Foreign Literature and Poetry

[gb]

Does anyone here read much non-english literature/poetry???

At the moment i'm studying modern chinese literature(mostly lu xun) and poetry at uni, and am also into russian literature(was reading a selection of short stories by nabokov). anyone half-chinese or otherwise people here read lu xun, or any russian lit fans here??

also, anyone here familiar with arabic and persian poetry?

[gb]

what kind of style does murakami write in?? always see those books around but have never read one

[thezealouscookie]

I’ve only read the English translations, but I enjoy Murakami. He’s a worthwhile read; funny, intelligent, even tempered, and fairly eccentric(which is a plus to me). His books tend to be vague mysteries. The type of mystery you experience instead of solving. The main characters tend to be men(late 20’s, 30’s) that have withdrawn from society and have recently “lost” their female companion. He uses repeating themes, repeating characters, fuzzy connections between people and objects, fascinating quasi-sexual relationships with spunky teenage girls, musical references(jazz, American pop), baseball, Subaru’s, writing, and cooked spaghetti. If you like one of his books, chances are you’ll like them all. Personally, my favorite is “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle”.

As a related side-story; In the US, Dickinson is considered better than Edgar Allan Poe. In France, Poe is considered better, but this probably has more to do with Beaudelaire penning his French translations. I had a professor who was run out of conference at La Sorbonne for making this argument (FYI the French are never wrong!). One obvious criticism of Poe is his very simple and mechanical rhyming schemes. Though easily readable, these rhyming rules severely restricted his vocabulary/expression. Writers can be interpreted very differently in foreign languages.