Persepolis

I’ve just finished reading Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

Warning! for the comix adverse: please be advised that the following commentary involves discussion of a graphic novel. Govern yourself accordingly. Are you all gone? Good, now we can proceed…

As I mentioned, this is a graphic novel. It is the autobiographical story of the young Marjane as a little girl in Iran during the time of the Shah’s rule and the subsequent Islamic Revolution. It is a fascinating story, all the more so because it is true. Marjane grew up in many ways just like all of us. All she wanted when her parents went to Turkey for vacation was a Kim Wilde poster. Cool. Now she is apparently an Iggy Pop fan. Did I mention that Ms. Satrapi is really hot? Where was I?

Oh yeah, the story. There is a lot of back story on Iran’s history and its culture. I vaguely remember the Shah’s exile as a kid myself, and this a pain free way to learn what that was all about. I came to this book late. It’s sequel, Persepolis 2 came out to much critical acclaim, but I had to go back and read this one first, obviously. Persepolis takes us up to when Marjane was 14 years old and her parents sent her to Austria to live with a friend while she attended a French school. Persepolis 2, presumably will take us from there. Her most recent book, Embroideries, has just been released, and it is a collection of racy stories that she remembers old Iranian women telling one another. That may be a chick book, we’ll see. Look for future reports on the complete Marjane oeuvre coming soon. I will be reading them all. I can’t say enough good things about this book. If you are interested in finding out what the graphic novel hooplah is all about, this is an excellent “gateway” graphic novel.

Here’s a fun and unlikely fact. Persepolis was required reading this year for West Point cadets. Ms. Satrapi was invited to speak to cadets at West Point, where they got to hear her lecture first hand. She was not all that complementary about Senor Bush (who is). But she was fairly impressed that this country’s top military academy invited her to speak. Me too. Bookslut has an interview with her that you may find interesting.

Bonus comix: If you prefer the guy-with-cape style comic, Michael Chabon has been working on a quarterly old-school comic book based upon the action character developed by the fictional Kavlier & Clay, The Escapist. The conceit of these comic books is that they are a collection of Escapist stories that have been published over the decades by different authors and comic-publishing houses. So each issue has some completely made up history about The Escapist franchise and how it evolved. It is all completely straight faced, but it lets you in on the joke from time to time – if you are down. This allows for a wide range of guest artists, writers, and stories. It’s pretty cool. The next issue, #7, which comes out in July will be a full issue Escapist story by Micheal Chabon himself. Check it out.

By Request

At the request of Shaft, I give you a revised masterpiece.

Magical Thinking

Okay, so I just finished Magical Thinking, by Augusten Burroughs.

Well, when I say “finished”, I mean I just finished page 243 out of a possible 268. Believe it or not, unlike books that I’ve gotten twenty or thirty pages into and decided to bail because I didn’t think I would enjoy them, I got conned into getting 90.6716% of the way into this one before I finally admitted defeat. Can this Burroughs fellow write? Sure. Can he turn a phrase that will make you chuckle? Sure. Can he go at least three paragraphs without playing the gay card? No chance in hell.

Now don’t get me wrong — I’ve got nothing against being gay. And plenty of the writers that I enjoy are gay (see, e.g., Marc Acito, the “Gay Dave Barry”). That’s not the point. The point is that I somehow got tricked into reading this because I expected it to be the best David Sedaris book written by someone other than David Sedaris. And it’s not. My problem with Burroughs (at least with respect to this, the only book of his that I’ve read), is that the first four stories of this book are anecdotal, fairly humorous tales of his growing up, and don’t have anything to do with his sexuality. The next twenty (of the remaing twenty-three) have very little in the way of funny, Dave Barry/Al Frankenesque anecdotale humor, but rather, are uninteresting tales of who-cares-about kind of stuff that are totally, gratuitously sprinkled — nay, drenched — with references to the fact that Mr. Burroughs is gay. Again, I honestly don’t give a damn about his sexuality; the fact is that the first few stories were entertaining enough that I kept reading for way too long in the hopes that he would revert to the style of the first few stories. Instead, by the tenth story (let alone the twentieth), he had forgotten how to tell a tale that would mean something or resonate with your average Joe, and I was hoping he (or one of his partners) would get hit by a bus. And that, my friends, would be magical thinking.

How I Paid for College………again

At Shaft’s recommendation – I finished How I Paid for College last night and agree with him that it was one of the funniest books I have read in a long time. I know that Chapter 23 was his favorite chapter (and it was laugh out loud) but my personal favorite hilarious sentence in the book was…………
“So I put on my Izod and my khakis and one of those embroidered cotton belts; in this outfit with my Hall and Oates haircut, I looked like a lesbian golfer.” Even writing this post – it is making me laugh.

My only issues were that there was a little too much nonsensical hi-jinks at the end and Frank Sinatra showing up at the end was way over the top.

Perfect summer beach book.

Wuthering Heights

So I’ve just finished Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë .

How about that cover. I scanned in the cover of my 1940s vintage budget “pocket edition” (complete and unabridged). This cover seems ripe for some Photoshop hi-jinks. For one thing, I can’t figure out who the people on the cover are supposed to be. Both Cathy’s had blond hair, as did the nancy-boy Heathcliff. The Evil Heathcliff and Hareton were huge guys. So who does that leave us? As you can see on the cover, the book was $0.25 in 1940, and I got it for $0.16 sixty-five years later. If you factor in inflation, I made $25.

Reading this book arose directly from the comments/discussion on Nitro’s review of The Book of Salt. While I don’t agree with her assessment of the “type” of books I/we tend to read, there was no denying that virtually all of the books that I read are of the type of books that I always read, if you follow. So maybe, in her misguided way, she was onto something.

But wait, there’s more. In this month’s Believer Magazine, author Nick Hornby talks about being in a similar rut in his monthly Stuff I’ve Been Reading column(link goes to teaser partial column). The article begins with Hornby being confronted by an interesting looking book about peregrine falcons, which is exactly the kind of book he never reads. He later determines that he will force himself out of his reading rut, and he will read some books that are exactly the kind of books he doesn’t normally read. At the end of the article, a friend of Hornby’s suggests that the kind of book he really never reads is web-site fan-boy non-literary sci-fi/fantasy. So he’s kicking himself for not getting that falcon book.

The prevailing mood then, as I read it, seems to be that it is high time we break out of our collective reading ruts. In a response to Nitro, I had thrown out Wuthering Heights as just the type of girly book that I was unlikely to read. So that seemed like a good place to start. If nothing else, it was a good opportunity to read a “classic”. My edition declares, “Wuthering Heights has been called the greatest book ever written by a woman” ( ! ). So it had that going for it as well.

I was not forced to read Wuthering Heights in high school, so what I new about the book was based entirely upon the Kate Bush song and prejudice. I assumed it was going to be a Victorian book that featured lots of courtly love, strict manners and social mores, fainting, huge manors, etc. I suppose I could have been more wrong about this book, but it’s tough to see how. My first clue that I was on the wrong track was when I read the hype on the back cover, beginning with “The Strangest Love Story Ever Told” – that ended up to be very true. Later on it says, “Wuthering Heights is a powerful story in the tradition of Dracula and Frankenstein“. Dracula and Frankenstein? WTF? Well, that part turned out to be true as well.

Wuthering Heights is one wacky story. It is a very twisted love/revenge story where virtually everyone is miserable to the limits of human endurance for most of the book. I won’t go into a huge plot summary, since I assume most of you had to read it in high school. Plus, it is not within my powers to describe the story without making it sound stupid.

However, I will tell you about a few things that I’ve learned from my “out of rut” experience. First, I felt that it was initially harder reading a book that was not written in the modern style that I am used to, and I found myself reading much slower than I normally do. That was a little annoying – but not the book’s fault. Second, the $0.16 that I paid for this book may have been too much. I later found out that old school classic literature that is now clearly in the public domain is readily available for free/no pay as an e-book download compliments of those internets. That’s cool, but how would I bring it on the bus? I certainly don’t want to read anything of length on my Palm. On the other hand, it could be an excellent way of getting some reading in at the office. Nice.

Those same internets provided some interesting back story on Emily Brontë. This was her only book of fiction, published in 1847. It was written before she was 30, and she soon after died of turberculosis. One of the reasons this book is “all that” is that it was among the first pieces of English literature to experiment with non-linear structure. Who knew?

Overall, this whole experiment was a success. I learned that I was completely wrong about my suppositions of a classic, and its a pretty good book to boot. Cool. I leave you with Kate Bush(not one of the Bush twins)….

Too long I roam in the night.
I’m coming back to his side,
to put it right.
I’m coming home to wuthering, wuthering, Wuthering Heights,

Heathcliff, it’s me–
I’m Cathy. I’ve come home.
I´m so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

AHHHHHHH YAAAAA YAAAA OHHHH YAAAAAAA

Photoshop Phun

Check out this round-up of Photoshopped romance book cover hilarity as well as the original. Long flowing mane goodness. Sadly, no Fabio. (links via Boing Boing).

Summer Music Reading List

Pitchfork, the indie music site, has compiled a summer music reading list. My “must read” item from the list has got to be the Wu-Tang tome. The reviewer seems to think it has it all:

Book Two breaks down the Wu-Tang gestalt to its constituent bits, as RZA constructs a cohesive worldview from selected tenets of martial arts, capitalism, comic books, chess, organized crime, cinema, and chemistry.

Damn, yo! Did you even know the Wu had a gestalt?v

Stacked Report

Tonight’s Stacked wasn’t shite. We learned the secret of women’s knitting groups: they talk about us men and they drink. The professor learned the dangers of making science too accessible to children. And the giant book poster on the wall was for a book by Erica Simone Turnipseed, hard to see, but it may have been A Love Noire.

In other news, The Believer has a great interview with Steve Martin, which they have thoughtfully made completely available.

Saturday

I’ve just finished Saturday by Ian McEwan.

Meh. It seems like this is a book that I should have enjoyed more than I did, and I can’t really pinpoint where it went wrong. It’s not you Saturday, it’s me. Really.

The book follows a London neurosurgeon over the course of a single day – Saturday, February 15, 2003. The books begins when the doctor awakens and wanders to his window half-asleep to see a flaming airplane streaking across the London sky. Post 9/11, that’ll freak you out. So that sets the tone for the rest of the book – a dread of something bad about to happen that one feels powerless to defend against.

Also on this day, a huge anti-war demonstration is to take place in London. The war against Iraq is still an open question and eventually 2 million Britons take to the streets to protest for peace. And we know what a fat load of good that will do them. I vaguely remember something about that demonstration on the news here at the time. It is interesting to read some of the British take on the war build-up, without having to read back issues of The Economist or something.

Our Dr. is excited about the return home of his daughter, who has been studying in Paris and will be publishing her first book of poetry. He is less excited about that his father-in-law, a self-important prick (and also a famous poet), will also be coming to visit. His son is a British blues prodigy, but he seems vaguely too clean cut for the job to me. His wife is a lawyer for a newspaper and does lots of 1st amendment type stuff – although as a Briton, I guess they call it something else. Anyway, just your typical over-achieving British family. I suppose they are like the Huxtables without the pudding pops.

There is surprisingly little dialog in the book. Much of the book, I’d suppose is a meditation by a well-to-do British citizen on the condition of the modern man in the new millennium where danger can come from all sides. While light on conversation, the book is not without conflict or action. There is a section about a car accident that the Dr. gets into that is as suspenseful and anxiety-producing as any thriller. Seriously, it had me burning through the pages there.

Without giving too much away, the days events circle back around on the Dr. and insert themselves into his home. The Dr. finds out a lot about the strength and character of his family and of himself.

The book is very well written. That Ian McEwan is no slouch. He captures the dread and malaise of the time perfectly. Maybe that’s what got to me. I’ve been working hard to get that pre-election hopelessness behind me. Anyway, this is exactly the kind of book that I generally really like. Which is why, with very little prodding from Nitro, I’ve decided that my next book will be exactly the kind of book that I would generally steer clear. Time to mix things up.

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

This collection of short stories by Nathan Englander got rave reviews “An astonishment….brilliant….daring….funny” when it debuted. I don’t know if I would go so far as to give this books such accolades but it was a thought provoking, enjoyable read.

The book consists of nine different short stories set in locations from Jerusalem, to Brooklyn, to a train on it’s way to a concentration camp in WWII Poland. I was expecting the book to be a much lighter and funnier read but as soon as I started the story in the book “The Tumblers”, I knew my assumptions were wrong. This story describes a group of Hasidic jews who accidently get on a train filled with circus performers rather than a cattle car and decide that their only way to survive and not get sent to the camps is to pretend that they are an acrobatic troupe. While there are some humorous scenes (….who knew that Raizel the widow had double-jointed arms, or that Shmuel Berel could scurry about upside down on hands and feet mocking the movements of a crab.), and I’m sure Englander was trying to show the strength of the human spirit, I found the story terribly depressing.

The title story of the book “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” describes a rebbe granting Dov Binyamin, an Orthodox Jew, authorization to visit a prostitute when faced with his wife’s self-imposed celibacy. The outcome of Dov’s choice to not wear a condom (according to Jewish law “It is a sin to spill seed in vain”) and end up having some veneral disease highlights the juxtaposition of modern day life with ultra-orthodox Judaism.

My other two favorite stories in the book were “Reb Kringle” in which a famous rebbe works in a department store dressed as Santa every year and “The Last One Way” in which Gitta a woman who was miserably married for 18 years and then separated for 18 years will do anything (including murder and/or torture) to get her husband to agree to a divorce.

It seemed that all of the stories were Englander’s thoughts on Judaism through the eyes of his different characters. I have to believe that Englander hoped the book would appeal to a cross-section of readers but I can’t imagine a gentile enjoying or having interest in this book.

Does anyone want to test my theory?

Motherless Brooklyn

One of the first books I read was the “Deadly Sin” books as in First Deadly, Second Deadly….I think they actually made a movie out of one of them starring Frank Sinatra as the detective.

Anyway, I mention these because Motherless Brooklyn reminded me of reading those books. The whole New York slightly “seedy” scene and the best description of sandwiches in writing since the Deadly Sin series, in my opinion. I mean who wouldn’t be inspired to find a deli that served up provolone and pepperoni sub ? The shared gastronomy is also a way the author creates a connection betweeen the reader and the main character of the book, Lionel Essrog, an all grown up orphan and small time hood who also happens to have Tourette Syndrome. The real genius of the writing is how the author manages to come up with so many “tics” throughout the course of the book as Lionel tries to solve the murder mystery of his employer and surrogate big brother, Frank Minna. This book works because the writer does not try to make Lionel into some lovable retard ( has anyone seen “Radio” ?..ugh) and therefore it is believable and at times, funny, as Lionel struggles not to bark or curse too much at inappropriate times. One of the best passages in the book is the description of why Lionel probably drove his cat crazy ( apparently OCD and Tourette’s are hand in hand disorders). It’s a good read overall.

The Word on the Street

Old and Busted: This week’s Stacked. Not so good. It featured double entendres with “rack” as the operative word. Most obvious joke ever. Also Tang, like the astronaut drink, was mistaken for something else. And the laugh track must die.

The New Hotness: Check out this “My Other Car is a Pynchon Novel” bumper sticker (scroll down). I expect those of you who enjoyed lit with me senior year at the U to have one of these on your cars by the end of the weekend.

The Book of Salt

A Changed Man

A few weeks ago I slapped up a post about Bookslut giving mad love to A Changed Man by Francine Prose. Call it fate, kismet – whatever – I heard the author on NPR’s Weekend Edition a few days later. So I had to be the first kid on my blog to check it out.

Despite the way crappy cover and an equally crappy web site, the book is actually very good. Read on for the rest of the rundown…

The story is about a former neo-Nazi who shows up at the headquarters of a human rights organization that is led by a Holocaust survivor. The skinhead says that he is there to help them stop guys like him from becoming guys like him. In their first meeting, the human rights leader asks to see the skinheads tattoos, which includes a Waffen SS insignia and the Totenkopf Death’s Head. Both were symbols of the Nazi forces used to guard concentration camps. The survivor then rolls up his sleeve and shows the skinhead his tattoo. How’s that for some dramatic tension?

As the novel goes on, the former skinhead becomes a useful and powerful symbol to the civil right group of the potential for change. We learn that Vincent, the skinhead, was never really that into it – being a white supremacist. His conversion experience is also conveniently fluid, so we’re never really sure of what to make of Vincent’s motivation for changing. He eventually becomes so famous that his past has little choice but to catch up with him.

The NPR story described the book as “comic”. I didn’t see that. While there were some lighter moments, there were no monocle-wearing leaders or lovable tubby guards with lame catch phrases. Prose spends a lot of time exposing the hidden bias and prejudices of almost everyone in the book. Some are kind of amusing, like when Vincent the skinhead first shows up in New York and wonders if a new breed of human has evolved that somehow thrives on “dog piss and carbon monoxide”. Most such observations, however, are just ugly racism.

I don’t think that Prose was shooting for comic is what I’m saying. The characters are not cartoon versions of their stereotypes. Each character is imperfect is his/her own way, like most of us. If the story is untidy, that just makes it more believable. I liked the book. If nothing else, it got me to check out the ADL’s hate group web pages, which in turn creeps me out about a tattoo I saw on a guy recently. Yipes.

Unrelated: So, I kept reading the ADL’s site. Need a reason to hate Fox News and talk radio? Have you been watching/listening to their mostly positive coverage of those idiots, The Minutemen, who have taken it upon themselves to patrol the Mexican Border? It’s been inescapable in bars and restaurants lately. Sean Hannity has been down there to mug with the defenders of freedom factually report upon the story. You may be surprised to learn that the organizers may have ties to white supremacy groups.

God’s Politics

Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I am free at last! After trudging through Jim Wallis God’s Politics, I come away in awe not of his message, but rather that he was able to repeat it, paragraph after tedious paragraph, for more than 200 pages before making any sort of point.

In the interest of time, I will summarize the central theme of this “book” using the unmistakable style of one of nation’s most thoughtful sages, South Park’s Mr. Mackey:

See, God, God is good, um-kay?
And Jesus, now, Jesus is really good. Um-kay?
But war, war is bad, um-kay?
And poverty? Now, poverty is just really bad, children, it’s bad, um-kay?
Now the Republicans, they love the Jesus. That’s good, um-kay?
Um-kay, but see, they like war and poverty, which is bad. Um-kay?
But the Democrats, they hate war and poverty. That’s good, um-kay?
But they don’t like the Jesus so much. That’s bad. Um-kay?
Now I loves the Jesus like nobody’s business, um-kay, and I hates that poverty and war a whole bunch. Basically, I’m the greatest person in the world, um-kay?
I also edit Sojourners magazine.
Sojourners Sojourners Sojourners Sojourners Sojourners. I rule. Sojourners.
And stay off the drugs, um-kay?

Jim Wallis is a proponent of a great many causes, none more so than furthering the career of Jim Wallis. He is a HUGE fan of himself, and will spare no opportunity to tell you so. When Dubya’s not high-fiving him in the Oval Office, a crowd of thousands is bursting into tears after being treated to his passionate proselytizing. If he’s not getting a standing ovation from a Harvard audience, Bono is bearhugging him at a debt relief function. Jim is like, way cool.

Not content to simply preach and preach and preach some more, Jim is also an avid writer of diatribes; there’s virtually no elected official in this great land who hasn’t had the pleasure of receiving 5000 word of wisdom. But don’t worry, we haven’t been left out of the mix; if he sent it, he also reprinted it in the book. If it was 10 pages long, no matter — it’s there, from the date to the signature.

The irony of this book is that when Jim steers away from the surface politics, it actually became somewhat intriguing. After 250 pages of tedium, Jim makes a few thoughtful and compelling arguments for the wisdom of international debt reduction, the danger of a WTO unchecked, our nation’s puzzling morality/poverty gap (i.e., the twisted right-wing logic that essentially makes exploiting the poor the right and just course of action), and the true nature of racism is the US, among others.

Naturally, he flushes it all down the tube by finishing with the tired call for the righteous masses to clean up the tawdry media that is obviously the main reason our nation is on the path to moral ruin. Look, I’m not crazy about Howard Stern throwing cold cuts at some sexually abused, meth-crazed teen stripper’s ass, either, but I’ve got 200 channels of other crap. If you don’t like it, Pax runs “Touched by an Angel” 24/7. The program you really need to be concerned about is the one where some 17-year-old from a dusty, peeling nowhere town gets shipped to the Middle East to get his legs blown off so some Bechtel exec can get a big enough bonus to add an indoor pool to his Aspen retreat — that’s called the news.

If nothing else, it brings to light the fact that there actually ARE left-leaning evangelicals who are conflicted by the current administration and want change. The bad news is the Fox Nation has no doubt spun these folks off as traitor Jesus freaks, which means that in the end, this book will probably do not a damn bit of good.

But that Jim Wallis, man, what a stud. Sojourners.

How I Paid for College

I just finished “How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater“, by Marc Acito.

I had no idea who Marc Acito was, and I knew nothing about this book other than the blurb in the Quality Paperback Book Club catalog, but I took a chance on it. Wow, wow, wow, did it pay off. What a great book.

The story takes place in 1983, and is about (and told by) Edward Zanni, a high school student in a little town outside Hoboken, NJ, and the cast of friends that surround him. Edward wants to be an actor, and wants to go to Julliard to study acting, but his father (now divorced from his flaky mother, who is purportedly off in South America somewhere getting spiritual) refuses to pay for school for him unless he studies business. Hijincks and shenanigans ensue. I won’t divulge details of the plot, or where some of these kids’ hare-brained schemes take them, but I will say that the story indeed features plenty of sex, theft, friendship, and musical theater.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book for me is that I have absolutely nothing in common with any of the central characters (who actually seem, on the surface, to have little in common with one another), and yet I followed this story from start to finish, page by page, as if I knew every one of these people, and I was rooting for them. It’s a fun, funny, book, and one that I would highly recommend to anyone who went to high school (even if it wasn’t a high school outside Hoboken, NJ). I laughed out loud many times — Chapter 23 might be the funniest chapter I’ve read in a book in as long as I can remember — and I feel sorry for my next book, whatever it may be, because it’s got a tough act to follow.

Fox on a Mission

What is it with the folks over at Fox? First they inflict Fox News on me. Then they mastermind American Idol, whose season is now longer than the NBA’s. The final straw? They show a re-run this week for a TV show, Stacked, that is only four weeks old.

Home Land

Home Land by Sam Lipsyte is genius. Really. Your social commentary doesn’t come much better than this. It’s absurd, and it’s true.

Home Land’s anti-hero, Lewis (or “Teabag” as he has come to be known since the “incident”), is a slob who by his own assessment has failed to live up to his own potential. He “did not pan out”. Annoyed by the phonies who submit over-the-top success stories to his high school alumni newsletter, Lewis decides to write in to the newsletter with the unvarnished truth of his own failings. The book is written as a collection of the rambling submissions that Lewis sends in to the newsletter.

Through each missive to the newsletter, none of which are actually published, we slowly learn the story of Teabag’s life. He also spills the dirt on those other East Valley High School Catamount alumni in the interest of clearing the air. The story leads up to the climactic big reunion, “Time Will Take You On! A Togethering”. That togethering thing killed me.

This book is great. It seems to have had a strange publishing history as well. It was first published in England (it’s an American story written by an American). Then it was released straight to paperback. That’s all I know about that story. Anyway, I have a high school reunion of an impossibly large number of years coming up this very weekend. With luck, it will be nothing like the Togethering of the East Valley Catamounts.

Kafka on the Shore

I love it when a theme comes together. The apparent theme for me lately appears to be foreign author’s with cool ass web sites. Check out the site for my man Haruki Murakami, author of my latest read Kafka on the Shore.

That’s pretty flippin’ sweet, no? I went to the “Extras” link to download the Murakami screen saver. I find it extremely useful in baffling my co-workers. You’ve got to keep those guys guessing. Get too predictable and you’re out like yesterday’s news. But I digress. On to the book …

This book was pretty great. I feel like some sort of provincial rube guy for not really having heard of the author before. He’s written several books that have been translated to wide critical acclaim. Huh.

Anyway, this book is about a 15 year old boy, on the lam name: Kafka, who runs away from his home in Tokyo. His father was cold, distant. His mother and sister left when he was nine. His life is generally miserable. Did I mention that he’s 15? Anyway, Kafka heads out on the road with some cash stolen from his father. His destination is seemingly random, but as the book goes on it becomes apparent that he has been drawn there for a reason. There are two narrative threads that alternate throughout the book, ultimately relating to one another. The story is loosely based on the Oedipus myth. But don’t let that get your eyes rolling. Now, before I go any further, let me say that those of you who like your narrative firmly based in the here-and-now physical world and aren’t really down with books that feature talking cats – well, you might want to look elsewhere. If you can handle some oddness in your prose, then read on.

Remember when the relatively unknown Japanese movie Spirited Away won an Oscar for the best animated movie (it beat Ice Age and Lilo & Stitch)? Ever see that movie? Well I have. That is one wacky movie. In the movie, the titular spirits come and go, some are friendly and cute, some are evil and disgusting, some reside within inanimate objects, some are in people, some are conjured from the ether, there are phantom railroads – I could go on. It was two hours of total bafflement (although it seemed pretty straightforward for the first ten minutes). If people rented this for their kids because it was nominated with Ice Age, man, were they in for a huge surprise. Therapy all around.

That movie is what first drove home for me just how huge the cultural divide really is between the Japanese and us (assuming that the movie made sense to the Japanese). Their whole mythology and their spirituality seemed to be completely alien to anything that we in the west can fathom. Thankfully, this book is not like that.

Murakami seems to go out of his way to accommodate the western reader. On his travels, Kafka passes McDonald’s and Denny’s and other typical scenes from our own landscapes. He listens to Prince and Radiohead (Thom York is supposedly a huge fan of Murakami). One of the spirits takes the shape of Johnnie Walker. Yes – the guy from the scotch bottle. Another spirit assumes the form of Colonel Sanders. Thankfully it wasn’t that ill-conceived rappin’ Colonel (Go, Colonel! Go, Colonel!). Those are physical manifestations that we can deal with. He also offers an insight for the Japanese “flexibility” in their views re: God, spirits, etc. Murakami tells us that until 1946 the Emperor was God. And then one day General MacArthur made the Emperor give a nationally broadcast speech in which he mentioned that he was not really divine. So then he wasn’t God any more. That’ll mess with your worldview.

This book is very well written. I highly recommend it to all of my friends who are not cursed with a myopic imagination. KOTS does what all novels should do, it transports you to another place. This place is a little unfamiliar, but whatever.

In a completely unrelated note: I am listening to the new Gorillaz song (Feel Good Inc) right now. It makes your butt wiggle. In a good way.