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Originally Posted by
MadMusketeer
(particularly the stuff with the entrance stone)
Hoshino called, he says "welcome to the club". Spoiler: Kafka
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I really like the melancholy little katabasis it enables, at any rate. That the actual danger it involves (Johnny Walker/Colonel Sanders's gambit) is never even remotely apparent to Kafka himself is a nice touch as well.
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Spoiler: Kafka Warning
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While I see what you meant with the (implied (notional)) incest with Miss Saeki, I'm not sure what you were referring to with the gerontophilia, even after finishing the book. If you were talking about Miss Saeki again, I'm not sure she's old enough for that term to apply (she's in her fifties).
Spoiler: Kafka
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Okay, fair. I meant it in the broad sense, insofar as given the age gap between them, it's strictly out of the range usually understood to be healthy. (By the by, affairs with older women is a recurring thing in Murakami's stuff, but it's usually not that extreme.)
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Spoiler
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Alternatively, if you were talking about Hoshino and Nakata, while the age thing would make much more sense (Nakata is described as an old man throughout the book), and I can certainly see that interpretation - when I initially saw your warning that was my main prediction - I'm not really sure I agree. I think their relationship has a much more familial bent (Hoshino thinks of Nakata as being like his grandfather), and I'm not entirely sure the text supports a romantic reading of their relationship, although I'm not opposed to it on principle.
Spoiler: Still Kafka
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That didn't even cross my mind, frankly, and I like their dynamic more for it. It's a very wholesome dea, overall. Plus it gives extra fun subtext to their driving about in a modest little Mazda Familia.
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Also, on your recommendation and Wintermoot's, and because I enjoyed Kafka, I started reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I'm still only about 50-60 pages in (~10%), but so far it's pretty good, although pretty different from Kafka. I'm finding the different perspective of this one interesting - Okada has very different problems and priorities to Kafka, and I'm finding it pretty compelling so far, although not as much as Kafka, which had the benefit of starting with a mystery (why is Kafka running away from home, and what's going on with his dad) to keep you engaged until the story really gets going later on in the book.
I think you would really like After Dark and A Wild Sheep Chase/Dance Dance Dance, actually.
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While Wind-Up Bird has a little of that (the woman who wanted to get to know Okada and kept calling him naked, what Kumiko was doing in the alley, what is up with May, et cetera), most of it is a lot more low-key, and so far, the questions raised have been less immediately compelling to me, although I'm still pretty engaged with it and looking forward to seeing what happens next. Also, the magical realist or otherwise metaphorical/symbolic elements (other than possibly the wind-up bird, and the woman who wants to get to know him) are much less significant thus far than in Kafka (the Boy named Crow is more significant and weirder than anything thus far introduced in Wind-Up Bird, and that was there from the first chapter), although they ramped up a lot as that book went on, so I'm sort of expecting more of the same here as well.
Well. All I'm gonna say is buckle up. It's gonna be a ride!