About Richard Bowker

Author of the Portal series, the Last P.I. series, and other novels

1Q84

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Richard Bowker

This blog is supposed to be about reading — at least, that’s what it says at the top. But it’s going to take me a while to get through my current book, so it might be worth while issuing an interim report.

1Q84 is a 900-page novel by the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. It was published in three volumes in Japan, but that’s not the way we do things around here, so we get this intimidating but beautifully designed doorstop of a book. So far (150 pages in) it follows two young Japanese characters in alternating chapters. It takes place in 1984, but one of the characters has slipped into a slightly parallel universe that she has started referring to as 1Q84. We are beginning to see tendrils of connections between the two stories, but there is no sense of where it’s all heading

None of which tells you anything about what it’s like to read this (or any other) Murakami novel. It’s like inhabiting a matter-of-fact dreamworld where the most mundane events — say, a traffic jam on a Tokyo expressway — somehow become inexpressibly eery. I suppose one could slot it under magical realism, but it’s really sui generis. And certainly an acquired taste. I was shocked to see it near the top of the local bestseller list; I wonder if it will end up being the most unread book of the year. I find it difficult to put down, but it’ll be interesting to see if I feel the same way 500 pages from now. Dreamworlds can get dreary if you live in them too long.

Rereading your own stuff

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Richard Bowker

Life is too short to reread stuff you wrote yourself. Once I’ve completed a novel, I never look at it again.

But the e-book process forces you down this path, if only to check for glitches in the conversion process. So that’s what I’ve been doing for Summit. Of course, my main worry was that I’d find myself thinking: How could I have written this crap? Luckily, this didn’t happen. There were sentences I felt like tweaking, but the novel continued to work for me.

What was most interesting about the experience was how much I had forgotten about the novel. These were characters and events that inhabited my brain for a long time, and now some of what happened seemed totally new to me. Did I really write that?

As a spy thriller, Summit is legally obligated to have a certain number of plot twists. They have to be prepared for in such a way that they are surprising when they happen, but sufficiently plausible that they don’t seem arbitrary, that the reader doesn’t think the author is just messing with him. When I reread the novel, the first plot twist took me completely by surprise. So much so that, when the twist started (somewhat mysteriously, with someone being in a place she wasn’t supposed to be), I thought I had screwed up, so I went back and changed a paragraph a couple of chapters earlier in the novel. Then I continued reading, and I realized the clever author had tricked his credulous future self. I should have trusted the author more — now I had to find the paragraph I’d changed and put it back to the way it was supposed to be.

Personalities persist, but memories decay. I’m the same person that I was back then, but that doesn’t mean I can’t surprise myself.

e-books and Summit

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Richard Bowker

The main rationale behind starting this enterprise is to backstop the release of the e-book versions of my many fine novels. I expect these releases to take place over the next year or so. (Of course, this place also gives me a forum for my many fine opinions about various things — stop by often to find out what they are! I’ll be interested in finding out what they are myself.)

I’m starting off my e-pub career with Summit, which should be available in a few weeks. Why Summit? I’ve been asked. The answer, I think, is that its mainstream publisher left it exposed on a hillside to die shortly after its birth — not through any fault of its own, but because its older brother, Dover Beach, hadn’t met Bantam’s high sales expectations. It was published, but with no attempt to market it, no attempt to solicit reviews . . . So this is something of a rescue effort.

Here’s what Summit looked like:

The no-free-will experiment, avec video « Why Evolution Is True

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Richard Bowker

What is more interesting than free will? Jerry Coyne finds it interesting, anyway.

The no-free-will experiment, avec video « Why Evolution Is True.

Also Sam Harris, according to Coyne. During my endless commutes I have been listening to lectures by John Searle on the philosophy of mind, and he openly admits he hates lecturing on free will, because he has no good solution for it. The only way he can make sense of free will is by invoking quantum indeterminacy, and he openly warns you to stop believing philosophers when they bring up quantum indeterminacy.