When something like this happens, you should think WWJD -What Would the Judge Do?

I’m surprised that you actually heard someone say “cacophony”.

“I’ve just finished a terrible Cormac McCarthy novel. You know, the man who wrote ‘No Country For Old Men?’ It was called ‘Blood Meridian’ and it was just an unintelligible cacophony of violence and nihilism. Absolute rubbish.”

I was about to take serious issue with him, even at the risk of coming across as a “lone nutter” who interrupts other people’s conversations. Then I caught a glimpse of the girl’s face and it was clear that she was falling in love with her beau’s strident and unconventional opinions, no matter how unfounded, so I left them to it and found another table.

Sorry for the distraction but this only happened a little over nine hours ago and clearly I still haven’t come to terms with the incident.

For me, it was the part where you said that his short stories round out the body of work. This is the problem with trying to have a discussion over a period of weeks….

In any case – what is your favorite Murakami novel and what is the single thing that you find the most attractive about it?

Ace – I think that Blood Meridian towers over McCarthy’s body of work (although nothing that I have read is “bad” or anything). In this one, McCarthy also meets one of the other demands that I make of “great” literature – it places itself firmly into a literary tradition by making use of allusion (to biblical / classical sources) but often does it in a mocking or subversive way so as not to be bound in by its influences. He also takes the American mythology of the Western and turns it on its head.

“Nabokov thought Conrad is “a writer for boy scouts”(or something like that in Playboy interview).”

Did he say how “Heart of Darkness” fits with this? I’m not a big fan of Conrad’s other stuff, actually.

There is also the chance that Nabokov felt a need to knock Conrad because the two of them usually compete for the title of greatest English prose from a non-native speaker. I’m guessing that this is why his name came up.

Asahi-do was the root of that part of the discussion.

Yet still,the idea of McCarthy getting a Nobel reminded what Vladimir Nabokov said on Joseph Conrad.
Nabokov thought Conrad is “a writer for boy scouts”(or something like that in Playboy interview).And I agree with that to certain extent and if I’m not mistaken that is the reason why Graham Greene couldn’t get the Nobel prize(along with the fact that his books are regular in the best sellers lists in English speaking world).

To use another extreme example – there are many, many people who find J-drama or Chick Lit heroines to be resonant – they admire the lives that they live, the brand names that they drop, they pattern their personal style and consumption after them, they may even weep for their failed romances, etc. – but is this resonance really a sign of the aesthetic or thematic superiority of the works? Something like “Fuyu no Sonata” can be aesthetic garbage and yet still reduce thousands of middle aged Japanese women to tears or raise them to a state of rapture. Are Murakami’s fans – some of whom will fly halfway around the world to catch a glimpse of him running this or that marathon – really working on a different level of resonance?

Now Murakami does what he does with a great deal more style and polish and works in occasional fine insights, but to put it in a bottom line sort of way – he is way behind many other Nobel winners and other authors that we have discussed here in two areas that I value highly – diverse themes and insightful self-criticism / reflection. The (often total) lack of these in most of his major works makes me rate him less highly than I do others.

“That’s all I wanted to hear.”

BUT, the standards that I apply to short stories and novels, the root of this part of our discussion, are similar. Same ballpark while blog posts are not.

Different media deserve different standards.

That’s all I wanted to hear.

I can’t think of many American novels less populizing. Harold Bloom, anointer of canon works, has anointed it as one of the 20th century’s finest novels.

I think that it may be the single greatest work of American literature. Some of the most powerful prose in English.

Steve Shaviro on the book -

“In the entire range of American literature, only Moby-Dick bears comparison to Blood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny, of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.”

More terrible clarity than Melville is terrible indeed.

Also, consider how “No Country for Old Men” – a minor McCarthy novel – has pretty much been adopted as a “classic” film already – by many of the same types that end up voting for Nobels.

Should he? Oh Yeah,I liked “The Road”.
But he fills in the same category with Murakami in a way.Too much a popular writer for a Nobel prize.

Yes, but one of the main points that I want to make is that this has an impact on his thematic diversity. I’ve gotten to know Murakami’s individual to the degree that I’m not sure that he has anything to say to me at this point. Some of the other works that I mentioned (Oe’s Quiet Life) for example, are actually about how the writer is trying to maintain his sense of self (or his “inner life” as Oe describes it) in a family setting. Here we get a sense of growth and negotiation of individual identity in a group that I’ve rarely had from Murakami. Many authors who have had very potent “individual” works (Doestvsky, Chekov, Mishima, Kawabata) have also written strikingly about the family.

“Would you include personal letters?”

Personally, yes. I do leave room for growth, however (bad works early career are forgiven more easily than a late career relapse).Perhaps not if I were evaluating a Nobel candidate, however. To use an extreme example, I downgrade Wagner for his anti-semitism. Can still enjoy the works individually, but it impacts my view of the career and the individual. H.P. Lovecraft, who was very forward with his racism in some published writings, gets downgraded even further.

On the issue of expanding media – blog posts, for example, would not have to be great literature, just great blog posts. Different media deserve different standards.