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544 pages, Paperback
First published September 20, 2000
(A character in this book once recalls sitting down to write a “See ya” note after a disappointing sex and turns it into a well thought-out multi-page treatise on Greek that took a few obsessive hours to compose — and we learn later that the note in question after twelve years remains unread. Yeah, I’m not even ashamed to say that had I been the recipient of that note, I wouldn’t have read it either. And I’m ok with that.)
One day it occurred to him that there were quite a lot of other books on the shelves. He selected a book with pictures, and he came to my side, perturbed.
—The face on the gutta percha inkstand has a tale to tell —
I explained gutta percha, inkstand and tale
— it is believed to be that of Neptune, moulded to commemorate the successful use of the material to insulate the world’s first submarine telegraph cable from England to France in 1850. —
& I said NO.
His agent had to remind him of various clauses in his contract and he had reminded him of his obligations of a professional musician.How Yamanoto deals with this was, for me, one of the most breathtaking parts of the book, and a true illustration of why geniuses are simply not like you or me. (Unless you're really a genius. I've met exactly one of those on GR so far.) They're off on another level that normal folks simply cannot comprehend, and it's lonely out there.
Yamanoto said: My agent always like to say that you could count on a Japanese to act like a true professional...What does that mean, to be a true professional? What's so Japanese about that?
Well, as you probably know the exchange of gifts is quite a big thing in Japan and part of it is that the gift has to be wrapped up in the right way. People go there and they miss the point. They think the thing the Japanese are really worried about is wrapping it up to look right it doesn't matter if what's inside is a piece of shit. I thought: that's what I'm supposed to do, they've already bought the wrapping paper and now I'm expected to give them a piece of shit that will fit the paper, I'm supposed to be a true professional and feel good about it because I gave them something that would fit the paper.
In a less barbarous society children would not be in the absolute economic subjection to the irrational beings into whose keeping fate has consigned them: they would be paid a decent hourly wage for attending school.Sybilla repeatedly plays Kurosawa's Seven Samurai to substitute for the lack of a male figure in Ludo's life. The movie serves as a substitute for the kind of human connection she desires but neither pursues nor talks about throughout the book.
Once you saw that you could potentially have dozens of fragments that could not be part of the finished work, and what you saw was that it was perceiving these fragments as fragments that made it possible to have a real conception of what wholeness might be in a workThe fragments of the father figures, is what allows Ludo a perception of wholeness in a human. Reconciling with all those fragments is what makes Ludo a genuine samurai
It is literally untrue to suggest that peace, contentment, happiness, follows a single battle, no matter how important, and that a hero who actually becomes is tantamount to a villain.