Quote Porn
Snow Crash
"This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the black light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed."
"All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there."
Kafka On The Shore
"It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness is a story."
"I can't be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha's followers and Jesus' apostles felt the same way. When I'm with the Buddha, I always feel I'm where I belong—something like that. Forget about culture, truth, all that junk. That kind of inspiration's what it's all about."
"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart."
A Few Thoughts
Snow Crash was written with balls. It's at once a science fiction story and a spoof on a science fiction story. For an immediate and always present example, the main character's name is actually Hiro Protagonist. Deeper than that, though; Stephenson fearlessly predicted the advent of avatars (sort of a second life, though I dread to call it that) on the internet, and some of the seriously criminal and criminally vapid uses that we would have for them as technology junkies. Some of these predictions are forthright in the text: the descriptions of people who are paid handsomely to help craft the aesthetic features of one's online avatar are hardly even funny anymore because, well, that's the world we live in. Other predictions are more subtle, perhaps unintentional: the effects of snow crash as it appears in the text seems like an awfully bleak allegory to human dependence on computers and their smartphone and tablet cousins. The combined effect of these serious, weight-holding predictions combined with the sense of humour and self-awareness the book carries is an odd mash-up, but it works.
The alternate reality of Snow Crash is attractive too, and not just when it's online. Hiro resides in an America that is largely decentralized and run corporately—not silent-partnered by corporations in a way that satirizes real life, but the gears and cogs of life in their universe are plainly in the hands of Uncle Enzo, Mr. Lee and entrepreneurs like them.
What Snow Crash does right by not getting too ridiculous or making up too much jargon with respect to technology, it does wrong by doing the same with history. It explains the mechanism that makes the title drug work using a "human root language" hacking the brainstem explanation, and posits that the virus was derived from ancient Sumerians. While the humour of Pentecostal churches rewiring and breaking the human brain was by no means lost on me, the more the book tried to explain archaic tongues in a true-history context, the more foolish it felt.
Still, I can't detract from Stephenson for his gutsy approach in one place while complimenting it in another. Even if it induced a few eye rolls in me here and there, Snow Crash is a fun and absurd cruise through a metaverse (read: internet) that's peculiarly different but also strangely familiar.
Kafka on the Shore is definitely my favorite Murakami book that I've read yet, and the only one of them that I'd deem a page-turner. At the surface, the story of a 15-year old boy running away from home really doesn't appeal to me, but the amount of intrigue about Kafka (the character, not the savant writer) builds exceedingly quickly in the novel. From the top of my head: the boy named crow, the unknown sister, the unknown mother, the connection between Kafka and the old man that half the book focuses on, the blackouts, the UFO-ish story... all of these things pop up and bring questions within 50 pages or so and had me really turning pages in search of answers. I wanted to read more and read faster to try and tie all the loose ends together. It was enveloping.
Unfortunately, many of the loose ends never get tied up, and often, when it feels that a big reveal is coming, it blossoms the aforementioned intrigue into yet more mysterious, unanswered questions. By the time the book ended, the only thing I was sure I understood was that, in his own messed up way, Murakami had just written a bildungsroman (in which he had actually used the world bildungsroman). I found Kafka had a lot in common with Holden Caulfield, if Holden had been willing to be a student of the world. Maybe that makes him entirely different; who knows.
The familiarity with and insertion of North American pop culture was always refreshing in the very Japanese-feeling story. Scenes where Murakami would describe Kafka's daily routine set to a backdrop of a Prince or Led Zeppelin song evoked clear, montage-y mental imagery. The insertion of Johnnie Walker & Colonel Sanders as characters brought a risibility to scenes that were confusing at best, and disgusting and confusing at worst.
I really wish I (or anyone) had understood what this book was about: if the metaphors or symbolism made any sort of sense to me, it'd likely be among my favorites. As it stands, it's a great read that's marred just a little by the fact that I can't think my way through it.
The alternate reality of Snow Crash is attractive too, and not just when it's online. Hiro resides in an America that is largely decentralized and run corporately—not silent-partnered by corporations in a way that satirizes real life, but the gears and cogs of life in their universe are plainly in the hands of Uncle Enzo, Mr. Lee and entrepreneurs like them.
What Snow Crash does right by not getting too ridiculous or making up too much jargon with respect to technology, it does wrong by doing the same with history. It explains the mechanism that makes the title drug work using a "human root language" hacking the brainstem explanation, and posits that the virus was derived from ancient Sumerians. While the humour of Pentecostal churches rewiring and breaking the human brain was by no means lost on me, the more the book tried to explain archaic tongues in a true-history context, the more foolish it felt.
Still, I can't detract from Stephenson for his gutsy approach in one place while complimenting it in another. Even if it induced a few eye rolls in me here and there, Snow Crash is a fun and absurd cruise through a metaverse (read: internet) that's peculiarly different but also strangely familiar.
Kafka on the Shore is definitely my favorite Murakami book that I've read yet, and the only one of them that I'd deem a page-turner. At the surface, the story of a 15-year old boy running away from home really doesn't appeal to me, but the amount of intrigue about Kafka (the character, not the savant writer) builds exceedingly quickly in the novel. From the top of my head: the boy named crow, the unknown sister, the unknown mother, the connection between Kafka and the old man that half the book focuses on, the blackouts, the UFO-ish story... all of these things pop up and bring questions within 50 pages or so and had me really turning pages in search of answers. I wanted to read more and read faster to try and tie all the loose ends together. It was enveloping.
Unfortunately, many of the loose ends never get tied up, and often, when it feels that a big reveal is coming, it blossoms the aforementioned intrigue into yet more mysterious, unanswered questions. By the time the book ended, the only thing I was sure I understood was that, in his own messed up way, Murakami had just written a bildungsroman (in which he had actually used the world bildungsroman). I found Kafka had a lot in common with Holden Caulfield, if Holden had been willing to be a student of the world. Maybe that makes him entirely different; who knows.
The familiarity with and insertion of North American pop culture was always refreshing in the very Japanese-feeling story. Scenes where Murakami would describe Kafka's daily routine set to a backdrop of a Prince or Led Zeppelin song evoked clear, montage-y mental imagery. The insertion of Johnnie Walker & Colonel Sanders as characters brought a risibility to scenes that were confusing at best, and disgusting and confusing at worst.
I really wish I (or anyone) had understood what this book was about: if the metaphors or symbolism made any sort of sense to me, it'd likely be among my favorites. As it stands, it's a great read that's marred just a little by the fact that I can't think my way through it.
Head-to-Head
Characters: The characters in KotS felt much more developed and real, and felt like they grew as the book went on. Snow Crash had some good ones, too, but they were definitely more static.
Advantage: Kafka on the Shore.
Plot: Both were very fun to read, but KotS was much more compelling for all the mysteries it started—even if it didn't ever explain half of them.
Advantage: Kafka on the Shore.
Ending: Snow Crash created a world, gave it a conflict, and resolved it roundly in order. While Kafka On The Shore really didn't explain all that much, it made up for that with the feeling of accomplishment when Kafka began to make his way home at the end.
Advantage: Push.
Language/Writing: The mood created by Murakami's style has me perpetually flabbergasted that his books are all translations. Stephenson was solid, but didn't stand out in any special way.
Advantage: Kafka on the Shore.
Philosophy: KotS is constantly referencing the philosophy of other books as well as popular culture. This cut and paste, wide scope approach packs a lot of punch.
Advantage: Kafka on the Shore.
Winner Winner Turkey Supper
I liked Snow Crash and its inventiveness a lot more than the head-to-head section may have made it look like I did. Still, the better book wins.
Kafka On The Shore moves on to the second round.
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