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Forget everything you think you know about William Shakespeare and his wife Anne. Instead live the virtual life of a force of nature named Agnes and the Latin tutor who knocked her up. The story starts with the final days of the eponymous boy who so far barely matters in the story of pestilence descending upon the gruff old glover’s home with intermittent glimpses of when Agnes was wooed away from her native woods.

After a few mild attempts to make art from various walking methods, Shimomura’s chapter displays finessed writing with authenticity. She starts with an issue to resolve. finds inspiration from artists as well as her own personal acts, and ends the initial problem taken care of by the scholar taking care of herself. If I ever get a chance to teach a/r/tography, this chapter is a stunning sample for required reading.

Nearing the end of his life of psychological investigation but far from writing the last word on alchemy, this treatise about the enigmatic figure of Mercurius goes into great depth. One could imagine one of Jung’s contemporaries scoff, just as many do now at this effort and in the same breath claim the stock market is more a substantial field of study even though it is as artificial a theory as this mythical lore.

I think I got this figured our, not the plot or characters’ motivations or anything that would make sense in a narrative but I am beginnng to sense what Gibson was trying to accomplish with this second novel, mainly not falling into the trap of “more of the same” for his break-out Neuromancer, and a giant swing in the direction of not being much of a novel. Waiting to see how the final fourth pays off.

The closer the reader gets to storylines converging, the wilder things become. Kafka is stowed safe in the isolated cabin yet still able to sexually assault Sakura in her dreams, chopping up his family tree. Nakata fulfills his novel-long quest to a dull climax, finding out he wasn’t the only familiar face to have turned over the entrance stone. So if Nakata did Kafka’s patricide, was it also him raping remotely?

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.