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consciousness studies that mirrors the work of Dennett, Penrose,et al . Their assignment quickly drags
them into spying on Jean Jacques Rousseau, as that famously paranoid writer begins his own descent into
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madness.
The final component of the tale is the first-person narrative of a professor named Petrie. An expert on
Rousseau, Minard and Ferrand (the latter two turn out to be characters from Rousseau's own writings),
Dr. Petrie is undergoing his own crisis, as he seeks to bed a student and confront his own mortality.
By book's end, needless to say, all these lines of discourse implode into a fireball of meaning.
Crumey's best sections are the Mee and Ferrand and Minard portions. (The Petrie thread, while
necessary and well-wrought, brings the least to the table, recalling too many tales of lust in academia.)
Mr. Mee is none other, I am convinced, than our old friend, Mr. Magoo. With the same blend of
confident fatuousness and optimistic bullheadedness, he wreaks havoc with every movement, but always
emerges undamaged himself. Ferrand and Minard, of course, echo in their ancillary lives both Stoppard's
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966) and Beckett'sWaiting for Godot (1952), for Rosier
never surfaces to reclaim his papers. Additionally, the conspiratorial aspects of this novel conjure up
thoughts of Umberto Eco'sFoucault's Pendulum (1988) though on a less daunting level of complexity.
What's really most affecting is that each thread is a love story that ends badly. Mr. Mee's epicene kind
of love for the young woman named Catriona; Petrie's infatuation with Louisa, his student; and the barely
concealed homosexual love of Minard and Ferrand all these affairs come to absolute ruin.
Yet this book overall is not a sad lament, but a testament to the absurdities of history, both personal and
public. You'll find wit and wisdom aplenty in Crumey's intricate braidings.
* * *
Haruki Murakami is one of those authors who employ a repertory company of actors, favorite types
whom he puts through a variety of paces constrained only by his dark and fertile imagination. Among
others, there's usually the conflicted young man who finds it hard to connect socially or personally. The
flighty, sensitive young woman of some talents, yet unable to fit within social constraints. And the older
woman of mystery, a walking enigma, potently attractive yet dangerous despite her best intentions. We
saw this troupe in action most recently inSouth of the Border, West of the Sun (1998), and Murakami's
newest,Sputnik Sweetheart (Knopf, hardcover, $23.00, 210 pages, ISBN 0-375-41169-0), equally
compact and affecting, echoes its predecessor. Both books are a break for Murakami from his massive
complicated masterpiece,The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997), althoughBorder was actually published
in Japan prior toBird .
Our narrator never named except for one allusion to his Kafkaesque initial, K is a youthful
grade-school teacher recounting at some remove the story of two women: Sumire, his peer and the
unrequited love of his life; and Miu, a middle-aged businesswoman. Among the three, subtle and intricate
coils of emotions spin themselves. Sumire falls in love with Miu, who remains tragically aloof. K watches
all from a distance, serving as confidante to Sumire. Until, that is, the day that Sumire vanishes on a
European trip, and he must rush to Miu's side. At this point, the relentlessly mimetic, crystal-sharp novel
falls under the glare of a quasar of weirdness, exposing ontological holes beneath all we had assumed
solid.
Eminently readable, packed with disquisitions on art and life, this novel typifies Murakami's stance on
existence: the universe is stranger than we can imagine, and even good will and compassion are barely
sufficient to prevent shipwrecks of the heart and soul. Yet, as we observe in a coda after K has returned
to Japan, some kind of life, however drear, can continue to be upheld amidst the wreckage, with some
potential for future blessings. From the shabby mountaintop, the ruins of those empty feelings, I could
see my own life stretching into the future. It looked just like an illustration in a science fiction novel I read
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as a child, of the desolate surface of a deserted planet. No sign of life at all. Each day seemed to last
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