So what’s next? Well, for now, I’ll keep updating as often as I feel inspired or can spare the time and try to keep building on the moment of the last month (3-5 posts a week instead of 3-5 a month). Until I’ve finished writing and you can purchase volume 4, I’ll continue to post the occasional update on Return to Labyrinth. I’ve got a few top-secret web plans that I’m starting to develop – something a little more ambitious than what I’ve done so far – that I hope to move forward with in the new year. Stay tuned for more on these (hopefully) exciting developments.
Regular readers will know I can be quite verbose when talking about my past, but I don’t comment much on my personal life in the present (rabbit chat excepted). I don’t plan on changing that formula too much, but I’ll make an exception here, seeing as this is a post to celebrate milestones. I’m gettingmarried! Exciting developments indeed.
Posted on November 29, 2008 by Jake Forbes in Uncategorized
There’s a new resident at the gobblin manor –Gatsby the bunny! Soak in his lupine lapine majesty! Imagine his satiny fur beneath your fingers! Hear his little huffs and grunts as he nibbles on raw veg!
So far, Gatsby’s favorite pastimes are snarfing and pooping. We’re giving him another day to get used to his new bunny abode before letting him hop around the house at large. Maybe then we’ll start balancing things on his head so as to jumpstart his career as an internet meme. Or maybe he can just live a quiet life of anonymity, munching on fresh cilantro and mustard greens with me.
Posted on November 18, 2008 by Jake Forbes in Reading, Review
Do you have an author who, when you read their words, makes you feel as if you were the only one they were writing for all along? Someone who reminds you that books, no matter how big the print run, are an incredibly intimate medium? Haruki Murakami is such an author for me.
I was introduced to Murakami at a very formative time under very swoony circumstances. Even if the book didn’t connect with me directly, I’d still remember it for that reason. But while the passions that accompanied Norwegian Wood on first reading will forever be confined to a time and a place, my love of Murakami endures. In fact, I would credit Murakami with rekindling my actual love of reading when a film degree and career in comics distracted me from novels.
When I read Murakami, I relish the honesty. Murakami’s characters, and his voice as narrator, are disarmingly frank. The way his characters talk is definitely reminiscent of Raymonds Carver and Chandler, Fitzgerald and Salinger—as well it should as he translates the lot of them into Japanese—but for me, the author I’m reminded most of is Lewis Carrol. Murakami makes the real and the surreal equally mundane—and frightening—while keeping the “adult world” distant. His stories tend to take place in a vacuum within our reality—they are modern characters (in a very nostalgic way) but they behave according to fairy tale logic. Even though Murakami’s works can be quite erotic, it always has an aura of childlike innocence about it.
When I read Murakami, I savor the minutiae. Perhaps no other author has spent as much time describing the process of scrounging up meals from whatever’s in the fridge, consuming that meal, then washing the dishes. Murakami’s meals are never extravagant—they’re comfort food. Reading his descriptions of simple food stirs the same sense of contentment as eating a bowl of mac and cheese on a chilly fall evening.
When I read Murakami, I lose myself in the puzzle and couldn’t care less about the solution. Murakami is a master of the literary mystery. His books are filled with clues and red herrings, and joining the protagonists on literal or psychological goose chases makes for an amazing experience. My boyish brain often falls into the trap of trying to rationalize what defies explanation, but Murakami has helped me to accept that sometimes the unexplained is okay.
A couple weeks ago I read Murakami’s latest release—What I Talk About when I Talk About Running. At a slim 190 pages, it’s one of his breeziest works in both word count and substance. Murakami—who am I fooling, after reading this book I feel like we’re on a first name basis!—Haruki goes into great detail about his running regime, with his usual frank and conversational tone. I don’t know if it’s the translation, or the informalness of the essays collected here, but something about the style feels a little…off. It’s still 100% Haruki, but it’s almost as if he’s picked up some of the false-modesty that his characters are so refreshingly oblivious too. (Haruki’s blithe dismissal of global warming, in particular, really irks).
Still, even mediocre Murakami is top-shelf reading for me. The fact that the subject matter serendipitously coincided with my own renewed pursuit of running made it a much more engaging read than it would have been at any other time. Murakami writes about how he first took to running, when he was 32 years old and at the very start of his writing career. I try not to fall into the writer’s trap of comparing my own professional timeline with those of others (Fitzgerald had already written Gatsby by the time he was my age!), but I confess to feeling some hope when reading that Murakami didn’t even consider writing (or running!) until he was the age I was now. So what if I’ve only written licensed tie-ins so far – that’s more than Haruki had! It’s a stupid reaction to have, but I’m sure Haruki would understand.
Now when I go out to run I can’t help but think about Haruki. I might not run a marathon a year like he does, but we’ve got a little something in common, and should we ever run into each other in a Tokyo jazz bar, maybe we could talk about it over a cold beer.
Posted on April 27, 2008 by Jake Forbes in Memoirs
When your parents are no longer together, and neither lives within a thousand miles of where you grew up, when your friends and family are scattered across the country, and when you haven’t spent more than a year or two in one place without moving during your adult life, what is the place you go home to? What place serves as the nucleus of your life, where, no matter how things change, you can always count on to keep you grounded? For me, that place has been Leon’s Bookstore. And as of next month, Leon’s – my home away from home – is shutting its doors forever. Read more »
So a few months back, I visited my sister in Alabama and we went on a road trip. As we were packing our bags, I suddenly had an idea – let’s invite Jareth! And so I looked into the mirror and chanted, “Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be, come to Alabama with a banjo on your knee!” And lo and behold, he came! It was one heck of a trip, I assure you. And thanks to Jareth, we never wanted for catchy tunes in the radio wasteland of the deep south. First stop: Space Camp!
In case you were wondering, Space Camp is just like the movie, in that hardly anything’s changed since the 80s, only there were no artificially intelligent robots to accidentally launch you into space for real. Or maybe those were in the off-limits, campers-only sections (we really just toured the museum and grounds). My sister and I played on the Mars-themed climbing wall, but Jareth said the tight fitting safety holsters looked a little too snug for comfort. (Yeah, I know – who’s he to talk about groinal snugness?). After that, we saw the lunar lander, went inside a MIR module and played with the shuttle simulator. And to top off our adventure – Dippin Dots! (Jareth had Cookies and Cream). On the way out, we stopped by the grave of Miss Baker, first monkey in space. Jareth saw the bananas lying there and took one. I tried to tell him those were left for Miss Baker, but he just shrugged and ate it anyway. I guess the Dippin’ Dots weren’t filling enough for the Goblin King.
