Japanese dudes

I finished Kafka on the Shore by Murakami the other day (finally). It makes me think that post-modernism was invented for Japanese authors. So many of the stories I've seen out of Japan have relied so little on logic; this one really formalizes that lack of logic. That was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, in case you didn't catch it. Central assumptions are called into question throughout the book, but are often thrown out in a "who cares", logic-is-your-enemy kind of way. It doesn't go totally overboard, though; there's definitely a balance struck between ridiculous subjectivism and the real world.

I enjoyed it in the same way that I enjoy a Neal Stephenson book; the end is crap, but getting to the end is still mostly fun. I enjoyed the huge number of literary, musical and historic references, and how it strangely and persistently references the story of Oedipus.

This is the kind of thing I am talking about.