Today I worked late. It was a fine day so I read W.G.Sebald's "Austerlitz" with the music by The Blue Nile. It has quite a difficult style but also has sincerity so I can read it more and more. It describes the 20th century's tragedy of Jewish people. The words "false" and "fault" remain in my impression. Of course, the persecution of Jewish people must be a "fault" we had done. But that sad past story was written as a certain beautiful and sublime story by Sebald. A person can have such a rich memory in themselves! I am surprised.
After that, I had time to read Paul Auster's "Man in the dark". After a long time, I have read Auster's novel again and was impressed by his novel's comical or humorous aspect. It is about an alternate history of America that didn't have 9.11. He creates an alternative America with flooded ideas such as using lego blocks freely, so it has a pop taste and is easy to read (but not remain in my mind seriously). However, this novel also has the theme of telling a story with a memory so I compared both novels.
Talking about history or memory again. This theme reminds me of Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". Or Walter Benjamin's prose or Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge". Haruki Murakami also wrote his "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" which was based on the theme of 'representing' history. I should remember Hikaru Okuizumi's "The Grand Mystery". Why can I forget Steve Erickson? I thought I had to read these kinds of great historical novels, although I also want to read Auster's recent novels.
How a person can have such a great memory? Danilo Kiš's and Fernando Pessoa's novels are also remembered as the novels of 'great personal history'. History comes from a person's inner space. I remember Takashi Hiraide's "Searching for the birds". They dig their own hole in their mind and talk to themselves. Yes, they might be too introverted. But that 'introverted' attitude will be connected to the universal. Ah, this is also the aspect of Yoshikichi Furui. I like these kinds of 'introverted' novels. I guess so.
