Uncertain walls by Murakami is probably my favourite novel of his so far. It feels like a return to Norwegian Wood with a maturity to explore the concept of his grief through a world rather than a character. Most interesting to me, is the conception of the inner consciousness/mind being both a neutralizing/safeguarding and decaying system. This reminds me strongly of many of the techniques used in therapy for anxiety and depression, in the sense that we so often percieve our anxious emotions as coming from the heart anf requiring a "rationalization" and or "temperance" from the mind. I feel like Murakami is somewhat challenging this idea by bringing in how the constant challenging, rationalization, and depression of emotions and memories doesnt invariably leads to a loss of humanity, otherwise known as the death of your shadow. This is invariably a story of seclusion, emotional instability, and human emotion.
The strange connection I wanted to make between A Strange Library and Uncertain Walls is in how they can somewhat be put together. We could think of Boku's job as a dreamreader similarly to the bookkeeper in strange library. What I mean by this is, both boku and the bookkeeper use an external form of information holding (egg, and person) and force them to mold the knowledge within them so that they can suppress/experience that knowledge and codify it as useful/tasty. It is this same give and take relationship with knowledge and could be helpful to us in understanding Murakami's conception of knowledge/memories.
Thomas
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