The Other Chronicle

Patrick D. gave me a lovely used copy¹ of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle for my birthday a few months ago. It’s a book that has been on my periphery for years now, ever since I was a young teenager but have never gotten around to picking up. I was glad to receive it.

It’s an epic of sorts but moves quickly — despite my limited reading time, I’ve managed to get through the book surprisingly fast, perhaps a testament to the readability of the book. While the characters and stories don’t relate to me in any direct way, something resonates and — perhaps the underdog nature of the main protagonist, Toru Okada.

Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent. ... It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni cheese in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that’s just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni cheese.

I’m almost to the end and I know I’ll miss the world this book has created.

¹ I love used books. This is the hardcover edition, with design by Chip Kidd featuring artwork by Chris Ware. ↩