Eric Maas > Recent Status Updates

2.14 - Creta Kano’s New Departure

2.13 - Creta Kano’s Story Continued

My unfeeling flesh was not my flesh.

2.12 - Discovered When Shaving • Discovered When Waking

2.11 - Hunger as Pain • Kumiko’s Long letter • Bird as Prophet

Before the mystery of May Kasahara’s absence is solved, there’s the mystery of Creta Kano’s absence.
Kumiko’s letter highly upsetting, throwing me back years and years. The sense of not being good enough. And also anger, for the assumption that this would be a one-way decision for her to make on her own…

2.10 - May Kasahara on Death and Revolution • The Thing Made Elsewhere

All of a sudden, May, who struck me as cool and sympathetic, turns to be highly detached, on the verge of autistic as she is mainly focused on observing Toru’s behavior in response to her casual threats to leave him to die. Funny how he is just as casual about that; a similar detachment. He too keeps observing…

2.09 - The Well and State • How the Ladder Disappeared

2.08 - The Root of Desire • In Room 208 • Passing Through the Wall

2.07 - Recollections and Dialogue on Pregnancy • Empirical Inquiry on Pain

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