Posts filed under ‘OBSERVATIONS & OPINIONS’
HARUKI MURAKAMI
HARUKI MURAKAMI
My consistent readers,
For the record, I am back in the saddle and have submitted two short stories and am working on publishing my novel, The Beast Awaits. While I wait for any of my efforts to bear fruit, I thought I’d share with you some of my favorite living authors and encourage you to read their work. My first author is Haruki Murakami.
Haruki Murakami was born in 1949, making him two years younger than me. How did he accomplish so much? I’m just kidding, he worked damn hard. That’s how he did it.
Murakami is a Japanese author and I have been reading his work for years. I look for him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His stories are about the basic Japanese, yet most of his stories have a haunting quality, a feeling of fantasy.
If you want an introduction to his writing, I suggest reading Kafka on the Shore or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. When you begin these works you will fall into a world of Japanese culture. Eventually, the fantasy will begin. When you emerge from the novel, you will be in a state of satisfaction, yet mystified. I encourage you to take the journey.
THE PASSING OF RAY BRADBURY
THE PASSING OF A GIANT
As a writer of science fiction, I felt a profound sadness today with news of the death of Ray Bradbury at the age of 91.
Not long ago my science fiction reading group read Fahrenheit 451, one of his most popular works. I had read it when I was much younger, and now attempting to write science fiction, was in awe of the quality of the writing. He also, as many science fiction writers do, invented devices for his story that exist today.
What prompted me to write this little piece was my wife. I told her of his death and she said, “I’m sorry.”
I’m sure all of us that have enjoyed his work feel sorrow at his passing.
OBSERVATIONS & OPINIONS
OBSERVATIONS & OPINIONS
I’ve decided to combine two of my categories because of was wrong in giving them a separated existence, happens. How can you have an opinion unless you first observe a subject? How can you observe something and your mind remain empty? Here’s the first installment under the new heading.
NEWS
I have always been a news junkie, but for sometime now I have been aware of a growing lack of news reported while the lengths of the broadcasts continue to lengthen. I won’t even get into the constant errors the talking heads of our local new here in Philadelphia make. They sail right along without blinking an eye while I cringe in dismay.
The local stations now manage to pack maybe fifteen minutes worth of new in one hour. The rest of the time is taken up with what the latest celebrities are up to. What the station will be showing for the rest of the night. This exposure reinforces my reasons for not watching television programming. They also must give the weather three times until they finally give a forecast.
As readers of my blog know, I’ve had some medical problems recently. During this experience I had little opportunity to watch the news. I’ve grow distant from the mind-numbing hours I once spent before listening to drivel. If I do watch news it is only the national news.
There are times when I think back to my youth and the news was really the news. I suppose it was back in the fifties when the local news began at 6:30 at night and ran until 6:45, and then the national news took over from 6:45 until 7:00.
While I have, for the most part, abandoned news of TV I still stay in touch with newspapers and news magazines. I still want to know what’s going on but I’m trying to be a bit more selective.
With my ever growing new attitude toward the new, I’m reminded of a song from Simon and Garfunkel’s album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, one of my all-time favorite albums.
The song’s title, ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’. The line from the song that I find most appropriate for my new state of mind is, ‘I can gather all the news from the weather report’. I think that says it all.
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