My first reaction upon finishing the book was, “Well, if his previous work wasn’t enough to merit a Nobel Prize, this one isn’t going to help.”
Good things: Murakami is still the only currently living master of magical realism, and this could be his last major work. The most charitable interpretation of the book is that it is the culmination of all of his work on loneliness and alienation. It takes very traditional Western magical elements like the fae, doppleganger, and immaculate conception, and weaves them in with traditional Japanese cultural elements like NHK fee collectors, filial piety, and the hikikomori. The title’s connection with Orwell’s 1984 is subtle and mostly well-done.
Bad things: Too often do characters say or think that something that was clearly arranged by the author happened “by coincidence”; in general the writing is somewhat lazy. No explanation is given as to why, e.g., a policewoman in ’84 would know who Marshall McLuhan is. Egregious abuse of Occam’s razor (by name) in the third part to mask the author feeding the plot-so-far into the mind of a character he needlessly recycled from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
Even after a couple months, this comment still puzzles me.
Yes, Rushdie is arguably a master of magical realism, but the original comment heavily implied that I don’t think so. What good is repeating his name a couple times, then?
I find this very interesting. My model of most LWers doesn’t like Murakami very much. I read Kafka on the Shore for an English class, and it was OK, but I wouldn’t exactly say it was in line with much of LW philosophically.
I haven’t read HPMoR before, so I’m genuinely curious about your reasons for disliking it. I would appreciate it if you could enlighten me—I usually seek out critical reviews before I read favourable ones.
First, I don’t think highly of the original story, and I imagine this predisposed me to not liking fanfiction based on it.
While I enjoy EY’s other fiction—in particular, Three Worlds Collide, and the short beisutsukai stuff—HPMoR doesn’t have the same punch. It’s a bit like Atlas Shrugged in that he tries to sum up the entirety of LW philosophy in fictional form, and the result is a text that drags on and on with little thematic unity. I enjoyed parts of the Ender’s Game chapters, for instance, because they were more or less on topic the whole time.
All in all, I would rather reread “Shinji and Warhammer 40k”, “To the Stars”, or other really good fanfiction than bother rereading HPMoR.
I finished reading 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami.
My first reaction upon finishing the book was, “Well, if his previous work wasn’t enough to merit a Nobel Prize, this one isn’t going to help.”
Good things: Murakami is still the only currently living master of magical realism, and this could be his last major work. The most charitable interpretation of the book is that it is the culmination of all of his work on loneliness and alienation. It takes very traditional Western magical elements like the fae, doppleganger, and immaculate conception, and weaves them in with traditional Japanese cultural elements like NHK fee collectors, filial piety, and the hikikomori. The title’s connection with Orwell’s 1984 is subtle and mostly well-done.
Bad things: Too often do characters say or think that something that was clearly arranged by the author happened “by coincidence”; in general the writing is somewhat lazy. No explanation is given as to why, e.g., a policewoman in ’84 would know who Marshall McLuhan is. Egregious abuse of Occam’s razor (by name) in the third part to mask the author feeding the plot-so-far into the mind of a character he needlessly recycled from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
I’ve been meaning to start reading book one. May I ask what version you reviewed?
The United States’ single volume.
Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie.
Even after a couple months, this comment still puzzles me.
Yes, Rushdie is arguably a master of magical realism, but the original comment heavily implied that I don’t think so. What good is repeating his name a couple times, then?
I find this very interesting. My model of most LWers doesn’t like Murakami very much. I read Kafka on the Shore for an English class, and it was OK, but I wouldn’t exactly say it was in line with much of LW philosophically.
I’ve read some of his short stories and thought they were meh. They had a few interesting points, but didn’t really connect.
Meh. I don’t particularly care what LWers in general like. They have the poor taste to tend to enjoy HPMoR.
I haven’t read HPMoR before, so I’m genuinely curious about your reasons for disliking it. I would appreciate it if you could enlighten me—I usually seek out critical reviews before I read favourable ones.
First, I don’t think highly of the original story, and I imagine this predisposed me to not liking fanfiction based on it.
While I enjoy EY’s other fiction—in particular, Three Worlds Collide, and the short beisutsukai stuff—HPMoR doesn’t have the same punch. It’s a bit like Atlas Shrugged in that he tries to sum up the entirety of LW philosophy in fictional form, and the result is a text that drags on and on with little thematic unity. I enjoyed parts of the Ender’s Game chapters, for instance, because they were more or less on topic the whole time.
All in all, I would rather reread “Shinji and Warhammer 40k”, “To the Stars”, or other really good fanfiction than bother rereading HPMoR.