Featuring: Haruki Murakami, Arthur Conan Doyle, Junot Diaz, Stephen King, and John Reibetanz.
1. Running Man In their summer fiction issue a few weeks ago, the New Yorker published an essay by Haruki Murakami about his simultaneous birth as a novelist and long-distance runner. Like most Murakami, it was really good, but sort of hard to say why. It’s actually an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which Bond Street will publish at the end of this month. What to say that doesn’t break the review embargo? I’ll note that if you enjoyed the essay, you’ll enjoy the book, and you’ll finish it with the same sense of perplexed pleasure with which you ended the excerpt. Murakami’s work is, stylistically at least, deceptively simple, and I always leave his novels a little uncertain of what’s transpired, but very sure that I’ve enjoyed its transpiring. Since the book is non-fiction, what happens within it is a bit clearer than in, say, South of the Border, West of the Sun (seriously—was she like a ghost or something?), but the prose still has its mysteries. For instance, how did it manage to entrance me enough to finish a book about long-distance running, a subject in which I have no interest? The title, of course, is borrowed from Raymond Carver, and Tess Gallagher is thanked within for permission. Not thanked, however, is Horace Silver, though he should be—Murakami’s cover borrows and adapts the running man from Silver’s semi-excellent 1972 Blue Note LP In Pursuit of the 27th Man (part of which is pictured above).
2. Call Moriarty. Please Proving that dumb movies often arrive in twos (Armageddon and Deep Impact, Dante’s Peak and Volcano), there’s going to be another new Sherlock Holmes picture to complement the terribly conceived Guy Ritchie version that I wrote about a few weeks ago. This idea suffers from the same conceptual flaw—recasting a character by making primary an element that, in the successful original, was secondary—but I think we can all agree that humour is more central to the Holmes world than awesome stuntmen. So while this probably will not be very good, it’s likely to be better than whatever Guy Ritchie comes up with. Sacha Baron-Cohen seems like a good casting choice, though I think John C. Reilly would make a better Watson than Will Ferrell, with his stocky physique and, you know, acting ability.
3. Grant Theft Analogy The unassailable Junot Diaz has some smart things to say about Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wall Street Journal. I can’t really comment on much of this as I’ve never played GTA, preferring instead for my video games to bear no resemblance to the world outside my window. (I’m a Nintendo man. The likelihood of me running into a talking toadstool is very slim, whereas several people have been shot within a few blocks of the Walrus office in the past year.) Still, like Diaz, I take issue with people comparing GTA to things like The Godfather or The Sopranos. I haven’t seen this point made, perhaps because it’s too simple to mention, but this comparison is faulty for an obvious reason. As Diaz suggests, GTA gives the player agency in a way that other games haven’t, and a narrative in which one has agency can’t really be compared to a narrative in which one has no agency. In other words, a story of (at least partly) my own making can’t and shouldn’t be compared to that time I watched I Know Who Killed Me. If I’d had agency in that story, I would have ended it right before you found out Lindsay Lohan actually had a twin, and it would have been a pretty cool movie.
4. Hope for The Stand Marvel has an interview with Mike Perkins, who is the artist behind the forthcoming comic version of Stephen King’s The Stand, which I’ve already called a bad idea. I’m still relatively certain that it will not be good for the reasons I’ve outlined, but there are a few statements in this interview that give me hope. First, Perkins says he read the unabridged version. While this doesn’t guarantee that the comic will be based on the longer cut, at least he’s aware of what’s contained therein. Second, he cites the “abundance of well defined characters,” which is pretty much right on. The characters are what make the book as rich as it is, and Perkin’s observation makes me think that he might not be as eager to elide them as the miniseries was. Third, Perkins says he’s most excited to art the Lincoln Tunnel scene, which is one of the essential thematic moments in the novel. This man obviously understands this book, which is not a bad place to start.
5. Reibetanzia Finally, I’d like to draw attention to John Reibetanz’s brilliant poem “To Darwin in Chile, 1835,” which is featured in our summer reading issue, currently on newsstands. Years ago, John was a professor of mine at the University of Toronto for a course called Poetry and Prose 1500-1600. It was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken, made particularly special by John’s remarkable reading style. Hearing him read Philip Larkin’s “Sad Steps” alongside Philip Sidney’s “Sonnet XXXI” from Astrophil and Stella is still one of the highlights of my life. “To Darwin” speaks quite well for itself, so my best advice is to read it.
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