#169 The Myth of Bears- Rick Bass

#169 The Myth of Bears- Rick Bass

Trapper and Judith are married and live deep in the forest, isolated rom the world, relying only on each other. But Trapper is bordering on insanity, or a prolonged version of cabin fever.

“In Trapper’s nighttime fits, he imagines that he is a wolf, and the others in his pack have suddenly turned against him and set upon him with their teeth; he roused in roused in bed to snarl and snap at everything in sight.”

She decides to leave him, and run away. But where? She is a forest woman and doesn’t want to go to town, she is like the Northern Lights. For now she is just glad to be free:

“The sadness of leaving him being transformed into the joy of freedom, and the joy of flight, too.”

He is a trapper, so naturally he goes hunting her. She feels comforted by his pursuits but doesn’t relent. “It’s not that he is a bad man, or that I am a bad woman, she thought. It’s juts that he is a predator and I am prey.”

He thinks about trapping her with gold chains and sugar. He has no introspection. Everything to him is about the hunt, finding ways to catch what he wants. “The mistake last time was that he didn’t hold her tight enough.”

As he pursues Judith, he is being pursued by the wolves, symbolic of his growing insanity.

“The wolves that have been following at a distance draw closer, knowing they are safe when a fit wells up from within him; at such times they know that he is not a man but one of them.”

She is incapable of fully leaving, his pursuit is what gives her identity: “It’s terrible without the thought of his out there chasing her, hunting her. It’s horrible. There’s too much space.”

This is a very strong story, full, earthy, animalistic. It makes me want to go watch Jeremiah Johnson.

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total=32

#93 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman- Haruki Murakami

#93 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman- Haruki Murakami

Reading Murakami is often a visceral experience, feeling like you’ve been hypnotized or fell into a ludic dream. To be able to have this effect even when translated is a testament to the power of his abilities. He doesn’t merely write stories, he composes literary music. Murakami says that if writing novels are planting forests, then writing short stories are planting gardens. Sometimes you just want to walk through the garden. You can feel the author’s connection to these stories. Murakami writes:

“My short stories are like soft shadows I’ve set out in the world, faint footprints I’ve left behind.”

So following in those shadowy footprints, we begin this collection with the title piece, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Like most of Murakami’s work, this has a tinge of the supernatural, here it comes in the form of a made-up tree.

A young man takes his cousin to the hospital to get his ears checked out. The cousin has an un-diagnosable condition where he suddenly and intermittently loses his hearing. While he waits outside, he remembers the last time he was in the hospital for a friend. She told him a poem she was writing about Blind Willows.

“A blind willow looks small on the outside , but it’s got incredibly deep roots…[it] pushes further and further down into the ground. Like the darkness nourishes it.”

Flies gather the pollen from the blind willows and bury themselves in the ear of a woman putting her in a deep sleep. Murakami often has these parallel story lines, one in reality and one in a dream. They aren’t necessarily connected, but they’re not separate either. We each have our lives, and the selfishness stemming from our lives, some running from deep and dark places, make us deaf to the needs of those around us.

Notable Passage: “I stood there is a strange, dim place. Where the things I could see didn’t exist. Where the invisible did.”

Rating: 10-9-10-8 Total= 37