Kirjanurkkaus

"Mistä ihminen voi tietää?" hän tivasi. "Olen jo kolme vuotta taistellut lakkaamatta. Olen taistellut jokaisesta kirjasta jonka olen lukenut, jokaisesta ulos lähtemisestä, jokaisesta ajatuksesta minä olen tapellut. Vannoin etten aiheuttaisi äidille koskaan mitään huolta ja vaivaa, mutta minähän olen vain kiusannut häntä. Kun annoin periksi hänelle, tunsin olevani halveksittava, kun panin vastaan, vihasin itseäni." Ottaen huomioon, että Simone de Beauvoir on yksi varhaisen feminismin pioneereista, merkittävä naiskirjailija ja filosofi, on outoa, etten ole lukenut häneltä aiemmin yhtäkään kaunokirjallista teosta. Beauvoirin ehkä kuuluisin teos, Toinen sukupuoli , on toki tuttu eräänlaisena feministisenä manifestina naisten oikeuksien puolesta. Yritin nyt kai jonkinlaista pehmeää laskua Beauvoirin fiktiiviseen tuotantoon valitsemalla luettavakseni yhden hänen varhaisemmista teoksistaan, jonka hän itsekin esittelee esipuheessa hieman pahoitellen: "Kyseessä on ly...

"Can't they see? Can't they understand? Without the smoke signal we'll die here? Look at that!" A wave of heated air trembled above the ashes but without a trace of smoke. "We can't keep one fire going. And they don't care. And what's more--" He looked intensely into Piggy's streaming face. "What's more, I don't care sometimes. Supposing I got like the others - not caring. What'd become of us?" Piggy took off his glasses, deeply troubled. "I dunno, Ralph. We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grown-ups would do." We're all familiar with stories of people being shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and having to survive in one way or another until they - inevitably - get rescued. Children read classic adventure stories like Coral Island , Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson . These are relate light-hearted, exciting and happy adventures that children encounter when they ...

Listening to the car radio, I drive to the harbor. I want classical music, but I can't find a station that broadcasts it at night. Stupid Japanese rock music. Love songs sweet enough to rot your teeth. I give up searching and listen to those. They make me feel I'm in a far-off place, far away from Mozart and Haydn. The Elephant Vanishes is a short story collection by one of the most popular contemporary Japanese authors, Haruki Murakami . Murakami is also a highly international writer and his novels and stories frequently mix American influences together with contemporary Japanese culture. This makes his novels and stories more approachable for a wider audience also outside Japan. Murakami's translators, Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin , receive their well-earned share of credit through their own, personal introductions below the author's blurb in the beginning of the book. I think that Murakami has realized that there's no point in constantly trying to change a...

It happened one day about noon going towards by boat, I was exceedingly surprized with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see any thing; I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot; how it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. Like a well-trained product of the Western society, I too read Robinson Crusoe (first published in 1719) for the first time when I was quite young. Of course, that was not the full story, but some kind of abridged, censored, children's edition...