Eric Maas > Recent Status Updates

2.06 - Inheriting Property • Inquiry on Jellyfish • Something Like a Sense of Detachment

The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.

2.05 - Vies of Distant Towns • Eternal Half-Moon • Ladder in Place

2.04 - Divine Grace Lost • Prostitute of the Mind

Creta Kano remembers Okada’s dream and is fully okay with that

2.03 - Noboru Wataya Speaks • The Story of the Monkeys of the Shitty Island

2.02 - No Good News in this Chapter

Okada perceives Malta Kano’s call as ‘no good news’. But as Mr. Honda predicted, what’s good may seem bad; what’s bad may seem good.

2.01 - As Concrete as Possible • Appetite in Literature

In the first book, Toru Okada’s inner state was rather detached, observing from safe distance. Now, with Kumiko’s unannounced disappearance comes a more involved sort of confusion and anxiety. The emotions are most relatable.

Book One: The Thieving Magpie
June and July 1984
1.13 - Lieutenant Mamiya’s Long Story: Part II

Unexpected thrilling, gruesome and emotional chapter after the previously chapters having been mostly somehow detached, due to Toru Okada’s point of view.

I say the doing nothing, thinking nothing. Unconsciously, however, I waited for that ray of light, that blinding flood of sunlight that poured straight down to the bottom of the well for one tiny fraction of the day .

And of course, my thoughts go back to Mann’s Joseph in his well: what does unbearable even mean, when it still has to be endured…

1.12 - Lieutenant Mamiya’s Long Story: Part I

2. Is criticism painless?

Funny Wittgensteinian dismissal of TS Eliot’s claim that only the best poets are the only judge of jury to comment his views on Paradise Lost. All in good humour…

1.11 - Enter Lieutenant Mamiya • What Came from the Warm Mud • Eau de Cologne

1938? That means Mr. honda and the lieutenant must have met on the continent during Mamiya’s captivity, right?

So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little .

1.09 - Culverts and an Absolute Insufficiency of Electricity • May Kasahara’s Inquiry into the Nature of Hairpieces

”I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.”

1.08 - Creta Kano’s Long Story • An Inquiry into the Nature of Pain

1.07 - The Happy Cleaners • And Creta Kano Makes Her Entrance

On the previous note: how silly of me, Okada is Toru’s surname. I just didn’t recognize it in relation to Kumiko’s name…

1.06 - On the Births of Kumiko Okada and Noboru Wataya

Strange. I don’t believe the name Okada is mentioned throughout the chapter.

Noboru Wataya pictured as fascinating antagonist

5. Hooked on Lemon Drops • Flightless Bird and Waterless Well

1.04 - High Towers and Deep Wells (Or, Far from Nomonhan)

1.03 - Malta Kano’s Hat • Sherbet Tones and Allen Ginsberg and the Crusaders

1.02 - Full Moon and Eclipse of the Sun • On Horses Dying in the Stables

This is the fourth attempt to read and all of a sudden I found the rhythm and the voice, very close to myself.

What was the point of my life at all if I was spending it in bed with an unknown companion?

That’s me lying wide awake next to my girlfriend in the still of night, thinking ‘who are you?’

1.01 - Today’s Wind-up Bird • Six Fingers and Four Breasts

1. Epic Poetry

On ne montre pas sa grandeur pour être à une extrémité, mais bien en touchant les deux à la fois et remplissant tout l'entre-deux. (Pascal)

One does not demonstrate one's greatness by being at one extreme, but rather by touching both at once and filling the entire space in between.

1.05 - ‘Visitors ashore, please!’

1.03 - Dinner with the Greenleafs
1.04 - Preparations and anxieties; Cleo

1. Mr. Greenleaf has a proposal
2. A short impression of Tom’s approach of things

Wonderful language for quite a convincing interior monologue. His circumstances may be grim, Tom’s mind however is not: vibrant, playful, artful. This may be the start of a beautiful friendship…

1. Mr. Greenleaf has as proposal
2. An impression of Tom’s sort of business