Blog Post 1 - Max Dahlstrom

Hello!

I’d like to preface my blog post by saying that this is the first (and only) English class I’ve taken in my four years at BU, and it’s been a nice change of pace from constantly reading political theory as a philosophy and political science major. I’ve appreciated the close readings we’ve done in class of The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase and our practice of calling attention to the eerie similarities between the two has reshaped the way I think about intertextuality. I’ve always bought into the argument that debates over the originality of pieces of art and literature are a bit pointless because it seems obvious that every work is influenced by existing conventions, patterns, and stories in some way. Analyzing the influence that Chandler had on Murakami, not just in story structure and tone but also regarding similarities in minute details has really cemented this belief in me. I was also quite interested in the Daniel Chandler article on Intertextuality because it explored these ideas more explicitly. It was fascinating to find out that notions of ‘authorship’ and ‘plagiarism’ as we understand them today did not exist before the 1500s. I think that these concepts ought to be questioned given the complexity (and perhaps the arbitrariness) of what constitutes originality, and I wonder if artistic and linguistic expression may become more interesting and innovative if we loosened the legal definitions of these concepts, or even did away with them entirely.

Regarding the two main texts that we’ve read, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both of them. I have to say that I think I enjoyed reading The Long Goodbye a bit more because of Chandler’s vivid and scathing descriptions of characters and places. Marlowe’s observations of the world around him and his cynicism towards American institutions provided a much more interesting perspective to me than Boku’s narration, which felt painfully dull in comparison at times. Nevertheless, Boku’s perspective as an ‘ordinary guy’ certainly had its charm in its own right. The most interesting part about The Wild Sheep Chase for me was not Boku, however, but rather the setting and description of places. As I was reading along, particularly during the part where they travel to Hokkaido, I constantly found myself looking up the regions that they traveled through, whether it be Sapporo or the fictional town of Junitaki further north.  In addition to learning more about the geography of Japan, my enjoyment of The Wild Sheep Chase largely came from the way Murakami framed the Japanese attitudes and understandings of their own history post-WWII. I thought that the little nod to Mishima’s coup attempt was quite genius and funny, and I thought the history of ‘the Boss’ and even the section about the Ainu youth were some of the most intriguing parts of the story.

- Max Dahlstrom