Soggy Mermaids

So, I'd planned to go with some friends to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade today, but the horrendous weather derailed those plans. For those of you who aren't familiar with this event, it taps into the wackiness of Coney Island's past while at the same time creating a great opportunity for women to walk around scantily clad. Here's some photos from previous years. I'm pretty bummed to have missed it.


But, the good news for the rainy day is that it gave me a chance to finish reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. What can I say about this fantastic read that explores the depths of identity, ego and the meaning of consciousness? I guess I could start by telling you that you will spend half the book wondering what the hell is going on. The narrative is broken into two plot-lines, the hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. The stories of the two plotlines are told in alternating chapters and Murakami weaves the story with such skill that it is only when he tells you how they're connected that you'll figure it out. Sorry. You know how often with dual narrative stories, you can find the weaving, find the bridges? Murakami gives no bridges. He doesn't care what you think the connection is, he's just going to tell you what he thinks it is! Frankly, at this point, I still don't really know how the narratives intertwine. After finishing the book, I'm left with more questions than answers. (Which I won't put on the web because I'm pretty sure I couldn't put up a question without spoiling the plot.) But that's the great thing about this work and precisely why you should read it. That and the fun of catching the overflow of literary and pop-culture references -- far too wide-ranging a reference base for me to follow completely. Well, with the obvious exception of the trip down the rabbit hole following the pink rabbit!

For those of you who are picky, here's some things you may not like. The book was written in 1985 (which accounts for, say, everyone using cassette tapes) and is set in the near future. It's got that sort of Japanese cyberpunk feel that often defines anime. It is also a very, very postmodern read. And the Professor's "sound research" screams of junk science in the same way that many of the "inventions" in Atlas Shrugged did. Despite these "flaws", I personally think if you're a cyberpunk/sci-fi snob, you should put that aside and read The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World anyway. I simply can't recommend it strongly enough. That is, unless you haven't read Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, in which case you should not be on the web, but at your local bookstore buying it instead!

I bought new shoes yesterday, Brooks' Glycerin IV. Took a 6.25 mile (47:00) treadmill run this morning to test them out. There's going to have to be an adjustment period because the feel's very different from my old shoes (Brooks' Adrenaline 6). However, I think these will work better for me. Jury's out, I'll keep you updated. And, two days until marathon training officially starts.