Less Ashamed

One of the first Japanese novels I attempted, after not having too much trouble with the first 2/3 of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, was his Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. (I gave up on NW because I found it far too depressing. Which made it really fun when, two years later, I found myself with a failing grade in a lit class unless I wrote a long essay--in Japanese, of course--on the book).

I gave up after two chapters when I realized that I was turning the pages without actually understanding what was going on. I was somewhat embarrassed by this.

Now I'm reading the English translation. And, somehow, I'm no longer embarrassed:

"Infrequent number series like these virtually rule out temporary bridging. Theoretically, of course, there's always that possibility. But there'd be no proving the syntactical validity, and without such proof you couldn't shake the error tag. Like trying to cross the desert without a compass."

And later:

"The numerics themselves were the proverbial piece of cake, but with so many case-determinant step-functions, the tabulations took much more doing than they first appeared to require."

I am fairly--though not completely--sure that this is all technobabble; in fact, by chapter six it's already getting somewhat easier. Nevertheless, I think I was justified in giving up in favor of the English. I like Murakami's writing, a lot, and Birnbaum's translation captures his style well; I also like the science fictional aspect, which was missing totally from Norwegian Wood. It remains to be seen what he'll do with it.