Book review: Comfort Me With Apples

This was a really strange book I read last night. It's very short, technically only a novella, so I finished it in about an hour. The description says "Comfort Me With Apples is the age old tale of the garden of Eden and the apples that have the knowledge of good and evil. It is the age old story of escaping from a life you were once content with when you realize why you shouldn't be content." 

Essentially, this book is a biblical allegory, and I knew that going in so the parallels were rather obvious while reading. In some Goodreads reviews, people said they didn't realize it was a biblical allegory until the end. Overall, I didn't like it that much, but I can sort of see what the author was going for. I wouldn't recommend this book unless it was specifically for a person I thought would be into weird biblical allegories with slight magical realism touches. 

It does not hit the spot of light surrealism the way I like. I would consider this book to be more like magical-realism-tinged medium to heavy surrealism, in some ways. Primarily the premise, which is only fully explained by the end of the book. At the beginning, before everything is made clear, it may feel more like light surrealism. Since I knew going in that it was some kind of biblical allegory, by the later portion of the book I could kind of predict/figure out what was going to happen. It overall felt a bit too predictable in an unsatisfying way, even regarding some other aspects in the beginning.     

At the beginning, I didn't particularly like this book. The writing style seemed too overwrought for my preferences. Towards the end, the writing style recedes somewhat and becomes a bit more normal as the plot picks up. But overall, I found this book rather meh and probably would have been more disappointed if it were longer and I'd spent more time on reading it. It gave me a similar feeling of "what the fuck did I just read" like J.G. Ballard's book "Crash," which was also bizarre but in a fairly different way. A review I saw somewhere said that it's slightly reminiscent of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper. 

I think I could have theoretically liked this book more if it had taken a more typical track/premise and were written more like a standard thriller/mystery, instead of a biblical allegory with magical realism. Or if it had been more of a sci-fi surrealism story. I am really not into fantasy or magical realism, which is adjacent, like fantasy-lite. 

In terms of surrealism, there are different flavors or subtypes. I particularly like light surrealism (could also be called subtle surrealism?) but medium to heavy surrealism can be interesting too. Aside from degrees of surrealism, the particular flavor or style has an impact too. A Clockwork Orange, for example, is more like dystopian-flavored heavy surrealism. There's technofuturist-surrealism (such as cyberpunk themes) which can also include dystopian surrealism. There are other varieties that aren't quite as easily described. 

An interesting video essay

In somewhat of a departure from this blog's usual content... 

I came across this video essay, which is 30 minutes long. I didn't feel like watching it so I used a website that generates a transcript of Youtube videos to read what was said in it. It's about deepfakes and their use in pornography and why that's bad for society. It was rather interesting. 

The transcript is quite long, but I guess that's what happens when it's from a 30 minute video. Here is the transcript for both my and your (theoretical reader) future reference. It was made via Youtube's autocaption feature, so there are probably some errors here and there where it couldn't really make an accurate caption/transcription. So I tried to format and clean up the transcript a bit. In some places I assumed a word or two that would make sense if the autocaptioned words didn't. 

El Centro del Confinamiento del [redacted] en El Salvador

Cuando escribo en mi blog acerca de tópicos o películas/libres/etc. de España o Latinoamérica, me gusta tratar de escribirlo en español. Por eso, esta publicación es en español. Uso el sitio languagetool.org para chequear la ortografía y gramática. El sitio es muy útil. Es como Grammarly, pero en otros idiomas. 

En los últimos días, hay un tópico en las noticias, aun en los EEUU, que es tan interesante para mí. En El Salvador, hay una prisión nueva que es la más grande en las Américas. La prisión se llama el Centro de Confinamiento del [redacted] y es para encarcelar los pandilleros quien aterrorizan el país. El presidente de El Salvador publicó unos videos propagandísticos mostrando la prisión y los pandilleros cuando se trasladan a la prisión nueva. 

Los críticos de la prisión dicen que el presidente está creando un estado policial. En los videos, la prisión es muy impresionante. Las luces eléctricas son tan brillantes y hay tantas celdas. En los videos, los pandilleros corren entre líneas de guardas armadas y entran sus celdas apretadas. Sienten en el suelo concreto de la prisión con sus manos encima de sus cabezas. En cada celda hay 100 prisioneros. 

Los videos son un poco surrealista para ver. En los EEUU, no hay prisiones tan grandes o con 100 prisioneros en una celda. El presidente de los EEUU no visita prisiones nuevas para celebrar la construcción. Un estado policial no es bueno, pero en el otro mano, hay que hacer algo para controlar los pandilleros y la violencia de las pandillas. La prisión nueva es una solución posible. 

Book review: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

This is a book I had been wanting to read, in the back of my mind, for many years. Probably ever since around the time it had been translated and published in English, which was 2011 or so. Only recently did I finally get around to it. 

I do tend to enjoy abstract things in artwork and other areas, so this book fits within that category. It is somewhat abstract and has surreal elements. The surreal elements aren't overboard in my opinion; the rest of the book seems realistic. The writing style is plain and matter-of-fact, but I didn't find it boring/unappealing. It's definitely not full of flowery language, though there are a series of interesting metaphors/analogies sprinkled throughout the book (ex: "we must move him to another world"). 

Though the book is close to 1000 pages in print, it goes by relatively quickly and doesn't feel overly dense/hard to read. I finished it within about a week of reading days (spread out over a period of two weeks). It doesn't really share many similarities with Orwell's 1984 despite the similar title. Apparently the title is supposed to be a pun/play on words in Japanese, as the letter Q and the number 9 are pronounced similarly. In English, the title more logically should have been 1?84, since in the book Q is explained as standing for "question [mark]" and the Japanese-language pun wouldn't have been evident to English-speaking people. 

It reminded me somewhat of Klara and the Sun (by Kazuo Ishiguro) since both books are somewhat surreal and hint at/allude to things in the plot rather than fully explain them outright. I would probably read more by Murakami in the future. 

Without spoiling the plot too much, 1Q84 is about two people who are thrust into an alternate universe and have to figure out what's going on with that, as well as trying to get back to the regular universe. The story switches between each character's perspective with each chapter, and there are various parallels interspersed in each of their storylines. I had very little idea of what exactly the premise of the book was when I started reading it. I only knew that it took place in Japan and was maybe somewhat surreal somehow. So I wasn't really sure what to expect from it, but in the end I did enjoy the book.

I'd like to read more (translated) books by Japanese authors in the future, including the ones mentioned here but possibly others as well.