that's fair. i like that "quietism" in murakami, too. it sometimes feels too effortless, both for the author and reader---this leads to suspicion (on my part) and guilt. not sure why i have to feel like i am being punished by an author to enjoy his/her work but i find that is often the dynamic i seek out.
abused reader support group anyone?
Murakami translated Gatsby into Japanese. It's interesting how on the book threads we come back to Murakami - I think I said before that my problem with him is that he appears to be saying more than he is, he seems to gesture towards depth without really arriving there. I, too, enjoy his prose style but, like reading Auster, I feel like he never gets very far. I suppose that's why I do like DFW because, it seems to me, he really does something with all the po-mo narrative tricks.
As to Gatsby - it is quite simply my favourite novel. As has been pointed out, the age when you read these things matters. Also, certain themes in Lit just fit and for me I can find no greater theme than that of unrequited love. I understand if people find him sentimental, unduly romantic in aspect but that is what I love - emotionally stunted as I am I love the ridiculousness of Gatsby himself. Finally, and this will sound old fashioned here, I love FSF's fidelity to language, the way he treats the novel like a Keatsian Ode - when you have read few pages aloud it's a revelation as to just how musical his language can be.
At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others — poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner — young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
Of course FSF inspired a range of very dull writers who just couldn't pull this kind if thing off but that's not his fault!
