Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
Shortly after reading Murakami’s story The Little Green Monster, I read Amparo Davila’s short story The Houseguest and it struck me that th...
-
Fever dreams are characterized by bizarre, often unpleasant dreams that sleeping people experience during a fever. My experience of ‘fever d...
I don't know why this posted as an image so I am commenting the text again for easier reading!
ReplyDeleteWhen creating my presentation about Kurt Vonnegut, and of course considering his similarities to Murakami, I thought back to when I initially read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five over this winter break. I remember how at the time I was struck by the similarity in their writing styles, particularly in the paired-back and aloof tone they both frequently employed. One thing I love about this sort of tone is that there is never a sense of pretension when you are reading it. You never feel like things are being blown out of proportion or like the author is forcing meaning down your throat, rather the lack of explicit emotion allows for me to have my own organic emotional reaction to the stories. For example, the narrator’s repeated mantra of “so it goes” whenever a death is mentioned in Slaughterhouse-Five reminds me so much of the classic apathetic, unconcerned, and isolated Murakami protagonist. Yet, in the works of both of these authors, I never get the impression that the writing is uncompassionate or heartless. Despite both of their tendencies to write characters who are apathetic and isolated in a sense, there is always a sense of wholeness and meaning in their writing. I don’t really have a theory as to how both Vonnegut and Murakami are so skillful in fostering a tone of apathy in their writing without ever coming across as cold or mean, but it is a similarity in their writing that I find a lot of enjoyment in!
-Alana