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Review of Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryū Murakami

November 28, 2022

art, book, Japan, literature, review, society, symbolism

I want to start this review of Popular Hits of the Showa Era, by Ryū Murakami, by saying that it surprised me with its audacity. The fact that I was surprised is… surprising itself, because I’ve read plenty of Ryū Murakami’s novels – parenthetically, no relation to Haruki Murakami – and they’re all as audacious.

And yet, there was something about Popular Hits of the Showa Era that made it profoundly daring and disturbing in abstract, symbolic ways. As you can perhaps tell by this comment, I really liked the book.

But I must warn you: It’s a book that is very difficult to like; the average reader will probably be disgusted by it. Reading Popular Hits of the Showa Era is an experience similar to reading American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis: a misunderstood masterpiece that hides a riot of meaning under the deceptive surface.

All this makes this review of Popular Hits of the Showa Era all the more important. There are lessons to learn about writing, reading, and art in general.

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Rabbit Hole: an Infinite Text Exploration of the Sublime

November 21, 2022

Literature, Philosophy, Programming

literature, philosophy, programming, subjectivity, sublime

Chances are, the title – as well as the listed categories – might sound confusing. “Rabbit Hole”? “Infinite Text”? “the Sublime”? Ironically enough in this context, this program – which I named, rather predictably, Rabbit Hole – precisely exploits two interrelated faces of language:

Language is both ambiguous and limiting; we have fewer words than we have possible concepts and ideas to express.
As a result, language is subjective; we create our own meaning.

With all this in mind, Rabbit Hole is many things at once. In a sense, it’s an infinite text generator – a bit like the one in Word Journey. In another, it’s an exploration of the sublime – our inability to go beyond certain thresholds, though we might still be able to taste what lies beyond them. After all, as I implied above, talking about the limits of language, how can we represent the unrepresentable?

In a way, we could say Rabbit Hole is an exploration of art – in the most subjective sense of the word. It is what its user wants it to be.

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A False Start Versus a Failed Project

November 14, 2022

Writing

book, creativity, fiction, literature, society, writing

One of the cornerstones of becoming better is completing things. There are sadly many people who begin something full of enthusiasm, yet sooner or later abandon it because it has become too difficult. Then they start something new, only to soon quit as well. The vicious cycle then continues, and they never (or rarely) complete anything. But there are crucial differences between a false start and a failed project, and learning to recognize them is pivotal for learning how to complete things.

Indeed, as societies we don’t talk enough about quitting. We don’t talk about learning how to abandon something when you have to. We seem to live in a world teaching people how not to quit. Instead, we should learn how to do it – properly.

And so, in this post, I’ll draw on my own experiences with false starts and failed projects, to show you how we can separate them.

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