Brittany Olson Blog #5

Ok this blog post is going to be a mishmash of everything we've been doing for the last couple of weeks to buckle up folks. 

I thought our discussions surrounding Murakami writing about women and LGBT+ really interesting. I really liked both the Ice Man and The Green Monster. Creta Kano on the other hand, yikes. The entire story, especially the part about her water being the reason she was so frequently SA'd felt like blatant unapologetic victim blaming and completely unnecessary. The Ice Man is probably my favorite out of all of Murakami's female narrators. I went through a lot of different emotions while reading it. The dynamic of the couple prior to their trip to the South Pole felt realistic and romantic in a weird way. The impending doom once she realized she was pregnant was really successful in illustrating the fear and dread she experienced when it was solidified that she was likely never going to leave. 

The interview with Murakami was kind of frustrating to read. I thought his refusal to deny any pattern in his female characters (whether it is intentional or not) was kind of a cop-out. In reality, most of the time this pattern of using women as a foil for corresponding male characters is unintentional and refusing to acknowledge it is only perpetuating the trope. 

Now I'm going to talk about the final project becuase yikes. 

I am in no way a creative writer outside of autobiographical lyrics. Last semester in the Modern Japanese Fiction course, I experienced the same kind of assignment as a final project and the same kind of dread. Last time I wrote my own version of Kawakami's the People in Our Neighborhood and it took me forever to even land on a concept. At least this time it can be in English! For this assignment, I thought it was interesting how easily a concept came to me. That's probably due to how in depth we talked about the different aspects of Murakami's work, and the Boku type of narrator reoccurs so often. So for my short story, I am going to at least attempt to show how apathetic Boku can be. I have never written in a male perspective, so let's hope it comes as naturally to me as it did for Murakami to write in a female perspective. 

-Brittany Olson