Of Dreams and Fantasies and Metaphors
On reading Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore...
This is the first book by this Japanese author that I have read . I asked my brother for a book he could lend me, and he gave me this. Way before that, during my tours alone in bookstores, I always caught a glimpse of the covers of this author's books, making me read the summary at the back. And it never failed to leave me slack-jawed. As with the book, it did not fail my expectations.
Yes, it is all weird and unreal, you may say. But reading the book, you get too lost, and your mind cannot help but think and get involved with what is really happening.
You enter a completely different world -- a world where spirits make love or commit a crime; where one can get lost in a forest and enter a land where time is not a factor; where one is prophecied to kill his father, and make love with his mother and sister.
And you think and try to understand all the mind-bending events and metaphors .
And I've noted down some of the lines in the book. Oshima says, "...When someone is trying very hard to get something, they don't. And when they're running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them."
And another: "Kafka, in everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach this point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive."
These are all true to me. And you know, life is all about metaphors.
This is the first book by this Japanese author that I have read . I asked my brother for a book he could lend me, and he gave me this. Way before that, during my tours alone in bookstores, I always caught a glimpse of the covers of this author's books, making me read the summary at the back. And it never failed to leave me slack-jawed. As with the book, it did not fail my expectations.
Yes, it is all weird and unreal, you may say. But reading the book, you get too lost, and your mind cannot help but think and get involved with what is really happening.
You enter a completely different world -- a world where spirits make love or commit a crime; where one can get lost in a forest and enter a land where time is not a factor; where one is prophecied to kill his father, and make love with his mother and sister.
And you think and try to understand all the mind-bending events and metaphors .
And I've noted down some of the lines in the book. Oshima says, "...When someone is trying very hard to get something, they don't. And when they're running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them."
And another: "Kafka, in everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach this point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive."
These are all true to me. And you know, life is all about metaphors.
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