still researching

I was reading this article by Haruki Murakami, and where he writes, "In an age when reality is insufficiently real, how much reality can a fictional story possess?" I couldn't help but think of my research of apocalyptic fiction in the mid-twentieth century. I find myself wondering if this threshold crossing that he feels so acutely is a personal journey and not a global trend.

Or, perhaps more accurately, I'm wondering if this wasn't very similar to the way certain novelists felt in the years after World War II - Vonnegut comes immediately to mind - and it's just that another global/local tragedy was what did it for Mr. Murakami.

I have to admit here that I've never read his fiction. I've read a few of his essays. (The list just keeps getting longer, doesn't it?)

But, conversely, perhaps one of the reasons I've been interested in mid-twentieth century apocalyptic literature (and backshadowing and the representation of memory and all that) has to do with my own specific historical experience. Maybe the chaos I feel in my historical moment is what led me to the literature of that era. Who knows?

On a sort of tangentially related note: I watched Alejandro González Iñárritu's lastest, Biutiful,last night, and I wrote a little review for it on my magazine's blog. Good times.