Haruki Murakami Bingo！
"
Directly across the room from Rachel was a mirror, hung high on the wall, and under the mirror a shelf which held a turn-of-the-century clock. The double face was suspended by four golden flying buttresses above a maze of works, enclosed in clear Swedish lead glass. The pendulum didn’t swing back and forth but was in the form of a disc, parallel to the floor and driven by a shaft with paralleled the hands at six o’clock. The disc turned a quarter-revolution one way, then a quarter-revolution the other, each reversed torsion on the shaft advancing the escapement a notch. Mounted on the disc were two imps or demons, wrought in gold, posed in fantastic attitudes. Their movements were reflected on the mirror along with the mirror in Rachel’s back, which extended from floor to ceiling and revealed the branches and green needles of a pine tree. The branches whipped back and forth in the February wind, ceaseless and shimmering, and in front of them the two demons performed their metronomic dance, beneath a vertical array of golden gears and ratchet wheels, levers and springs which gleamed warm and gay as any ballroom chandelier.
Rachel was looking into the mirror at an angle of 45°, and so had a view of the face turned towards the room and the face on the other side, reflected in the mirror; here were time and reverse-time, co-existing, cancelling one another exactly out. Were there many such reference points, scattered through the world, perhaps only at nodes like this room which housed a transient population of the imperfect, the dissatisfied; did real time plus virtual or mirror-time equal zero and thus serve some half-understood moral purpose? Or was it only the mirror world that counted; only a promise of a kind that the inward bow of a nose-bridge or a promontory of extra cartilage at the chin meant a reversal of ill fortune such that the world of the altered would thenceforth run on mirror-time; work and love by mirror-light and be only, till death stopped the heart’s ticking (metronome’s music) quietly as light ceases to vibrate, an imp’s dance under the century’s own chandeliers…
— Thomas Pynchon, V (via wirespeed)
"
待合室の真向かいの壁には高く吊るした鏡があって、その下に、世紀転換期の時計を収めた棚があった。裏表二面の文字盤が四本の飛梁から吊るされ、その下に迷路のような時計装置がスウェーデン製の鉛硝子のケースに収められている。振り子がスイングするのでなく、床と平行の円盤が、六時の針と平行のシャフトによって駆動される。片方に四分の一回転すると、逆方向に四分の一回転し、その軸の回転が脱進機に伝えられて歯車を一コマずつ進めるという仕組みだ。その円盤の上では、黄金の悪魔というか小鬼が二体、突飛なポーズをとっている。二匹の小鬼がクルックルッと回るさまが、レイチェルが背にしている壁一面の窓ガラスを通した景色と一緒に、鏡に映っていた。庭の松の枝と緑の針葉が二月の強風に吹かれて揺れ動き、日差しを散乱させるその前で、二匹の小鬼がメトロノームのような踊りを披露する。その頭上では、黄金のギアとノコギリ歯車、レバーとスプリングが垂直方向に組み上がって、往年の舞踏会場のシャンデリアに劣らない、絢爛とした光彩を添えていた。
レイチェルは鏡に対して四五度の向きだったから、部屋に正対する文字盤とともに、鏡に映った裏の文字盤も見えた。時間と反時間との共存。互いを正確に打ち消し合っている。世界にはこうした鑑照の場がいくつもあって、欠損を抱えた満たされざる者たちがつかの間出会うこの待合室のような場所に真理が顔を覗かせるのだろうか。リアルな時間にバーチャルな鏡像時間をプラスすると結果はゼロになるのか。そうだとしたら、そのことはどんな教訓をぼんやりと示しているのか。骨を詰め込んで立派に見せたりする者たちには、以前の不遇な時間を逆転させる「鏡の時間」が待っているということ？ 鏡の中の光の導くままに、働き、愛し、己が世紀のシャンデリアの下で小鬼のダンスを踊り続けよということ？ 死が心臓の拍動（メトロノームの音楽）を止め、揺らめく光を止めるまで……。
"— トマス・ピンチョン『V.』（小山太一＋佐藤良明訳、新潮社）
"前に、高校時代はろくに勉強というものをしなかったというようなことを書いたら、ある読者から「村上さんは確か早稲田を出たはずです。勉強しないで早稲田大学に入れるわけがないでしょう。嘘をつかないでください」という抗議だか詰問だかの手紙をもらったことがあった。なるほどねえ、そういう世の中になっちゃったんだな、と僕はその手紙を読んでけっこう深く感心してしまったのだけれど、まあそれはともかく、もしそのような発言をしたことによって僕が誰かを傷つけたのだとしたら、何はともあれ申し訳なく思います。なるべく他人に不快な思いをさせないようにと心がけていつも文章を書いているつもりなのだが、世の中は広いので、何をどう書いても必ずどこかで傷ついたり、あるいは腹を立てたりする人が出てくるようである。とくに大学のことでは多くの人が真剣にセンシティブになっているのだという事実を、僕はよく忘れてしまう。"
— 村上春樹『やがて哀しき外国語』（講談社文庫）
"セス・キーガンが数週間前から二人で手がけているプロジェクトの修正点について質問しようと、ベニーのパーティションまでやってきた。「ちょっといいかい」とセスは訊いた。ベニーは椅子をくるっと回した。「＜今回だけだ。今回だけは仕事のことを訊いていい＞」「そりゃよかった」セスはパーティションの中まで入ってきた。「ここにつけた影をどうするか、考えを聞こうと思ってね。こうしたらどうかっていま思ってるのは……」ベニーはときどきうなずきながら、彼の話を聞いた。まもなくセスは、ベニーの意見なしで勝手に結論に達した。ベニーはセスが立ち去ろうとすると、やけになって呼び止めた。「＜なあ、妹の結婚式なんだ＞」とベニーはふてくされながら言った。「へえ、そう。妹さんが結婚するの？」とセス。「＜そしてボスがボタンを押せと言ったら、押す＞」セスはベニーをじろじろ見た。「そりゃよかった」セスはそう言ってうなずき、行ってしまった。"
— ジョシュア・フェリス『私たち崖っぷち』（篠森ゆりこ訳、河出書房新社）
"そこに芽吹いたのは春の日差しにきらめく清流の如き爽やかな心地である。"
"
It was like so, but wasn’t.
言ってみればこんな話だが、本当はそうじゃない
"— Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)
リチャード・パワーズ『ガラテイア2.2』（柴田元幸訳、みすず書房）
"厳しい現実を直接反映させた問題提起型の小説は、現実そのものの前では圧（お）し潰（つぶ）されてしまう。現実を凌駕（りょうが）するか、現実から百歩も千歩もあとずさり、どんどん遠ざかり、逃げ続けるか。どちらにしろコースを一周すれば同じ地点に出る筈だ。そこにしか、小説という小さな旗は立てられない。"
— 「小さな旗」 芥川賞作家、田中慎弥さんエッセー - ニュース - 本のニュース - BOOK asahi.com：朝日新聞社の書評サイト
"自分の意見の信頼性を高めるために語ることと、他人の意見の信頼性を貶めるために語ることは、似ているようだけれど、違う。 前者は「読み手」の知性を信頼しており、十分な論拠を示し、適切な推論をすれば「たいていの人は私と同じ結論に到る」と思っている。 後者は「読み手」の知性を信頼しておらず、放っておくとたいていの人は「自分の意見とは違う、誤った結論」に到ると思っている。"
"関係と感情をともなう小さな暴力は返しのある釣り針のように私たちの中に潜り、どれだけ細く小さくても抜くことができない。"
"一気に読んでしまうことと物語に入り込むこととは意外に関係ないのか。"
"The contraption inside her head had finally been set into motion, and once the gears began turning, they gained a frantic kind of momentum that nothing, it seemed, could stop."
— The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet - Reif Larsen
"
Excerpt: ‘1Q84’
Chapter 1
Aomame
DON’T LET APPEARANCES FOOL YOU
The taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janaìcek’s Sinfonietta—probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn’t seem to be listening very closely, either. With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents. Aomame settled into the broad back seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the music.
How many people could recognize Janaìcek’s Sinfonietta after hearing just the first few bars? Probably somewhere between “very few” and “almost none.” But for some reason, Aomame was one of the few who could.
Janaìcek composed his little symphony in 1926. He originally wrote the opening as a fanfare for a gymnastics festival. Aomame imagined 1926 Czechoslovakia: The First World War had ended, and the country was freed from the long rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. As they enjoyed the peaceful respite visiting central Europe, people drank Pilsner beer in cafeìs and manufactured handsome light machine guns. Two years earlier, in utter obscurity, Franz Kafka had left the world behind. Soon Hitler would come out of nowhere and gobble up this beautiful little country in the blink of an eye, but at the time no one knew what hardships lay in store for them. This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: “At the time, no one knew what was coming.” Listening to Janaìcek’s music, Aomame imagined the carefree winds sweeping across the plains of Bohemia and thought about the vicissitudes of history. In 1926 Japan’s Taisho Emperor died, and the era name was changed to Showa. It was the beginning of a terrible, dark time in this country, too. The short interlude of modernism and democracy was ending, giving way to fascism.
Aomame loved history as much as she loved sports. She rarely read fiction, but history books could keep her occupied for hours. What she liked about history was the way all its facts were linked with particular dates and places. She did not find it especially difficult to remember historical dates. Even if she did not learn them by rote memorization, once she grasped the relationship of an event to its time and to the events preceding and following it, the date would come to her automatically. In both middle school and high school, she had always gotten the top grade on history exams. It puzzled her to hear someone say he had trouble learning dates. How could something so simple be a problem for anyone?
“Aomame” was her real name. Her grandfather on her father’s side came from some little mountain town or village in Fukushima Prefecture, where there were supposedly a number of people who bore the name, written with exactly the same characters as the word for “green peas” and pronounced with the same four syllables, “Ah-oh-mah-meh.” She had never been to the place, however. Her father had cut his ties with his family before her birth, just as her mother had done with her own family, so she had never met any of her grandparents. She didn’t travel much, but on those rare occasions when she stayed in an unfamiliar city or town, she would always open the hotel’s phone book to see if there were any Aomames in the area. She had never found a single one, and whenever she tried and failed, she felt like a lonely castaway on the open sea.
Telling people her name was always a bother. As soon as the name left her lips, the other person looked puzzled or confused.
“Miss Aomame?”
“Yes. Just like ‘green peas.’ “
Employers required her to have business cards printed, which only made things worse. People would stare at the card as if she had thrust a letter at them bearing bad news. When she announced her name on the telephone, she would often hear suppressed laughter. In waiting rooms at the doctor’s or at public offices, people would look up at the sound of her name, curious to see what someone called “Green Peas” could look like.
Some people would get the name of the plant wrong and call her “Edamame” or “Soramame,” whereupon she would gently correct them: “No, I’m not soybeans or fava beans, just green peas. Pretty close, though. Aomame.” How many times in her thirty years had she heard the same remarks, the same feeble jokes about her name? My life might have been totally different if I hadn’t been born with this name. If I had had an ordinary name like Sato or Tanaka or Suzuki, I could have lived a slightly more relaxed life or looked at people with somewhat more forgiving eyes. Perhaps.
""関係と感情をともなう小さな暴力は返しのある釣り針のように私たちの中に潜り、どれだけ細く小さくても抜くことができない。"
