One for the Kipper

Murakami is a genius. Sometimes I tend to think that if souls lived in houses, he would be my next-door neighbour. Well, we’d definitely live in the same street. I read three of his books so far: the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, and Sputnik Sweetheart. I must say that Sputnik Sweetheart wasn’t such a remarkable read at all, just the regular Murakami, like an ordinary day in our ordinary street. We can’t be special and remarkable and memorable all the time… can we? Anyway, the Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood have intrigued me greatly. And now I am caught in this same net with the Wild Sheep Chase.

Could it be that I like books with animals on the cover? Upside-down animals especially! The Wind Up Bird Chronicle has a picture of an upside-down bird on the cover and this simple fact was the sole reason for my buying it. You could call it love at first sight! And they say you shouldn’t judge books by their cover! Bullshit! Another most wonderful book with an upside-down animal, which I just couldn’t put down once I picked it up at an airport bookstore is the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time… and that book really is quite something. The chapters are numbered by prime numbers and there is an appendix explaining the mathematical proof of some obscure question. And the story is told from the perspective of a very unreal but a very beautiful mind. Who thinks this up?

Anyway, I wanted to blog about the Kipper. ‘One for the Kipper’ is the title of a chapter in the Wild Sheep Chase. Hahaha, I have to laugh at this. What a nonsense conversation, and how I love this nonsense. Okay, check this out, I copy an extract here to illustrate my nonsense point.

“I thought that they always served meals on planes,” she said, disgruntled.
“Nope,” I said, waiting for the hot lump of gratin in my mouth to cool down, then gulping down some water. No taste but hot. “Meals only on international flights. They give you something to eat on longer domestic routes. Not exactly what you’d call a special treat, though.”
“And movies?”
“No way. C’mon, it’s only an hour to Sapporo.”
“Then they give you nothing.”
“Nothing at all. You sit in your seat, read your book, and arrive at your destination. Same as by bus.”
“But no traffic lights.”
“No traffic lights.”
“Just great,” she said with a sigh. She put down her fork, leaving half the spaghetti untouched.
“The thing is you get there faster. It takes twelve hours if you go by train.”
“And where does the extra time go?”
I also gave up halfway through my meal and ordered two coffees. “Extra time?”
“You said planes save you over ten hours. So where does all that time go?”
“Time doesn’t go anywhere. It only adds up. We can use those ten hours as we like, in Tokyo or in Sapporo. With ten hours we could see four movies, eat two meals, whatever. Right?”
“But what if I don’t want to go to the movies or eat?”
“That’s your problem. It’s no fault of time.”
She bit her lip as we looked out at the squat bodies of the 747s on the tarmac. […]
“Well,” she went on, “does time expand?”
“No, time does not expand,” J answered. I had spoken, but why didn’t it sound like my voice? I coughed and drank my coffee. “Time does not expand.”
“But time is actually increasing, isn’t it? You yourself said that time adds up.”
“That’s only because the time needed for transit has decreased. The sum total of time doesn’t change. It’s only that you can see more movies.”
“If you wanted to see movies,” she added.

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