THE CHAOS THEORY

“Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade” by Kurt Vonnegut

Meet Billy Pilgrim. He is a WW2 war veteran who becomes “unstuck in time”, where he often compulsively relive random episodes from his traumatizing past.

The narrative of the story follows a nonlinear pattern that jumps back and forth between 3 of his major timelines:

1. His time as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany (1944-1945), where he is locked with other prisoners in an underground meat locker called “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
2. His postwar, seemingly normal, life in a suburban New York, where he marries a wealthy woman, has children, and become an optometrist.
3. Alien abduction (1967) where he was abducted on the night of his daughter’s wedding, and was placed in a glass zoo by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.

The randomness in the flashbacks and flashforwards are intended to show Billy’s severe PTSD, and shows the readers how it feels to live with it, which resonates with Kurt Vonnegut’s own real-life trauma from witnessing the 1945 Dresden bombing.

And by focusing on the PTSD of the war veteran rather than glorifying the heroics, Vonnegut is sending an anti-war message through this novel. In fact, as hinted in the subtitle of the book “The Children’s Crusade” he also points out that wars are mostly fought by frightened and inexperienced kids, not rugged heroes.

Equally interesting is the Tralfamadorian view, where they believe that all moments from past, present, and future coexist simultaneously. Hence, the phrase “so it goes” that is used repeatedly in this book, which shows an attitude of accepting deaths without being affected by it, because time is an illusion and death is never truly final. This numbness approach to life is also fully adopted by Billy Pilgrim, where he does not try to change anything or escape his fate and instead passively accepts whatever is happening in his life.

If you’re thinking that the Tralfamadorian view looks like more of a coping mechanism for his severe PTSD, it does look that way. Despite Vonnegut intentionally left it ambiguous, the alien race, the abduction, and the sanctuary planet indeed look more like a mental escape invented by Billy.

Especially when Billy doesn’t start to tell about his alien abduction until a year later in 1968, just after surviving a horrific plane crash that killed everyone else except him, and after his wife died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. The massive physical and emotional traumas are likely to worsen the war PTSD and trigger the alien sanctuary, which become the only thing that kept him from completely breaking down.

It can be an eerie novel that is uncomfortable to read at times. But after struggling for over 20 years on how to write it, Vonnegut resorted with plain prose, short sentences, and a dark sense of humor to counter-weight all the horrors. Which left us with a strange lingering after-taste, and a deep empathy towards the fragile, broken, and defenseless Billy.

This is exactly the intention of the book, and this is why it becomes one of the most celebrated anti-war novels of the 20th century.

“Novelist As a Vocation” by Haruki Murakami

This is a comprehensive book that shows how Haruki Murakami thinks and sees the world. It is a semi-autobiographical account that has this nice personal touch, with no hint of arrogance or ego whatsoever, where Murakami looks back into his glittering career as a novelist and provides an honest review.

It touches many topics, such as his serendipitous path to become a writer, his take on literally prizes, on inspirations and originality, his writing process, on education, on creating characters, who he is writing for, and more. It is a brutally honest account, which also shows the failures and doubts along the way, that makes him look human and realistically inspiring.

Murakami also lays out all the tools and methods that he often use to make his craft, revealing the way he receives and processes information, before writing it down into a novel. But perhaps more importantly, he shows us how he sees the world, observations that have given him all the fuel for his writings.

Oh there are so many lessons that can be learned from this book, as if Murakami poured in everything he has learnt from his decades of experience and observation.

Here are some of the most impactful quotes from the book:

1. The thing that makes novels different is that practically anybody can write one if they put their mind to it.
2. In my considered opinion, anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist. That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace—in low gear, so to speak.
3. We spend our time behind closed doors doing the most intricate type of operations, day after day after day. The process is virtually endless. If you aren’t built for that sort of work and can’t shrug off all that it entails, there’s no way you’ll keep it up over the long haul.
4. A novelist, however, sees the idea of “a leisurely life” as practically synonymous with “the waning of one’s creativity.” For novelists are like certain types of fish. If they don’t keep swimming forward, they die.
5. A tenacious, persevering temperament that equips them to work long and lonely hours. It is my belief that these are the qualifications required of a professional novelist.
6. our futures, it seems, don’t always unfold in the ways that we expect.
7. Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles.
8. There is no basic change today—I feel the same pleasure and excitement I felt when I wrote my first novel. I wake up early, brew fresh coffee in the kitchen, pour some in a big mug, sit down at my desk, and boot up my computer (there are times, I must admit, when I miss the days of manuscript sheets and my fat Montblanc fountain pen). Then I sit there and muse about what to write that day. Such moments are pure bliss. To tell the truth, I have never found writing painful. Neither (thankfully) have I ever found myself unable to write. What’s the point of writing, anyway, if you’re not enjoying it? I can’t get my head around the idea of “the suffering writer.” Basically, I think, novels should emerge in a spontaneous flow.
9. Give me time, I thought, and I can turn out something much better. This may sound arrogant for someone who not long before had never given a thought to writing a novel. It even sounds arrogant to me. In all honesty, though, anyone who lacks that level of arrogance is unlikely to become a novelist.
10. I have a standard answer when interviewers ask me about literary prizes—this question invariably comes up, whether in Japan or abroad. “The most important thing,” I tell them, “is good readers. Nothing means as much as the people who dip into their pockets to buy my books—not prizes, or medals, or critical praise.” I repeat this answer over and over ad nauseam, yet it doesn’t seem to sink in. Most often it’s completely ignored.
11. I have never served on a selection jury for any literary prize. I have been asked, but have always politely refused. That is because I feel I am not qualified for the task. The reason is a simple one—I am just too much of an individualist. I am a person with a fixed vision and a fixed process for giving that vision shape. Unavoidably, sustaining that process entails an all-encompassing lifestyle. Without that, I cannot write.
12. If a fifteen-year-old boy were to hear the same music for the first time today, he might find it amazing, but it is doubtful it would strike him as “unprecedented” in the same dramatic way.
13. The same patterns characterize the realms of art and literature. Art lovers were shocked, on occasion even repulsed, when they first beheld the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. I doubt many still feel that way. To the contrary, their art is now found to be deeply moving, invigorating, even psychically healing. That’s not because it has lost its originality with time; rather, that originality has become one with our perception, so that, naturally, it has become a part of us, a reference point, as it were. Similarly, the literary styles of Natsume Sōseki and Ernest Hemingway are now celebrated. Yet both were criticized, at times even ridiculed, by their contemporaries.
14. It is my impression, in fact, that if Sōseki and Hemingway had never developed those styles, the literature that we read today in the West and in Japan would be somewhat different. Taking it a step further, I think it’s arguable that their styles have become part of the mental landscapes of Japanese and English readers.
15. In my opinion, an artist must fulfill the following three basic requirements to be deemed “original”: 1. The artist must possess a clearly unique and individual style (of sound, language, or color). Moreover, that uniqueness should be immediately perceivable on first sight (or hearing). 2. That style must have the power to update itself. It should grow with time, never resting in the same place for long, since it expresses an internal and spontaneous process of self-reinvention. 3. Over time, that characteristic style should become integrated within the psyche of its audience, to become a part of their basic standard of evaluation. Subsequent generations of artists should see that style as a rich resource from which they can draw.
16. Before we can say much about an artist’s style, we need to see an accumulated body of work. Otherwise there just isn’t enough to go on. We can’t really assess someone’s originality until we can line up a number of their works and examine them from a variety of angles.
17. The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert had this to say: “To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream.” Lines like these can really buck up your spirits!
18. As someone who had lived through the student protests of the late 1960s, the years of rebellion, it went against my instincts to “sell out” to those in power. Most of all, however, as a writer I wanted to remain spiritually free, beholden to no one. To write my novels the way I wanted, according to the schedule I myself had laid out. This was my bottom line, my assertion of authorial independence.
19. From the outset, I had a pretty clear idea of the novels I wanted to create. I could even picture what they should look like, once I had developed my skills to the point where I could write them. The novels floated directly above me, shining in the sky like the North Star. If I felt lost, all I had to do was look up. They would give me my location, and point me in the right direction. Had they not been there, I might well have ended up wandering all over the place.
20. Speaking from experience, it seems that I discovered my “original” voice and style, at the outset, not adding to what I already knew but subtracting from it. Think how many—far too many—things we pick up in the course of living. Whether we choose to call it information overload or excess baggage, we have that multitude of options to choose from, so that when we try to express ourselves creatively, all those choices collide with each other and we shut down, like a stalled engine. We become paralyzed. Our best recourse is to clear out our information system by chucking all that is unnecessary into the garbage bin, allowing our mind to move freely again.
21. One rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “Am I having a good time doing this?” If you’re not enjoying yourself when you’re engaged in what seems important to you, if you can’t find spontaneous pleasure and joy in it, if your heart doesn’t leap with excitement, then there’s likely something wrong. When that happens, you have to go back to the beginning and start discarding any extraneous parts or unnatural elements.
22. In any event, that was how I began. I started with a simple style, light and breezy, and then took time fleshing it out bit by bit in later works.
23. The structure of my novels, too, was skeletal at first, but I built it up in stages, making it more three-dimensional and multilayered until it was strong enough to handle the heightened complexity of long narratives. In this fashion, my works grew in scale.
24. As I said before, I began with an internal image of what I eventually wanted to write, but the process of getting there happened naturally. No detailed planning was involved—only after I had arrived did it hit me, “So that’s how I got here!”
25. If there is indeed something original about my novels, I think it springs from the principle of freedom.
26. This is purely my opinion, but if you want to express yourself as freely as you can, it’s probably best not to start out by asking “What am I seeking?” Rather, it’s better to ask “Who would I be if I weren’t seeking anything?” and then try to visualize that aspect of yourself.
27. I never write unless I really want to, unless the desire to write is overwhelming. When I feel that desire, I sit down and set to work. When I don’t feel it, I usually turn to translating from English.
28. After a while, however, the desire to write begins to mount. I can feel my material building up within me, like spring melt pressing against a dam. Then one day (in a best-case scenario), when I can’t take that pressure anymore, I sit down at my desk and start to write.
29. I don’t make promises, so I don’t have deadlines. As a result, writer’s block and I are strangers to each other.
30. Originality is hard to define in words, but it is possible to describe and reproduce the emotional state it evokes. I try to attain that emotional state each time I sit down to write my novels. That’s because it feels so wonderfully invigorating. It’s as if a new and different day is being born from the day that is today. If possible, I would like my readers to savor that same emotion when they read my books. I want to open a window in their souls and let the fresh air in. This is what I think of, and hope for, as I write—purely and simply.
31. I think the first task for the aspiring novelist is to read tons of novels. Sorry to start with such a commonplace observation, but no training is more crucial. To write a novel, you must first understand at a physical level how one is put together. This point is as self-evident as the truism “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
32. It is especially important to plow through as many novels as you can while you are still young. Everything you can get your hands on—great novels, not-so-great novels, crappy novels, it doesn’t matter (at all!) as long as you keep reading. Absorb as many stories as you physically can. Introduce yourself to lots of great writing. To lots of mediocre writing, too. This is your most important task. Through it you will develop the basic novelistic muscles that every novelist needs. Build up your foundation. Make it strong while you have time to spare and while your eyes are still good.
33. Writing is important, too, I guess, but it can come later—there is no need to rush.
34. Next, before you start writing your own stuff, make a habit of looking at things and events in more detail. Observe what is going on around you and the people you encounter as closely and as deeply as you can. Reflect on what you see.
35. Remember, though, that to reflect is not to rush to determine the rights and wrongs or merits and demerits of what and whom you are observing. Try to consciously refrain from value judgments—conclusions can come later. What’s important is not arriving at clear conclusions but retaining the specifics of a certain situation—in other words, your material—as fully as you can.
36. Some individuals decide what or who is right or wrong based on a quick analysis of people and events. Generally speaking, though (and this is purely my opinion), they don’t make good novelists. Instead, they are better suited to becoming critics or journalists. Or possibly academics of a certain kind. Someone cut out to be a novelist, on the other hand, will stop to question the conclusion he or she has just reached, or is about to reach. “It sure looks that way,” he or she will think, “but wait a minute. That might be only my preconceived notion. Maybe I should consider it more carefully. After all, things are never as simple as they seem. If down the road something new pops up, it could become a completely different story.”
37. That is why I don’t leap to judgment when something happens. My mind no longer works that way. Instead I strive to retain as complete an image as possible of the scene I have observed, the person I have met, the experience I have undergone, regarding it as a singular “sample,” a kind of test case, as it were. I can go back and look at it again later, when my feelings have settled down and there is less urgency, this time inspecting it from a variety of angles. Finally, if and when it seems called for, I can draw my own conclusions.
38. Nevertheless, based on my own experience, I have found that the occasions when conclusions must be drawn are far less numerous than we tend to assume. Indeed, the times when judgments are truly necessary—whether in the short or the long run—are few and far between. That’s the way I feel, anyway. This means that when I read the paper or watch the news on TV, I have a hard time swallowing the reporters’ rush to give opinions on anything and everything. “Come on, guys,” I feel like saying, “what’s the big hurry?”
39. When less time is taken between gathering information and acting on it, so that everyone becomes a critic or a news commentator, then the world becomes an edgier, less reflective place.
40. It is possible, of course, to jot them down on a notepad or something of the sort, but I prefer to trust my mind. It’s a real pain to carry a pad around, and I have found that once I have jotted something down I tend to relax and forget it. If I toss the bits into my mind, on the other hand, what needs to be remembered stays while the rest fades into oblivion. I like to leave things to this process of natural selection.
41. Come to think of it, there have been very few situations when I wished I had a notepad on me. Something truly important is not that easy to forget once you’ve entrusted it to your memory.
42. Your mental chest of drawers is a great asset when you set to work on a novel. Neatly put-together arguments and value judgments aren’t much use for those of us who write fiction. More often than not, they impede us by blocking the natural flow of the story. If you have stockpiled your chest with a rich variety of unrelated details, however, you will be amazed to see how naturally they pop up when the need arises, full of life and ready to be fit into the narrative.
43. James Joyce put it most succinctly when he said, “Imagination is memory.” I tend to agree with him. In fact, I think he was spot-on. What we call the imagination consists of fragments of memory that lack any clear connection with one another. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but when we bring such fragments together our intuition is sparked, and we sense what the future may hold in store. It is from their interaction that a novel’s true power emanates.
44. If I want to include the story of someone who starts sneezing whenever they get angry, for example, but have already published it in a weekly journal, it can be a real disappointment. Of course, there is no rule that says that the same material can’t be used in an essay and a story, but I have found that doubling up like that somehow weakens my fiction. My advice, then, is to hang a sign on your chest of drawers that says For Fiction Only when you are in the process of writing. You never know what you are going to need later, so it pays to be miserly. This is one piece of wisdom I have picked up in the course of my long career.
45. If something is really tasty, I save it for my main job—my next novel.
46. The key component is not the quality of the materials—what’s needed is magic. If that magic is present, the most basic daily matters and the plainest language can be turned into a device of surprising sophistication. First and foremost, though, is what’s packed away in your garage. Magic can’t work if your garage is empty. You’ve got to stash away a lot of junk to use if and when E.T. comes calling!
47. Two principles guided me. The first was to omit all explanations. Instead, I would toss a variety of fragments—episodes, images, scenes, phrases—into that container called the novel and then try to join them together in a three-dimensional way. Second, I would try to make those connections in a space set entirely apart from conventional logic and literary clichés. This was my basic scheme.
48. More than anything else, music helped move this process forward. I wrote as if I were performing a piece of music. Jazz was my main inspiration. As you know, the most important aspect of a jazz performance is rhythm. You have to sustain a solid rhythm from start to finish—when you fail, people stop listening. The next most important element is the chords, or harmony if you like. Beautiful chords, muddy chords, secondary chords, chords with the tonic removed. Bud Powell’s chords, Thelonious Monk’s chords, Bill Evans’s chords, Herbie Hancock’s chords. There are so many kinds. Though everyone is using a piano with the same eighty-eight keys, the sound varies to an amazing degree depending on who’s playing. This says something important about novel writing as well. The possibilities are limitless—or virtually limitless—even if we use the same limited material. The fact that a piano has only eighty-eight keys hardly means that nothing new can be done with it. Finally there is the matter of free improvisation, which lies at the root of jazz music. Once the rhythm and chord progression (or harmonic structure) have been established, the musician is able to weave notes freely into the composition.
49. From the beginning, therefore, my intention was to write as if I were playing an instrument. I still feel like that today. I sit tapping away at the keyboard searching for the right rhythm, the most suitable chords and tones. This is, and has always been, the most important element in my literature.
50. Your material may be lightweight, but if you can grasp how to link the pieces together so that magic results, you can go on to write as many novels as you wish. You will be astounded how the mastery of that technique can lead to the creation of works with both weight and depth—as long as, that is, you retain a healthy amount of writerly ambition.
51. In contrast, writers who from the first write about heavy topics may eventually—although, obviously, this does not occur in all cases—find themselves faltering under the very weight of that material.
52. Hemingway was the type of writer who took his strength from his material. This helps explain why he led the type of life he did, moving from one war to another (the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War), hunting big game in Africa, fishing for big fish, falling in love with bullfighting. He needed that external stimulus to write. The result was a legendary life; yet age gradually sapped him of the energy that his experiences had once provided.
53. Writers who do not rely on weighty material but instead reach inside themselves to spin their tales may, by contrast, have an easier time of it. That’s because they can draw on their daily lives—the events routinely taking place around them, the scenes they witness, the people they encounter—and then freely apply their imaginations to that material to construct their own fiction. In short, they use a form of renewable energy. They feel no need to fight on the battlefield or in the bullring, or to shoot lions.
54. Please do not misunderstand—I am not saying that direct personal involvement in things like war, bullfights, and big-game hunting has no meaning. Of course it can be meaningful. Experiences are crucial for a writer, of whatever kind. All I’m saying is that they needn’t be of the dramatic variety to make a good novel. Even the smallest, most nondramatic encounter can generate an astonishing amount of creative power, if you do it right.
55. Things the world sees as trivial can acquire weight over time, while other things broadly considered to be weighty can, quite suddenly, reveal themselves to be only hollow shells.
56. “I can’t write any other way, so take it or leave it,” was my response to the critics.
57. Novelists are people who happen to have the knack of discovering and refining that raw material. Even more wonderful: the process costs virtually nothing. If you are blessed with a pair of good eyes, you too can mine the ore you choose to your heart’s content! Can you think of a more wonderful way to make a living?
58. It strikes me that, at the risk of exaggeration, long novels are my lifeblood, while short stories and novellas are more like practice pieces, important and useful steps toward the construction of longer works. You could compare this to the way long-distance runners think—we may keep track of our records in the five-thousand- and ten-thousand-meter races, but our true standard is our time in the marathon.
59. When writing a novel, my rule is to produce roughly ten Japanese manuscript pages (the equivalent of sixteen hundred English words) every day. This works out to about two and a half pages on my computer, but I base my calculations on the old system out of habit. On days where I want to write more, I still stop after ten pages; when I don’t feel like writing, I force myself to somehow fulfill my quota. Why do I do it this way? Because it is especially important to maintain a steady pace when tackling a big project. That can’t work if you write a lot one day and nothing at all the next. So I punch in, write my ten pages, and then punch out, as if I’m working on a time card.
60. Ten pages a day means three hundred pages a month. That works out to eighteen hundred pages in six months. To give you a concrete sense of how much that is, the first draft of Kafka on the Shore was eighteen hundred manuscript pages long. I wrote most of that novel on the North Shore of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Not only was nothing there to distract me, it rained almost all the time, so the work progressed at a rapid pace. I started the draft in April and wrapped it up in October.
61. In the case of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I decided that a large chunk of what I had written didn’t fit into the whole, so I excised it and used it as the base for a subsequent novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun. That’s an extreme example, though—in most cases, the sections I cut out are gone forever.
62. Novels are, by definition, longer works, which means the reader can be stifled if the screws are too tight. Correspondingly, there are spots where I leave them loose, to allow the reader room to breathe. There must also be a balance between the novel as a whole and its parts. All these things require careful adjustment.
63. Once the novel has fully settled, it is time for another detailed and exhaustive run-through. Thanks to my time away, my impressions of the work will have changed quite a lot. Weaknesses I haven’t noticed before jump out at me. I can sense what has depth and what doesn’t. Just as the work has settled, so too has my state of mind.
64. Once the settling period is over and the subsequent rewrite completed, I move on to the next step. By this point, the novel has assumed what will be more or less its final form, so I can show it to a first reader—namely, my wife. This is a natural extension of the writing process, a station on the line that leads from inception to completion. My wife’s opinions are something like standard tuning in music. They are similar to the old speakers I have at home (sorry, dear!). I have listened to all my records on those speakers. They aren’t especially good, part of a JBL system I bought back in the 1970s. Big and bulky, their tonal range is more limited than the fancy new speakers available nowadays. The clarity of the sound isn’t as good, either. One could even call them antiques. Yet I have been listening to so many kinds of music on them for so long that they have become my standard of comparison. They are like a part of me.
65. Whichever course I have followed, once I have sat down and rewritten a given section I almost always find it much improved. It seems that when a reader has a problem, there is usually something that needs fixing, whether or not it corresponds to their suggestions. In short, the flow of their reading has been blocked. It is my job, then, to eliminate that blockage, to unclog the pipe, as it were. How to do that is up to me, the author.
66. At any rate, I spend as much time as I can on the rewriting process. I listen to the advice of the people around me (even if it makes me angry) and try to bear it in mind as I rework my novel. Their comments are valuable. Anyone who has just finished writing a long novel is bound to be in an emotional, overstimulated state. In a way, we are out of our minds.
67. Raymond Carver, a writer I love and respect, also enjoyed tinkering. He wrote, about another writer, that “he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting commas back in the same places.” I know that feeling exactly, for I have had the same experience many times. You reach the limit. If you tinker any more you will only damage what you have written. It’s a subtle point, easy to miss. The bit about replacing commas hits it right on the head.
68. In my opinion, using your willpower to control time is what makes it your ally. You mustn’t let it go on controlling you. That just makes you passive. “Time and tide wait for no man,” they say, so if time isn’t going to wait for you, you have no choice but to take it to heart and actively construct your schedule on that principle. In other words, assume command of the situation and stop being passive!
69. In fact, I think I enjoy talking about my system much more than I do talking about the value and specific qualities of the various books I have written. I think this kind of talk has more practical value as well.
70. When I first started writing Norwegian Wood, I wrote at cafés in various places in Greece, on board ferry boats, in the waiting lobbies of airports, in shady spots in parks, and at desks in cheap hotels. Hauling around oversized, four-hundred-character-per-page Japanese manuscript paper was too much, so in Rome I bought a cheap notebook (the kind we used to call college-ruled notebooks) and wrote the novel down in tiny writing with a disposable Bic pen.
71. Essentially, I believe people don’t write novels because someone asks them to. They write because they have a personal desire to write.
72. Naturally, some writers write novels because they’ve been asked to do so. This might be true for the majority of professional writers. My own personal policy for many years has been not to write novels because I’ve been contracted to or requested to, but I might be a rare case. For most writers, editors will ask them to write a short story, for instance, for their company’s magazine, or a novel exclusively for their publishing company, and they’ll go from there. In these cases it’s usual to have a deadline, and depending on the situation, to receive a payment up front as a kind of advance.
73. It’s kind of a cliché to say it’s a lonely process, but writing a novel—especially a really long one—is exactly that: extremely lonely work. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting all alone at the bottom of a well. Nobody will help me, and nobody’s there to pat me on the back and tell me I’ve done a great job. The novel I produce may be praised by people (if it turns out well), but no one seems to appreciate the process itself that led to it. That’s a burden the writer must carry alone.
74. you have to become physically fit. You need to become robust and physically strong. And make your body your ally.
75. I began running once I became a full-time writer (I started when I was writing A Wild Sheep Chase), and for thirty years running for an hour a day, or sometimes swimming, has been a regular part of my daily schedule. Perhaps I have an inherently strong constitution, but during this time I’ve never been seriously ill and never hurt my legs or back (though I did sustain a torn muscle once when playing squash), and I have continued to run every day with hardly ever taking a break. Once a year I run a full marathon, and I’ve participated in triathlons as well.
76. How have I been able to do it? It’s because I feel like the act of running represents, concretely and succinctly, some of the things I have to do in this life.
77. That sentence has become a kind of mantra for me: No matter what, this is something I have to do in my life.
78. I felt very strongly that paying close attention to what the body is feeling is, fundamentally, a critical process for someone involved in creative work. Whether it’s the emotions or the brain, they’re all equally part of our physical body. I don’t know what physiologists say about this, but to me, the lines separating the emotional, the mental, and the physical aren’t all that clearly defined.
79. This mental toughness—or at least the greater part of it—isn’t something I was born with; it was acquired. I obtained this by consciously training myself.
80. They were seriously upset that they’d been reading novels written by such a thoroughly boring man. Maybe ordinary people in nineteenth-century England had an idealized image of a novelist, or a novelist’s lifestyle, as unconventional. I get a little jumpy sometimes wondering if I’ll suffer the same fate as Trollope, seeing as how I also live this kind of ordinary life. Well, it’s a good thing, I guess, that in the twentieth century Trollope’s critical reputation has seen something of a reassessment…
81. Some people insist that if you’re truly talented at something, your talent will definitely blossom someday. But based on my own gut feelings—and I trust my gut—that won’t necessarily happen. If that talent lies buried in a relatively shallow place, it’s very possible it will emerge on its own. But if it’s buried deep down, you can’t discover it that easily. It can be the most abundant talent, but as long as there’s no one to actually pick up a shovel, say “Let’s dig here,” and start digging, it may remain forever unknown, buried in the earth.
82. As I’ve lived and matured, I’ve found, through much trial and error, the way that works best for me. Trollope found the way that works best for him, and so did Kafka. You should find what works best for you.
83. I’m the type of person who whenever I like something and am interested in it, puts everything I have into it and goes all in. I never stop halfway, thinking, “That’s good enough.” I do it until I’m convinced I’ve got it. But unless something really grabs me, I can’t put my heart into it. Or, more precisely, I just can’t work up the desire to do so.
84. In my own case, when I look back to when I was in school, the biggest saving grace for me was having some close friends, and reading tons of books. When it came to books, I greedily devoured a wide range, like I was busily shoveling coal into a blazing furnace. I was so busy every day enjoying one book after another, digesting them (in many cases not properly digesting them), that I didn’t have any time left to think about anything else. Sometimes I think that might actually have been a good thing for me.
85. Also, reading so widely helped to relativize my point of view, and I think that was very significant for me back when I was a teenager. I experienced all the emotions depicted in books almost as if they were my own; in my imagination I traveled freely through time and space, saw all kinds of amazing sights, and let all kinds of words pass right through my very body. Through all this, my perspective on life became a more composite view. In other words, I wasn’t gazing at the world just from the spot where I was standing, but was able to take a step back and take a more panoramic view.
86. If you always see things from your own standpoint, the world shrinks. Your body gets stiff, your footwork grows heavy, and you can no longer move. But if you’re able to view where you’re standing from other perspectives—to put it another way, if you can entrust your existence to some other system—the world will grow more three-dimensional, more supple. And I believe that as long as we live in this world, that kind of agile stance is extremely important. In my life this has been one of the biggest rewards of reading.
87. A novelist is a person who steadily fills his head with a world of his own.
88. In most cases, the characters who appear in my novels naturally emerge from the flow of the story. Except for a few rare cases, I never decide ahead of time that I’ll present a certain type of character. As I write, a kind of axis emerges that makes it possible for the appearance of certain char-acters, and I go ahead and add one detail after another as I see fit, like iron scraps attach to a magnet.
89. Naturally what I write isn’t neatly organized as a ready-to-go novel, so later I rework it a number of times, changing its form. That rewriting process is more conscious and logical. But the creation of the prototype is an unconscious and intuitive process. There’s no choice, really. I have to do it this way or my characters will turn out unnatural and dead. That’s why, in the beginning stage of the process, I leave everything up to these Automatic Dwarves.
90. IN ANY CASE, in the same way that you have to read a lot of books in order to write novels, to write about people you need to know a lot of them.
91. By “know” I don’t mean you have to comprehend them, or go so far as to really understand them deep down. All you need to do is glance at the person’s appearance, how they talk and act, their special charac-teristics. Those people you like, ones you’re not so fond of, ones that, frankly, you dis-like—it’s important to observe people with-out, as much as possible, choosing which ones you observe.
92. So you shouldn’t just avert your eyes when you decide you can’t stomach some-body, but instead ask yourself “What is it I don’t like about them?” and “Why don’t I like that?” Those are the main points to keep in mind.
93. Every time I went through these negative experiences, I tried to observe in detail the way the people involved looked and how they spoke and acted. If I’m going to have to go through all this, I figured, I should at least get something useful out of it (to get back what I put into it, you could say). Naturally these experiences hurt me, even made me depressed sometimes, but now I feel they provided a lot of nourishment for me as a novelist. Of course, I had plenty of wonderful, enjoyable experiences as well, but for whatever reason the ones I recall now are the negative ones.
94. But beyond being real, interesting, and somewhat unpredictable, I think what’s more important is the question of how far the novel’s characters advance the story. Of course it’s the writer who creates the char-acters; but characters who are—in a real sense-alive will eventually break free of the writer’s control and begin to act inde-pendently. I’m not the only one who feels this-many fiction writers acknowledge it. In fact, unless that phenomenon occurs, writing the novel becomes a strained, pain-ful, and trying process. When a novel is on the right track, characters take on a life of their own, the story moves forward by itself, and a very happy situation evolves whereby the novelist just ends up writing down what he sees happening in front of him. And in some cases the character takes the novelist by the hand and leads him or her to an unexpected destination.
95. One of the things I enjoy the most about writing novels is being able to become anyone I want. When I wrote Kafka on the Shore I was a little past fifty years old, yet I made the main character a fifteen-year-old boy. And all the time I was writing I felt like I was a fifteen-year-old.
96. As I wrote the novel, I was able to vividly relive inside me, almost as they were, the air I actually breathed at age fifteen, the light I actually saw. Through the power of writing I could draw out sensations and feelings that had long lain hidden deep inside. It was a truly wonderful experience. Perhaps the sort of sensation only a novelist can taste.
97. I might, at one time, become a twenty-year-old lesbian. Another time I’ll be a thirty-year-old unemployed househus-band. I put my feet into the shoes I’m given then, make my foot size fit those shoes, and then start to act. That’s all it is. I don’t make the shoes fit my foot size but, rather, make my feet fit the shoes. It’s not something you can do in reality, but if you toil for years as a novelist, you find you’re able to accomplish it. The reason being that it’s all imaginary.
98. And being imaginary, it’s like things that take place in dreams. In dreams—whether ones you have while asleep or dreams you have while awake-you have hardly any choice about it. Basically I just go with the flow.
99. The year before I made this decision, I read Ryu Murakami’s novel Coin Locker Babies and was really blown away. But this was something only Ryu Murakami could write. I also read some of Kenji Nakagami’s novels and was really impressed, but again only Nakagami could have written them. They were both different from what I wanted to write.
100. Enjoying yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll produce an outstanding work of art. A process of rigorous self-examination is a crucial element. Also, as a professional, of course you need a minimum number of readers. But clear that hurdle and I think that your goal should be to enjoy yourself and write works that satisfy you. I mean, a life spent doing something you don’t find enjoyable can’t be much fun, right? I return again to our starting point: What’s wrong about feeling good?

“The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shikibu (translation by Edward G. Seidensticker)

This is the first novel ever written in history. It is written in the 11th century by a female writer, Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan who served empress Akiko.

The novel shows a nuanced portrait of a refined society in 10th-11th century Heian period in Japan, where every casual romantic or sexual relationship is an act of political calculation. Chief among the players is Hikaru Genji, a handsome second son of the emperor Kiritsubo and a passionate man with impulses that often create great turmoil in his kingdom and very nearly destroy himself. This fictional story, which spans almost three-quarters of a century, is mainly about him and the people around him.

Genji was born into royalty but later demoted to a status of a commoner after the death of his mother, a low-ranking concubine. As he matures, he grows to become a master of all essential noble arts, such as calligraphy, poetry, playing the lite, scent-mixing, and courtly dance. And his handsome features and charismatic personality enables him to be entangled in complex love affairs with various women, including a scandalous affair with his stepmother.

It was a highly political era, with the kingdom fractured into the Left and Right, where some actions can lead to political exiles, deaths, and spiritual disillusionment.

This English-language translation by Edward G. Seidensticker was first published in 1976, and it is arguably the 2nd best translation that I found after hours of research comparing the reviews between the multiple translations available. Why settle for the 2nd best, and who is the best translation? Many sources are saying that the translation by Royall Tyler is the undisputed best one, and true to my tsundoku habit, I already have the physical copy of it when I bought this thick book in Japan in 2013 as a souvenir for my collection (the first ever novel, bought directly in Japan? Jackpot).

But why still buy and read this Seidensticker’s translation? The Tyler translation is the 1217 pages, fully complete, unabridged masterpiece that spans 54 chapters and traces multiple generations. Meanwhile, this Seidensticker translation is the 384 pages, abridged version with curated selection of 12 core chapters that strictly focus on Genji’s youth and early romances. Chapters 2, 3, 6, 15 and 16, for example, are omitted due to their stand apart nature that have no effect on the main narrative.

Furthermore, Seidensticker’s translation also focuses on direct and concise English prose style that chose clarity, compared to Tyler’s translation that replicates the long and winding style of classical Japanese syntax. Hence, it is the perfect introductory translation to read in order to fully understand the story.

I will eventually read the Tyler translation someday, which aimed to preserve the purity of the text, complete with the 795 poems, extensive scholar commentaries, and of course the entire narrative from the original text. But for now, anyone who wants to read the first ever novel without being discouraged before we even begun to read, due to its sheer size, this Seidensticker translation is the go-to book to read.

A little personal side note: I intentionally read this book while travelling to Japan, and visited the Uji area at the outskirt of Kyoto along the way, where the last 10 chapters of the original Tale of Genji are set. There’s something about the Uji calm environment that I really love, and reading this book there felt like a Zen experience.

“Kokoro” by Natsume Sōseki

This book is a classic Japanese literature, written by whom many consider as Japan’s leading novelist, Natsume Sōseki.

It was published in 1914, two years after Japan’s Meiji era ended after the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912, which was followed by the accession of his son, Emperor Taishō, who ruled the Taishō era from 1912 until his death in 1926.

The book portrays the transition period in Japanese society from the traditional early Meiji era, to the modernizing later Meiji era, to the Taishō era that was filled with even more modernity and assimilation with the Westernized world. And it is depicted in the story through the relationship between a young student and his mentor (or Sensei), with the student represents the hopeful new Taishō era while the Sensei has more of a Meiji era’s characteristics that is increasingly lost and felt out of place.

Interestingly, Sensei’s character is said to be similar with Sōseki’s own personality and upbringing. Sōseki was born in Edo in 1867, a year before Emperor Meiji took the throne and the Meiji era began (and Edo was renamed into Tokyo). He was educated in the Japanese and Chinese classics and in the Confucian moral code, still far from the Western concepts of individualism and individual rights.

Similarly, Sensei is of a similar age with Sōseki, with his references to the importance of old-fashioned moral education reflects Sōseki’s own preferences. For both Sōseki and Sensei, the Meiji period’s later embrace of Western individualism already triggered inner conflicts that haunted them trough their lives, which was then exacerbated in the Taishō era.

This is what the novel is about, the inner struggle in the transition, the isolation, the generational gap, the moral guilt, and ultimately the human connection. But there’s a twist, a Dostoevsky-esque type of moral story similar like Crime and Punishment.

But the difference is, this novel reveals it at the very last part of the story. Throughout the early parts of the novel the student (as the unnamed narrator of the story) keeps on portraying Sensei as a distant character with a mysterious past, with only glimpses of clues appear every now and then in the middle of their conversations and the student’s conversations with Sensei’s wife. But everything is eventually explained in part 3 by Sensei’s letter to the student, which I will not reveal here because it would become a spoiler for the entire build up.

All in all, the novel’s title “Kokoro” is a perfect reflection of the themes in this story, where it can be translated to “the thinking and feeling hearts.” Because following your logic does not mean a thing, if your action contradicts with what your heart is telling you.

The Meiji Era ended when Emperor Meiji passed away on 30 July 1912. And after the funeral on 13 September 1912, the very next day General Nogi Maresuke and his wife Shizuko committed a ritual suicide (seppuku), practicing a long-banned Samurai tradition to die with their lord. This event sent a shockwave throuhought Japan, and inspired Sōseki to write this novel.

“Fahrenheit -182” by Mark Hoppus

My teenage years were filled by blink-182 songs. “All the small things” was the anthem for me and my high school friends, “First date” was literally the song that I listened to at one time while being nervous picking up my date, while years later “I miss you” was my break up song (different girl).

I like them so much that during my uni days in England, in a limited student budget I took 3 trains from Cambridge to London, to Birmingham, then to Manchester, just to see their concert. And afterwards I had to crash in a stranger’s living room floor for the night, before heading back home the following day.

Sure the songs are great, but what makes them very relatable are their jokes and banters on stage, first introduced to me by a friend when listening to the Tom-Mark-Travis show, on a cassette. This book has the same fun vibe to it.

The memoir is broken down into a crazy 66 chapters, but it still feels too short due to the past-pace of the narrative and the laid back style of writing.

It begins with Mark’s early childhood memories: his parent’s ugly divorce; the poverty that he, his mom, and his sister endured; the constant moving between cities that made him enroll in different school every year, and by the time he was in high school he’d lived in 8 different houses and nothing really felt at home; falling in love with the skateboard culture; and being mesmerized by The Cure’s bassist Simon Gallup when watching their video clip on MTV.

Furthermore, Mark also tells the story about attending his first concert: They Might Be Giants, which kicked start his flood of musical inspirations; working his ass off one summer to earn a bass guitar from his dad, and self-taught himself how to play it; the Descendents album “I don’t want to grow up” that his girlfriend gave him, which opened up his world to punk music; working part time at the coolest pizza and ice cream place; going to concerts: Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth, Nirvana; forming his own band; moving to San Diego for college but having an identity crisis of who he is and what he’s doing; that is, until he meets Tom DeLonge, at chapter 8.

Mark’s meeting with Tom was like a meet-cute in a rom-com, where 2 soul mates meet. They hit it off right off the bat, with them sharing a similar broken family background, the same jokes, the same music taste, both played skates, and separately create some music that together can be combined into something spectacular. The duo was formed!

The story then proceeded to the ups and downs of the band in recording their first demo album, in spreading them out, in winning some gigs at local venues, meeting a guy called O who was influential and took them under his wing, meeting a dude called Brahm who was their fan and happened to have a father who own a record company, looking for the most badass van for their touring vehicle, searching for a band manager, getting arrested for underage drinking, getting involved in a brawl, stealing a Lenny Kravitz cardboard cutout, NOT calling Allyssa Milano when he had the chance, the falling out with their drummer Scott and borrowing other band’s drummer Travis Barker, and talking about the “fourth blink-182 member”: the producer Jerry.

The book answers some of my lingering questions about the band for so long. Like did they really run naked in the “What’s my age again” video clip? Answer: no, wardrobe gave them skin-colored speedos. Damn, a bit of a bummer, don’t you think? Not about the naked stuff, of course, but just the illusion of rebelness that turns out to be slightly manipulated. Although they really did strip naked for the band-playing scene.

The book also addresses the reason why they add the number 182 behind the band name blink, after for the longest of time at the beginning their name was simply blink. So what prompted them to add 182? A cease-and-desist letter from an Irish techno band called Blink that had played in California and New York, giving them the legal right to the name Blink. And thus they had to change their name.

So what’s the 182 stands for? Mark answers, “Over the years, we’ve offered a number of reasons behind the choice of 182. 182 pounds is my ideal weight. 182 was the number of the rescue raft my grandfather floated on after the sinking of his battleship in World War II. Someone claimed Al Pacino says “fuck” 182 times in Scarface. It’s been proven wrong, but that one stuck for a long time and we still get asked about it. Maybe 182 is the number lovingly painted on my childhood sled, long before I became a morally bankrupt newspaper tycoon, dying alone among my riches. Maybe it’s a blank canvas and everyone paints their own interpretation of 182. Maybe the real 182 is the number of friends we made along the way.” Not so much of an explanation, eh? One AI search away suggests that the number was actually random.

Anyway, the book is surprisingly very deep and personal. It shows how these events shaped Mark to become who he is now as a rock star and the songs that he has written and co-written. It shows his struggle with anxiety. It shows the pressure of success, fame, and fortune, and the depression that comes with it when the star is starting to fade. It also shows the crack in the band, the growing pains, that led them to break up in 2005. And of course all the miseries that the trio had to endure, like Mark losing a dive buddy who drowned during a dive with him, Travis’ plane crash, and Tom’s business ambitions that broke the band up for the 2nd time in 2015. And then Mark’s lymphoma cancer, and the honest recollection of the worry and struggles.

Man, the book has everything; hope, despair, hard work, taking chances, rejection, triumph, friendships made, friendships broken, love, marriages, divorces, fights, deaths, joys and successes, so many dick jokes, plane crash, another plane crash, their “beef” with Greenday, his weird encounter with The Cure’s Robert Smith, the stories behind the songwriting, the making of the music videos, brutal break ups, twice, getting back together, also twice, starring death in the face, until they eventually get back together in 2022 with the original Tom-Mark-Travis line up. What a journey.

“It’s All About the Buzz: Understanding Terrace Culture” by Jason Morgan

Terrace culture is a British working class sub-culture, built around football. It rose to prominence around the 1970s where different sorts of lads from different economic background, skin color, or even music taste gather together to form a group (or “firm”) based on 1 thing: the love for their chosen football club.

There are a lot of groups like this from all over the country, and those who do not choose the same football club will be the opposition, with them often ended up in a brawl between one another.

This book is a reminiscence down the history lane, where firm members from various different club supporters are telling their battle stories from the chaotic old days. From supporters of Liverpool, to Middlesborough, Everton, Portsmouth, Leeds United, Man City, Preston, Man United, Newcastle, Tottenham, Bournemouth, QPR, Stockport, Fulham, Cardiff City, Hearts, Chelsea, Millwall, Arsenal, Wolves, Brighton, Celtic, to West Ham, losts of West Ham, and many more.

This is the era when there’s no CCTV to record your crimes and no real consequences from the police either. Indeed, this is hooliganism at its worst, but terrace culture is so much more than just football violence. It got its name from the terrace stand in a football stadium, where another thing appeared that became the other half that defines the culture: the fashion.

This wasn’t explained in the book, but the fashion part of the culture was started by Liverpool fans in their away match against Man United in 1977. By then Liverpool fans have been going to away matches in European Cup, and brought back nice European brands like Fila, Sergio Tacchini, and Adidas. This so-called “Scally look” was later matched by Man United and Man City fans who started to wear Fred Perry polos and Adidas Samba.

Meanwhile, by the end of 1970s hooliganism was getting more violent and thus the police surveillance and arrests were also increasing exponentially, including punishments of minimum of 3-year ban, passport confiscation, even prison time. And thus wearing your team’s football jersey or scarf suddenly will expose you. And so the firms began to replace the obvious football jerseys with their team’s color that was hinted in the likes of Fred Perry polos. Thus, the smart casual pristine look was shaped and spread.

As one Cardiff supporter puts it “This was a culture that made labels massive. A culture with a forever changing uniform. A uniform that was great to wear first and even better when every c**t copied you.”

The book gets repetitive after a while, however, where despite having different sorts of supporters giving the testimony, the templates are tiringly identical: 1. Growing up as a local lad supporting the local football club 2. Joining the firm, loving the camaraderie 3. Nostalgia over the fighting days 4. A side note about fashion and/or music 5. Now I’ve grown up and moved on, but still brothers for life with the lads from the firm and even with some from the firms of other football clubs.

On a more personal note, I’ve had the privilege of living in England for 6 years during uni days, and experienced this culture myself. I watched plenty of England matches at my local pub, hugged and chanted with total strangers during Istanbul 2005, that David Beckham’s free kick against Greece, met plenty of new mates while joining kickabouts in Parker’s Piece (where football was invented), or that one time I ended up playing for Japan in a friendly student match against South Korea (I’m not Japanese).

I also went to Birmingham to see God (Robbie Fowler, when Liverpool played Birmingham at the Carabao Cup), lived 5 minutes walk away from the Walkers Stadium during postgraduate and went to Leicester City matches at the Championship (before the spectacular 5000-1 Premier League season), and went to watch several international matches and pre-season friendlies at the Emirates Stadium (where I saw Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in the flesh).

Or that famous Champions League match between Man United 7-1 AS Roma in 2007 where the match was electrifying but the atmosphere outside the stadium was horrifying (the Man United hooligans were seeking revenge for the beating that their fans received in Rome a week earlier). But my absolute favourite match was League 2 match at home in Cambridge United, where the stand is still, well, standing, in a bloody cold December night. The raw tackling, the booze, the hooligan vibe were all spectacular.

Oh those were the days alright. No fighting, though. Only booze, music concerts, a couple of heartbreaks, and lots and lots of football.

“A Man & His Watch” by Matt Hranek

The first time I read this book was merely 2 years ago, when I was just at a very early stage of becoming a watch geek. I was new to this obsession and knew almost nothing about horology and I read this book to better inform myself, which helped a lot.

Now, 2 years later, I have watched thousands more hours of YouTube reviews, doom scrolled even more IG reels, read various watch blogs, visited ALL the watch bazaars in Jakarta, established rapport with some re-sellers and ADs, went to a “pilgrimage” to Nakano Broadway, visited vintage watch market in Bangkok, Soviet watch hunting in Hanoi, even found a rare Kurono Toki in a small bazaar near my house and brought it along to Kurono Salon in Tokyo. It was surreal.

And of course, in the past 2 years I’ve purchased more watches. From buying a Grand Seiko SBGM221 in its flagship store in Ginza; to buying my GADA grail watch Omega Aqua Terra; travelling to a dodgy mall in the harsh part of my city just to meet a guy who sold Studio Underdog Watermelon (and decided to buy it); buying 2 local microbrands, Rivelta and Lima; to buying my very reliable Tudor Pelagos 39 that I eventually wear to snorkeling in Bali, hiking in Bukit Bentang, cave trip to Ninh Binh, watching football matches at the stadiums, and all sorts of concerts and music festivals.

And then there were the ones that get away, like the Zenith El Primero reverse panda that was about 60% discounted from retail price (but I just had to think about it for a day and it was already gone); or the ones that I’m interested to buy but never really convinced, like the Breitling Navitimer 41 that I have tried on like 6 times at different ADs but never purchased.

So, why re-reading this book after only 2 years? Because I am longing to read more books about watches, and quite frankly there’s not a lot of them. So I thought, why not re-reading it, only now with a more understanding of this damned hobby/disease/mental illness.

And I must say, it’s an even better reading now when I understand the watches, the models, the history, and the contexts a little bit better. It reminds me why I appreciate the likes of Sinn 556 F.A.Z more than any of Rolex’s mainstream names. It is also fitting that I read a book about the sentimental value of watches before I go to Kyoto next month and planning to visit Kuoe and engrave a certain Old Smith 90-002. Sure, a relatively cheap microbrand, but like what Mario Andretti said about his watches, this would be one of the “trophies” that I will cherish.

It’s always a blast reading this book, but please oh mighty please make a 2nd book for this.

“A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway” edited by Linda Wagner-Martin

We all know Ernest Hemingway’s story. Born in a Chicago suburb on 21 July 1899, by the time he turned 25 Hemingway was already friends with Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and had written the majority of the stories that were published as “In Our Time” (1925). Before he was 30 Hemingway had buried his father due to suicide, and written “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) and “A Farewell to Arms” (1929).

Moreover, at 36 he reported the Spanish Civil War to American news readers. At 44 he reported on the Normandy invasion from a landing craft off Omaha Beach. At 46 he had already married to his 4th wife. At 53 he won the Pulitzer for fiction and survived from 2 plane crashes in Africa. At 54 he won the Nobel Prize in literature. And on 2 July 1961, Hemingway shot himself on the head in a suicide.

This book provides this short biography right at chapter 1. So, what does it talk about for the rest 7 chapters? It breaks down his persona into 5 focuses: 1. His education as a naturalist 2. The fashion of machismo 3. His gender training 4. The great themes in his writing: love, war, wilderness, and loss 5. My favourite subject: The intertextual Hemingway (the methods or styles or ideas that he borrowed from other writers). And then followed by an amusing illustrated chronology of his life that complements nicely the information in chapter 1, before concluded by a bibliographical essay. All of which are written by 7 different writers.

It is such a complete, multi-vantage points, view on Hemingway’s life. It shows the family background, his education, the many books that he read, the influential friends that he had, the evolution in his writing style, his vocation as a reporter, his experience as a volunteer ambulance driver during World War 1, his complicated relationship with women, his inspirations for his books, his struggle for depression, his choice to be a machismo, and more. All of which helped to shape his world views, which then projected into the characters and narrations in his books.

It is such a complete dissection of his life, done in a serious investigative manner.

Just a little fun fact about how I get my hands on this book: I found and purchased this book at the legendary Kitazawa bookstore, one of only few English-language bookstores out of 176 bookstores in Jimbocho book town in Tokyo. The place was filled with interesting old books but very well preserved (all of them are even laminated). And it is so fitting to have bought a book in a legendary bookstore that talks about a legendary writer.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

This is a story about life told from the point of view of a 6-year old girl, Jean Louise Finch (or nicknamed Scout). It begins as a charming book filled with child-like innocence and wonder, which later turned awfully dark.

The story is set between 1933 and 1935 during the height of the Great Depression, in a fictitious town in Alabama called Maycomb. It evolves around the occurrences in school; at home with her dad Atticus and brother Jem; and in afterschool activities that involve all sorts of mayhem like a weird old man “Boo Radley” and his creepy house, and a magic tree that gives her and her brother food, among others.

Scout’s mother died when she was very young and so she and her brother Jem were raised by their strict but loving housekeeper Calpurnia, who is crucially for the story, a Black woman. Her role as the mother figure in the family is what makes the family immune to racism, and one of the reasons why Scout’s father Atticus steps up to become the defense lawyer for a Black man by the name of Tom Robinson, who is unjustly accused of raping a white woman Mayella Ewell.

Tom is a kind person who often passes the Ewell house on his way to work, who out of pure kindness would occassionally steps inside the fence to help Mayella with her chores (and refuse payment). But one day Mayella made romantic advances towards Tom, and when her father Bob caught them, her father beats Mayella. Mind you, this is 1930s America where racial segregation was still very much in place. And to cover up the fact that Bob beats his own daughter and to protect themselves from the racial taboos, Bob and Mayella Ewell decide to put the blame on Tom, and even accuse him of rape.

The progression of the story goes on to show the brutal racial superiority conducted by white men over the minorities. And Atticus and his family – as the defender of Tom – eventually also have to bear the brunt of it; which is extra confusing and scary when we look at it from a 6-year-old’s perspective, who witnesses her neighbours (that she had known for a long time) turn on her family with such an intense hatred. She even get bullied at school because of this.

Indeed, the book led us into the empathatic shoes of the victims, which left a bitter taste in the reader’s mind; an important eye-opener especially when the book was first published in 1960.

A bitter taste, like the mob of the town people who march to the jail and want to directly kill Tom themselves, before Scout bravely prevent them. Or the outcome of the trial where the all-white jury still sentence Tom to prison despite the clear and undeniable physical evidence of his innocence. Or when Tom completely lost his faith in the white man’s justice system (while Atticus is still actively planning to appeal the verdict to a higher court) and decides to escape from prison, before getting shot 17 times and died on impact.

It is shocking that they can kill an innocent and vulnerable man so easily like that, as if they’re killing a mockingbird.

This is what the title of the book means. It is explained in chapter 10 when Atticus tells his children that it is practically a sin to kill a mockingbird, which their neighbour miss Maudie later explains that mockingbirds don’t eat up people’s gardens or nest in corncribs, and instead they just “sing their hearts out for us.” And thus, a mockingbird is a perfect representative of the pure presence in the world, the kind, and the innocent.

The killing of a mockingbird in this story, therefore, applies to the death of a kind and innocent man Tom Robinson; the lost of child-like innocence of Scout and Jem throughout this debacle; and even the innocent Boo Radley, whom people in the town judged as a weird old guy who lives in a creepy house, but later turns out to be a very shy and kind man who saves Scout’s and Jem’s life, when Bob Ewell wants to settle a score with Atticus after he humiliated Bob in court, by attempting to kill his children.

It is such a total masterclass of a story, one that surely leaves a mark on readers’ minds. No wonder it is an American classic.

“Out of Thin Air: Running Wisdom and Magic From Above the Clouds in Ethiopia” by Michael Crawley

This book is written by Michael Crawley, an anthropologist with a passion of running, who spends 15 months in Ethiopia conducting anthropological fieldwork on their culture of long-distance running; you know, the “other” African success story in running besides the more famous Kenyans.

In fact, as Crawley points out, “Since Abebe Bikila’s surprise, bare-footed victory in the 1960 Olympic marathon, Ethiopian men have won twice the number of marathon gold medals as Kenya. They occupy six of the top ten spots on the all-time marathon lists. They have won five Olympic 10,000m titles since 1980 to Kenya’s one, in spite of boycotting the event twice. Ethiopian men and women hold all four 5000m and 10,000m world records. Since Mo Farah started winning global titles on the track, he has only been beaten twice in major championships over 5000m and 10,000m – both times by Ethiopian runners.”

So why do the Kenyans have more of the spotlight instead of the Ethiopians? “Most of the books on running in the region are about Kenya, where it is possible to speak English, and where there are a number of comfortable hotels set up to cater for journalists and Western runners. When we speak of ‘East African’ running, then, we are actually primarily talking about Kenyan running. I was drawn to Ethiopia partly for this reason and partly because I was fascinated by Ethiopian exceptionalism: Ethiopia was the first nation to adopt Christianity, the only African country with its own alphabet and the only one to outwit European colonialism.”

Indeed, Ethiopia is different. Charming, in fact, as Crawley explains: “Ethiopia appeals to me because here the runners believe that ‘mysterious incalculable forces’ have a huge part to play in their success. Why else would they travel for hours at a time, three days a week, in order to run somewhere like Entoto? To get up at 4 a.m. to travel somewhere with hallowed ground and ‘special’ air makes running more pilgrimage than recreation.”

He then continues, “Ethiopia is a place where I have been told that energy is controlled by angels and demons, and where witch doctors can help you to acquire another runner’s power. It is a place where an anonymous runner in the forest told me, miming an imaginary scoreboard and with a completely straight face, that he had dreamt that he would run 25.32 for 10,000m – almost a full minute faster than the world record. It is a place where they tell me that the air at Entoto will transform me into a 2.08 marathon runner. It is a place, in short, of magic and madness, where dreaming is still very much alive.”

This, by the way, is why Crawley names this book Out of Thin Air. Because, firstly “We know little about the lives and beliefs of some of the most talented athletes in the world, and the feats they accomplish therefore seem to spring almost from nowhere.” And secondly, “we usually explain long-distance running success as being a direct result of a set of deterministic factors that are out of the control of the athletes who possess them, chief among which is altitude. We assume that the performances of elite Ethiopian, Kenyan and Ugandan runners are produced almost directly ‘out of thin air’.”

But surely magic and natural abilities are not the real reasons why they’re so good at this sport, right? Well, sports scientists have actually conducted a test on this. As Crawley remarks, “The Athlome Project, for instance, an international consortium of scientists working on exercise genetics and genomics, attempts to discover the ‘genetic variants associated with elite athletic performance’. The project’s director, Yannis Pitsiladis, has written numerous articles based on the premise that it is likely there is some genetic component to elite athletic performance, but has conceded that as yet none has been found.”

Crawley then elaborates, “The assumption of some sort of genetic or altitude-derived advantage comes down to ‘nature’. Runners from Ethiopia and Kenya are seen as ‘naturally gifted,’ and this extends to the way in which people talk about poverty. The implication is that growing up in rural poverty necessitates a more ‘natural’ way of life. This is characterised in media portrayals as working on the land as a child and running long distances to and from school barefoot, with these activities seen as naturally producing champion runners. We come to believe that running for Africans is something they take to easily, without thought or consideration.”

However, by focusing on the genetics advantage or natural circumstances of East African runners (with both claims are still unfounded) we are looking at the wrong things. As Crawley explains, “The tendency to describe African runners as ‘effortless’ or as ‘born to run’ masks the years of preparation and sacrifice that have gone into creating this illusion. It fails to recognise the running expertise that is specifically Ethiopian, or Kenyan or Ugandan. And it fails to acknowledge the institutional support, in fact far superior to that of the UK, offered to Ethiopian runners.”

This is what the book is essentially doing, dispelling the false stereotypes and stripping away the myths. And instead, it shows us the daily routines and socio-cultural structures that enable the habits of the runners, which mold them into some of the best in running world. Crawley done this by following the fortunes of a group of elite long-distance runners, and his attempt to keep up with them as he spend most of his time running alongside them – like learning about zigzag running or doing a local dance as a form of warming up – and hanging out with them post-run, which makes this book a semi-autobiographical account alongside the several characters that we get to know along the story.

Particularly interesting for me is how in this age of sports science and tracking devices, the Ethiopians are still relying more on their gut instinct. As Crawley recalled, “Far from the Western obsession with ‘marginal gains’ and the sports scientists trying to explain athletic success in the lab, my experience living and running in Ethiopia unveiled to me a far more intuitive, creative and adventurous approach to the sport. Coverage of the various two-hour marathon projects, the most recent of which saw Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya running 1.59.40 for the distance in Vienna, has cast Western scientists as the ‘experts’ on East African running, focusing on innovations such as carbon fibre-plated shoes and aerodynamic running formations.”

“As I was told by one young Ethiopian runner, though,” Crawley continues, “‘A scientist does not know time, a doctor does not run.’ We think of global sport at the top level as being dominated by sports science and laboratory testing, but even some scientists acknowledge that a simple running race can measure physical traits better than any lab test. To an Ethiopian runner, there is no more objective test than a simple race from A to B and the best way to learn about running is to run – a lot.”

Yes, there’s something old school romantic about the Ethiopians’ approach of going back to the basics as naturally intended; where they are focusing more on the intense, collaborative, and often rugged training methods. Methods that are rooted in the unique culture and practices of the locals in Addis Ababa that have produced a long history of world champions from Ethiopia.

The last few chapters of the book show the progress that Crawley made in his training with his group and culminating in running a marathon in Turkey together. And in the last chapter he shows the “where are they now” tribute with the update whether his running mates are now successful or not. Because, it is said that there are at least 5000 runners in Addis Ababa, who start as a big flock of birds but eventually will drop down one by one to nearly nothing, with only a few can become successful. This is the harsh reality that we tend to overlook, which of course also disproving the notion that all East African runners are naturally and genetically gifted.

So what makes the successful ones different from the flock? As Crawley recalled, a senior coach told him in Ethiopia that the successful ones “are the ones who watch with their eyes and think with their minds before they move their legs. The ones who run on emotion only can’t make it.”