Nate -
My thanks. I'm always up for finding another author (that is, above and
beyond those of us on this list - a goodly number, it would appear, even
taking into account that at least one published author has declined to toss
his hat into this particular ring [hi, Tony!]). As to Basho, I'm guessing
that the "he slept here" phenomenon is connected to the fact that he appears
to have been a popular travel writer. _Narrow Road_ reads like kind of a
pre-photographic travelogue. (Granted that woodcuts were in vogue; still,
you can't have every view [for example] of Fujiyama on your walls.)
Gereg
Message: 9
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 19:33:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nate Ledbetter <
ltdomer98@...>
Subject: RE: Digest Number 889 - more suicide notes (so to speak)
--- Silk Road School <
silk.road.school@...>
wrote:
> Damn, was that Basho? I'd completely forgotten
> that. That was the only
> Japanese poet whose name I could remember, and I
> didn't think it was he.
Yup, that was him. I haven't read it, so I just know
he wrote it, and the only other thing I remember about
him is that he wrote the "frog/pond" haiku that is so
often quoted. That, and he seems to be the "George
Washington" of Japan, in the sense that there seems to
be a "Matsuo Basho slept here" sign in every corner of
the country.*snip*
> Murakami Haruki, OTOH...
> A name with which I am unfamiliar (one of many, as
> is obvious by now). Do
> tell!
My favorite Japanese author--modern work, not anything
to do with samurai or anything, though I think a
historical wourk by him would be absolutely hilarious.
Ranges from absurdist ("A Wild Sheep's Chase", "Dance
Dance Dance", "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of
th World") to the poignant mid-life crisis tale with
just a touch of the absurd (The Wind-up Bird
Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, South of the Border, West
of the Sun, Sputnik Sweetheart...)
"South of the Border, West of the Sun" rivals Miyabe
Miyuki's "All She was worth" for my favorite book of
all time.
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