Friday, December 5, 2008

Wild Sheep Chase



My dear friend gave me a novel by Haruki Murakami to check out while she was busy finishing two others. The work, A Wild Sheep Chase, is, according to the authors' bio on the rear jacket, "A marvelous hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Marakami's international reputation. "

Here is a sample from page 145:

"Correct, I said. Giving the situation further thought, I went on: "I'm something of an authority on troublemaking. I can claim to be second to none in the ways and means of creating problems for others. I live my life trying my best to avoid things ever coming to that. Which ultimately creates more problems. It's all the same. That's the way things go down. Yet, no matter that I know it's all the same, it doesn't change anything. Nothing gets that way from the start. It's only a pretext."

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"What I am saying is, mediocrity takes many forms."

Pretty good stuff. Check it out when you are up counting sheep.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm. You change directions but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts.Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones."

From Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.