What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.
“What the hell is it?” said Jimmy.
“Those are chickens,” said Crake. “Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.”

Oryx and Crake is the first of a trilogy of novels set in a distopsian future where genetic modification leaves the population alienated from their food, which is merely one symptom of how dislocated they’ve become from each other. In spite of his initial repulsion, Jimmy eventually embraces Chicken Nobbins by the bucket. His surrender is a conspiracy of apathy, commercialism, economy, and fatalism. Bombarded by constant new technologies, novelty, even in the flavor of disgust, quickly erodes. The loss of society quickly turns the tables on Jimmy, and when the modified organisms aren’t stewarded, they evolve and reproduce with surprising results.

I found the book difficult in some respects: I had very little sympathy for the protagonist. The writing was wonderful though, the very ideas complete until nearly familiar. A well constructed reality is critical to science fiction (no doubt all fiction) and Atwood is stylish and logical. The next novel is already out and you can expect my review sooner rather than later. Regardless of the company, her world is compelling, and her voice, unique.

Margaret Atwood is a good interview, and there’s plenty of interviews available. She’s done a whole series on religion on YouTube, and I previewed several vids where she discussed the MaddAddam Trilogy. The Year of the Flood is out in paperback already, and I’ll be looking for some enlightening material to post on the development of the series when I read it. Here, she mentions a motivation for science fiction as a kind of activism. By imagining the road further travelled we’ll make better choices in the now. Enjoy the video.

Years later, I stumbled across his second book Dance, Dance, Dance in a clearance bin at a big chain bookstore, read it and then went back for the first. Murakami is a delight for English readers in much the same way as Carlos Fuentes: he is a foreigner who knows and appreciates our art and culture. Yet his work retains a sensibility which aligns it with Japanese lit, especially the development of ambience and mood as a product of an individual psyche. His characters spend time exploring their own minds. Particularly, The Wind Up Bird Chronicles takes this practice as central to the interactions of the cast. There are overlapping dreams, dreamlike sequences in reality, and a psychic community in the story.

I consider it an extension of the work of Junichiro Tanizaki, an author from the previous generation and lesser known in the U.S., whose stories are preoccupied with intimate politics. Murakami’s book is expansively creative, perhaps bizarre, definitely surreal. The ending certainly doesn’t tie up loose ends, and ultimately resolves only as a personal and psychic achievement for the hero whose goal is to navigate back to a relationship with his wife. It’s a beautiful book, unsettling, dislocated, erotic, elegant. I won’t read every book Murakami writes, but it worth checking in to his repertoire to watch the development of a distinctive voice.

After reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, I went looking for vids on Haruki Murakami. No such luck. There’s a couple of bootlegs of a lecture with him on YouTube, but by and large he’s been rather elusive, and claims to have never been on TV. A more recent novel, Norwegian Wood, brought him significant celebrity in Japan, however, and there is a movie in the works. The director is Tran Anh Hung whom I will always recall with affection from my days as a projectionist at an independent theater. He was a master of the Aimless Asian Art Film, perhaps best exemplified by the masterpiece The Scent of Green Papaya.