Dear Students,
Welcome
to our Murakami class blog! I am looking forward to reading your posts.
Please write at least 200 words each time and remember to sign your
name. Feel free to post whenever the mood strikes you, not only on the
days posts are due.
Anna Elliott
A few years back, I read A Wild Sheep Chase for the first time. In high school, I would often read a Murakami book or two during the summer. For whatever reason, I have only read Murakami outside of the summer for this class, and once more for another class, although it was only one reading. In the fashion of a Murakami protagonist, I am compelled by forces greater than I understand to continue this particular habit. Moving on to A Wild Sheep Chase, my first reading was taken at face value. I did not think too much about the implications of an individual having a sheep in their brain. Ok, perhaps I thought about it a little bit in relation to the subconscious mind and how power can corrupt people's minds. However, for about 90 percent of the novel, I was more focused on Boku’s journey. This time around, I focused on the implications of the sheep in a nationalistic sense, as we discussed in class. After having some time to digest all of this, I think I prefer to take Murakami at face value, or rather a little bit of analysis, but not enough to stifle the cathartic oddity that only Murakami can create.
ReplyDelete-Alex G
What I found most interesting about Murakami’s writing so far was South Bay Strut. While I know his writing drew heavily from hard-boiled literature popularized by Chandler, and generally speaking, the story was meant to create a fantastical description of a fictional space in Southern California to some degree, I wanted to point out that the South Bay is actually a real area in California. South Bay is a region that is made up by smaller cities outside of LA, but some are part of LA county; these cities include Carson, El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lomita, Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, and Rolling Hills. The reason I want to point this out is that, in reading South Bay Strut, Murakami managed to describe this region of Southern California rather accurately. He was able to contextualize the culture of this region, which you can see if you are ever in that region, especially with how he described it as a place where kids can’t remain eternally young, and it isn’t a place where you see movie-star mansions. I was wondering if he had ever actually visited the region or if he somehow knew about the nefarious reputation of that region of California. For added context, Pulp Fiction's Jules and Vincent are both from the South Bay, and the entire movie takes place in areas considered part of the South Bay region.
ReplyDelete-Pilar Diaz