Thomas Andrikus > Recent Status Updates

I'm taking the plunge now. Oh boy.

Hmm...the novel is quite ordinary. I wonder where it is heading...

Still on the funeral... I seem to be reading novels about deaths these days

Hmm. Finally!

The story only gets more...titillating here, especially on this page (284)

Midori is a really interesting character...I'd rather date her than Naoko.

This novel is twisted. In a somewhat good way...and I like it

I notice how these characters (who were living in the 1970s) in this novel seem to be very literate...making references to works like The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye... I wonder if they represent actual Japanese youngsters of that era? Because as far as I know, young Japanese nowadays no longer read anything substantial...just mangas and short fictions.

So Toru (the protagonist) is in the "hospital" now. It seems to be a nice place, but I have a feeling that something is a bit off.

The setting was in 1969, hence the characters could genuinely miss an appointment without calling each other...simply because mobile phones had not existed back then. This Midori character seems to replace the importance of Naoko more and more...

So far the cultural references made by Murakami for what the characters watch or listen to are Western...such as Miles Davis, Racine, Humphrey Bogart... I wonder if this is due to the translator's influence to make the book more "readable" to English speakers? Anyway, I just discovered that Naoko probably won't be dying in novel. There is a sense of impending loss I'm about to discover though. Fetching!

I identify with Kizuki (the protagonist's childhood friend), as I seem to resemble him a lot. Curious to see what would happen to him later, as he seems to be out of the picture in the future setting.

It commences with the reminiscing of an old flame. Curious to see how this fits into Murakami's Kafkaesque genre...

The pages 196-7 shows the main meaning underneath the story. The story isn't so much about interconnected lives between Dr David McBride and his patients, as they share no mutual friends or places. But their mutual interests and similar life choices have shown how the psychiatrist and his patients share more similarities than at first glimpse.

There's a good, comprehensive paragraph on the analysis of Caravaggio's psyche and his views on life and death on this page (152). Somehow I could relate to him...I sympathise with him.

"His name isn't even here...it looks too ordinary [of a cemetery] for such a great poet [as Keats]" Elizabeth "Death is extremely ordinary. It happens to everyone, though people seem to forget this. It's why you and I mustn't waste time." Thomas C. -p.121

David's mind wanders a lot whenever he's having a conversation with Gus or his patient Elizabeth Cruikshank. I have a hunch that he is probably as demented (if not more) as his patients.