Kyle > Recent Status Updates

The next set of authors walk into some very out of the way places to display the diversity of a/r/tography as it moves mostly into East Asia. Hu and Ge use the methodology pointedly to challenge Applied Behavior Analysis for their participants on the spectrum. Hashimoto, on the other hand, takes a more cerebral approach, barely up from his writing desk much less walking outside. Kasahara’s students find a balance.

Atwood continues to write about a few favourite hobbyhorses in this collection: the role of authors against an oppression, the decline of the environment in foreseeable human terms, and some books by preferred authors including Alice Munro (again). Sometimes her advocacy for these general topics blend together in an essay. Yet, according to not-so-distant dates, she offers a window into a kinder, more literate world.

All excitement of the often graphic nighttime visits between Miss Saeki and Kafka is ickily tempered by the uncertainty over their familial relations. Even by the end of this affair, when he heads back to the mountain, it seems like they are destined to be in bed again. At least the police are making some connections between Kafka’s flight and Nakata’s quest for an entrance stone that might eventually be entered?

The Sprawl is a fitting analogy, more like a seedy underbelly of the matrix flipped upside-down and less like a fictitious version of the real world. This analogy matches how Gibson writes his characters: Turner, Marly and Bobby are simply nodes running their own algorithmic program for some mysterious prime mover, who just do as they are told without much of a clue why as the reader. Then in runs the Finn déjà vu.

So many main characters, including Genji himself, unceremoniously killed off between Part Four and Five, to be replaced by more hapless descendants. Out of nowhere Prince Hachi picks up the narrative mantle only to die a few chapters later, leaving behind Agemaki and Kozeri. Their sheltered life at Uji soon becomes a series of bed tricks, but unlike All’s Well these substitutions only lead to more despair.

Just as the story had seemed to settle into a too-comfortable alteration between Kafka’s encounter with the living ghost and Nakata’s search for an unknown stone, Hoshino steps into the spotlight, led by the trickster Colonel Sanders for a wild ride with a philosophy-spouting sex worker. Like so much in the story so far, there is not much going on at the outset but so many finer details shaping up its inner life.

Other entries in this section are fine but I must use the limited space here to brag about my published chapter on transmedia entertainment which started off as a legitimate postdoctoral research project that fell apart due to the Covid-19 pandemic and was resurrected by the editorial team. I chronicled these events as a first- and second-person dialogue that brings in other voices with academic citations and quotes.

Wry and sardonic about the past few decades, Atwood seems alternately to make a big deal about her Handmaid’s Tale, a breakout futurist novel and then deny that she has any foresight into humanity’s authoritarian leaning. Many of her short essays leading up to the 2008 financial crisis just follow her literary interests while readers hallucinate her cunning predictions on our current disastrous affairs.

Prescient as ever, especially reading this novel nearly forty years after it was published, Gibson delves into the “unthinkably complex consensual hallucination” (p. 50) with the same disinterested ennui as many of us today view our social media, something that is always on and judging us. His writing style is a disjointed mix of hardboiled espionage with art-world romance, as if he had way-too-early GenAI tools.

Wow, saving the very best bits for the end of the book! After a summary of her shorter, unserialized writing, Leavy takes a deep dive into the many tactics a young author might take in order to get published. More like finding a literary agent who will press on with publishing possibilities while the author focuses mainly on your creative side of storytelling. Still a little uncertain about her try-everything advice.

The myriad a/r/tographical methods to walk artistically through an inquiry is proof that there could be whole volumes published by each of these Relational researchers. The spaces they explore are familiar yet transformed through the process of inquiring, much like editor Nicole Lee reflects upon her literal moving experience with the same somber sophistry that one cannot go home again. Pictures help with our recall.

Always keeping in mind my Mum’s maxim about self-praise (or in this case whether self-citing is an honour), I must admit if I had as many novels under my belt as Patricia has, I’d be looking for any opportunity to share how and why those stories were written. All still falling between the two poles of consistent effort and waiting for a magical muse but once in each story’s selection, I could feel their effect.

The two main storylines begin to converge with Kafka and Nakata at least sharing stomping grounds in Nakano before their paths diverged on a physical plane yet became more entangled at the subconscious level. Still not sure how marine life starts falling from the sky, how much of the Ancient Greek curse will play out for Kafka, or if his Oedipal doom is already two-thirds fulfilled. Good for Oshima remaining as a he.

With a few nods towards narrative inquiry and other arts-based research methods, Leavy goes out on a limb with a new academic phrase she seems to have toyed with for more than a decade: social fiction. Then she gets into the technical description of what really sums up as magic and perseverance to write a story based on research. Including samples from her own novel helps to give the feel of what such theories lacks.

Violence and sex make an abrupt entrance into the narrative: a blood-covered shirt here, a frisky night in Sakura’s bed there and a bit of both with Setsuko’s story of what really went down on Rice Bowl Hill. Nothing overtly nasty but like Kafka’s ride with Oshima into the mountain, potential for things to get really bad (or good) at any moment. Even Nakata picks up on this impending danger with Johnnie Walker.

Pick up the pace, Ag! Just got to the two-third point of this short story (not really a novel, is it?) and the fourth of ten victims met his untimely end out of sight of everyone else, of course. Really hoping to see a few more meet their end in the next few pages only because I can’t be bothered keeping track of each aimless backstory and motive-musings. At least three more bodies to put this nursery rhyme to bed.

Un-man’s tempting of the Perelandrian Lady takes on many biblical tones, as if it were a mere replaying of memorable scenes from Genesis with one highlight being the satanic voice getting her to put on some clothes. The mirror unnerves her so it is up to Ransom to forgo logic and pummel this enemy. Brief glimpses outside this Jacobean wrestling reveal “one middle-aged scholar against another” (p. 155).

After reading as many of the short stories as I could find, it felt like the right time to take on something more sustained and much to my surprise found the opening few chapters much like Murakami’s short stories familiar settings yet indistinct people: are Crow or Nakata other versions of Kafka, is any young woman he meets his sister, who might be his mother, and who know what connection he has to Rice Bowl Hill?

The idea behind this book is intriguing: a peek behind the curtain of the post-production process for major Hollywood movies, except for the career trajectory of Goetz detailing the success stories for films that are mostly mediocre. He can only work with the cards he has been dealt, I guess, but one has to wonder if any test screening has ever truly revealed a hidden gem rather than reinforcing American monoculture.

Perhaps due to the uncertainty of Christie’s title (some publishers choosing the N-word in place of the I-word), there is a menacing presence within the covers of this book. Much like the mustiness I encountered while reading my one-and-only Stephen King novel, one must wonder at the sordid psychology of murder mystery authors who go to great lengths to make characters that readers feel indifferent to their deaths.

Got through most of the frontmatter and into the first Interlude; quite the academic journey so far! Much of this territory is familiar to many arts-based researchers according to the growing list of references appended to each chapter. Proof enough that each of us is mindfully walking the same way in different directions. Nicole’s journey spans each Canadian coast and yet widens using a formerly free digital tool.

The remaining stories minus the eponymous have little to do with death; instead they dwell on the pointlessness of life. Polikey’s life being so accidental that his suicide and family’s ruin just a matter of time before tragedy. Similar desperate situations appear in “After the Ball” and “Forged Coupon” nearly to the point of predating those acclaimed 1990s movies like Crash or Magnolia.

The remaining stories minus the eponymous have little to do with death; instead they dwell on the pointlessness of life. Polikey’s life being so accidental that his suicide and family’s ruin just a matter of time before tragedy. Similar desperate situations appear in “After the Ball” and “Forged Coupon” nearly to the point of predating those acclaimed 1990s movies like Crash or Magnolia.

Fascinating that this series was written as part of a bet, one that Lewis clearly won despite Tolkien not bothering to write his own time-travel story. Nevertheless Lewis wins in a deeper sense as his imagination provides more a sense of wonder than his Inkling contemporary usually manages. The fine detail put into alien worlds, strange and new, adds to the allegorical layer and stirs up theological debate mid-story.

The subtle differences between outside the house and inside one’s body are discussed with simple instruction on cleaning windows, brushing teeth and getting enough sleep. Added all together there is a sense that the sutra-studying habits of Zen monks are a welcome distraction from the cleaning, thankfulness and meagre comforts life at the temple offers. A spiritual way of performing otherwise menial tasks everyday.

It took me a while to realize that the narrator of the first few chapters, unnamed for most of them, would be C. S. himself, even when his planet-hopping philologist friend finally addresses him as Lewis it took a couple pages to sink in. So there is some element of truthiness in this tall tale, as someone must have come up with a reason Ransom travels to a watery wavy planet named Perelandra on a mysterious mission.

Many of the preceding chapters delve deeply into obscure, avant-garde and fringe-y productions that might only be an intellectual curiosity to the academic authors, their begrudging friends and significant others plus other theatre artists. It shifts when Reinelt mentions the West End production of Mamma Mia as contrast to the high-concept ponder pieces and later Sleep No More as immersive theatre..

Fascinating to read about the items and daily habits within a Japanese home, especially as the mindful inhabitants follow the practices of Buddhist monks. What I have seen so far is true: there is a special calm and contemplative feel to a well-kept home. The only puzzle comes in the fourth chapter which starts out advising to mend all broken things yet ends with the urge to get rid of excess. Perhaps this is a koan?

Off the rails for the last couple of chapters while the True Knot begins to unravel and fray. Not really the unstoppable doom as they were in the movie but no fault of the director for making them more terrifying. Abra’s abduction and now Chetta’s death now loom heavily in the tangled ball of wool that is the rest of the novel before the final showdown, a true tête-à-tête between Dan Torrance and Rose the Hat.

The everyday lives of typical Russian get painterly expression with two tales: “Polikushka” and “After the Ball” that are incidental with this collection’s theme of death. Polikey is so focused on his reputation that his suicide is almost an afterthought. Meanwhile, Ivan tells a very Murakami-like story of seeing corporal punishment (not even an execution) killing off his youthful love for a dancing damsel.