Saturday, February 4, 2017

4. three moments of an explosion

China Melville has a very scientific style of writing. He writes like how people write for newspapers, describing every bit of information to the smallest detail so the viewer can draw their own opinion. What makes three moments of an explosion unique are the stories that Melville tells. He brings about incredibly fantastical and crazy problems to the normal, modern world. In one story, there are huge icebergs that hover above London. In another, there are playing cards in a deck of cards that appear to the players at random all around the world. So these out-of-the-ordinary situations are described as scientifically and accurate as possible, trying to grasp and understand the crazy situations that happen. It reminds me of Murakami's style in A Wild Sheep Chase. The author is taking a stance of indifference and wants the viewer to take things casually as they are happening. It seems like this is the style these days, since both of these books are written by great authors of our century. It makes me think about the internet and how maybe that has aided in disconnecting people from one another.
But the way these stories are written doesn't make it sound like a bad thing. I actually really enjoy reading these books because of the style (maybe Sheep Chase more, because the indifference comes from a character and not an unknown speaker. That could spark another topic of conversation, but I don't think I want to head there.).

What I don't like about the book stems a little from that though. A lot of the short stories are written from such a distance that a story seems almost unimportant and boring. It feels like the author just wrote some of these stories to explore a "what-if" idea. Not all of them, granted, but a lot. I just wish he had given a little more care to the character side of things, even if it would be hard considering how he'd have to take that "indifferent" feeling into it.

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