 3 days have been some of the most amazing days of my life, I think.  Nothing big, just simple pleasures.  And Dance Dance Dance is so much apart of that.  Last night, I soaked in the tub with some bath salts and read by candlelight while drinking green tea with honey.  It was such an amazingly relaxing experience.  I felt so at peace (aside from my brain-gears grinding like crazy).  Then today, the weather was just so beautiful, I actually walked to work from Port Authority (it's not a very long walk - a little over a mile, but I usually take the subway out of convenience).  I had iced coffee for the first time since it got really cold.  At lunch, I went out without a jacket and went to Toasties.  They had their front windows/doors completely open so everything was exposed to the lovely outside weather.  I sat at the table closest to the window/door so it was like I was eating outside.  I can't think of a better way to spend an afternoon.  The breeze, the book, the sunshine, iced coffee.  Yes, these past 3 days have been amazing in their own simple ways.  It's amazing what a great book can do for you.  Well, it's more than that I guess.  Everything just came together.  I better get ready for rough times ahead - haha.

I don't really know how to end this entry.  Apologies for it's length.  X-posted to robotswilleatus.  Sorry, Regina.

Take care.  And godspeed, you weary hobo.