The Roads Less Travelled …

What happens when Dream and Day unite? Maybe you get a book like Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World [HBWaTEotW] (phew … that’s a long acronym)?

My last Murakami [Norwegian Wood] had left me no way prepared for this neo-Carrollian piece. From the very onset the reader realizes that the book is two different books in one - Hard Boiled Wonderland & The End of the World. This is apparent from the different fonts used in marking the alternate chapters in the contents. Even the annotation on the top left of the left page reads differently for different chapters.

Hard Boiled Wonderland, is the story of our Calutec protagonist who reads Turgunev, listens to Bob Dylan, watches John Ford movies and downs whisky with relish. He is called upon by an eccentric scientist to do some data laundering and shuffling, and gets embroiled in a grand conspiracy involving the System, the Factory and the INKlings. The End of the World on the other hand is the tale of initiation of a new entrant into the Town surrounded by the Wall who is given the designation of the Dream Reader. [If you did not understand anything from the above lines do not worry, they are not meant to be understood.]

But then why are these the same book? If I give the answer, I would be kind of spoiling the mystery of the story but I can say that the reader's answer to this query will probably form the basis of his experience with this book. Almost halfway into the book the readers would probably have no clue of what is going on but then things start coming together.

The prose is flighty and fast paced, sometimes bordering on corny. Murakami seemingly favors this form in all his compositions. The dreamy quality of the book is further enhanced by the chapter names; each of which seemed to be created after the chapter was written and then picking out the three most used themes in that chapter. It took away from the book any sense of coherence in the storyline, giving the narrative a very jagged and staggered look. The female characters reminded me a great deal about Naoko and Midori from NW. Seems to be another Murakami trademark - over the top or reserved female characters.

Read this book if you are tired and want your brain to be exercised. Read this book if you think your imagination is getting deadened. In short read this book if you are not frightened of the out of the ordinary.

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The last three books I have read have got to do something or the other with phrenology and skulls. Weird coincidence? Probably.

This is amongst the thickest books that I have read in recent times - not just in terms of pages, but also in terms of the scope of the narrative and the number of characters involved. The narrative centers around the events in Canudos in Brazil towards the end of the nineteenth century. If it was only a tome in history, there would not have been much to write; if it was a book on social dynamics, there would have been more but not so much; the fact that the book uses history and the unique social setting in Brazil in general and Canudos in particular as a background for narrating a number of intertwined and parallel moving stories is what actually gives book it's bulk.

Unlike the previous Llosa novel I read "The Way to Paradise", "The War of the End of the World" [TWotEotW] carefully crafts and blends in each individual storyline onto the greater fabric of the book. No story lingers for too long and the narrative is expertly switched in between various contexts. Llosa's sense of history is for once reasonably balanced. For large parts of the book he manages to recount the events without apportioning blame or credit for those. This in itself is no mean feat to achieve while writing a historical novel.

This book has often been compared, for the breadth of human emotions and actions it encompasses, to "War and Peace". While it does try to emulate W&P, the author does not display the same control and finesse in the bringing out the varied emotions that a situation produces in each different individual. The characters in TWotEotW, though numerous in number can be sorted out in a few baskets. Though the author goes into great detail into the life histories of each of the major players, rarely do those details manifest themselves in the actions of the characters in the later stages. Take for example the stories of the bandit converts Abbot Joao, Pajeau and others. They are in terms of their experiences, probably the most colorful of the characters, but their actions in the war against republic rarely brings out these differences. The only thing in which the book compares favorably with W&P, is its length that sometimes frustrates the reader.

If I had to describe the book in a few words, it would be "The misunderstanding's of a few fanatics". For it is in the characterization of these fanatics - Galileo Gall, Rufino, Moriera Cesar or the Counselor - that the author produces his finest. What drives them can often not be codified, but it is something definite - a just society, honour, progress or the rule of God. Everytime he gets a chance, Llosa drives home the point that rational thought and reason are not the panacea for all ills. When towards the end of the book, the short sighted journalist comments that the entire affair at Canudos was nothing but a misunderstanding, the author sums up the entire book.

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I think it has been a long time since I have cribbed about my work. The thing was that I was so much into C++ shit that all arduous tasks there had become routine and I seemed to be settling into some kind of a pact with my compiler - I do not do this, you do not crib.

However programming on the Pi App has again brought the crib demon back in me. I mean why can't Mozilla and IE come to some kind of agreement about how to do things. As Luis said, "Mozilla and IE are as similar as Unix and Windows". While I can comprehend the Unix and Windows point, the former fails me. Its not that it is new knowledge - I just got hit by it. My first feature in the App and I had to send a mail saying this freaking thing does not work, let me figure it out first. Shitty, if you ask me.

C++ coding has this beautiful symmetry to it. Things work here and there. Not so with WWW. Freaky thing works on my machine and bloody crashes when it is deployed. Arbit. Bonkers. Crazy. Words that describe my state right now?

I stop now for I have to go and figure something out.