where Wagner fears to soar

This past week I have pushed ahead through Mann's stellar Doktor Faustus, enjoying its contemplative orbits and its grand supersturctures of language, but, much like Magic Mountain, it can be exhausting. The air is thinnner in direct proportion to the challeneg of concepts and the characters are revealed ever so slowly. It has been quite a treat.

I was also able to carve out a good run at the Burton, though I didn't resume such over the weekend. Instead I picked up After The Quake a collection of stories by Murakami about the Kobe disaster of 1995. I am no fan of stories but cher Haruki is a maestro, blending sensative characters into a tapestry that one could fathom converging in a novel to be, a panorama of not only contemporary Japan but the entire human crawl.