Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way
Chapter 1: Elevator, Silence, Overweight
This character is so weird, counting money the way he does, and "taking classes in lip reading".
The part where he's thinking to himself about "inconsequential fat women" and "young, beautiful, fat women" made me confused. I couldn't tell if he was being rude, or if he was being complementary. If he was saying "a young, beautiful woman shouldn't be fat" or if he (like me looking for the least attractive man in the room when I'm in a position to look) is looking at her in a way of "she is attainable to me and so now I'm thinking of attaining her".
Chapter 2: Golden Beasts
Are the "beasts" just horses or unicorns? Their coats are black, white, gray, or brown in the Spring, and in Autumn they are gold. They have blue eyes and a single white horn. They have hooves and are herded.
It does seem strange that they let the beasts "out" at night but bring them "in" during the day.
Chapter 3: Rain Gear, INKlings, Laundry
I would have been freaked out by the random closet that led to nothingness and water, too! And there's a part of me that hates the vagueness, like what is this "job", I'm sure we'll find out but I hate waiting to figure it out! I also hate the jumping POV or whatever the jump is, I'm not sure if it's a different narrator or just different area.
Maybe I'm crazy but I could almost feel the anxiety and pressure the main character was feeling subside as soon as the "roar of the river was now the babble of a brook".
It's kind of terrifying but also kind of awesome to think about the ability to pull memories out of our bones or our brains. I mean, in the idea of "no need for torture cuz the truth is in their bones" is a negative spin, but imagine being able to pull the memories out of someone you lost.
Also, I love how the main character, amidst the scientists babble about his research and how valuable it is, the narrators concern is how he could get in trouble for being here since he was called on in an irregular way.
I don't really understand the "old man's" experiments, and I also am kind of glad such thing isn't real because the ability to affect sound and speech seems like an awful lot of power to have in even the best of circumstances.
Chapter 4: The Library
I am beginning to believe this is almost like parallel universes. One is obviously more fantastical than the other, but for some reason the memories of the realistic world seep into that of the fantastical.
I wonder if the author was writing the Old Man's Accent as an American. Cuz reading it as an American I'm imagining a typical Southern Accent but it could also just be a Japanese's interpretation of American Accents as a whole.
Again with threatening a noise free world, I don't think I could take it. I mean, I guess if I had to loose a sense I probably wouldn't mind losing hearing as much as seeing, tasting, touching, and smelling. Then again I'd rather loose smell than sound.
During the scene where the narrator is complimenting the granddaughter's sandwiches and the old man responds with "It takes a special someone to appreciate the child" I kept imagining "sandwiches" as a euphemism for "fat ass".
The scene on the way to the elevator is so awkward, but of course, sadly reminds me of myself in high school.
Chapter 5: Shadow
Aha! So it is unicorns!
The statement made about "I called the System to check my schedule" reminds me of 1984 where everything is set a specific way. Same with the "One person, one job" thing.
Chapter 6: The Colonel
The idea of having a relationship with your shadow is bizarre. I don't think I pay attention to my shadow nearly as much as an adult as I did as a kid.
Gastric dilation. I'm curious as to how that should sound, at first I thought it was a polite way to say bulimia but then she said she doesn't gain weight. Is this an actual thing or fictional for the book?
Chapter 7: The Wall
When describing his shadow he says there are "Ill-humored folds about his eyes", which doesn't make sense. Shadows don't have features. I let the "talking shadow" go without comment because things can speak in their own way without a mouth, but certainly shadows don't have eyes that you can see.
Finally part of the book title is starting to make sense. Still not sure about the hard boiled part.
He was stupid to think Junior and Big Boy (a little confused as to who they are) were going to leave his most loved items alone. But, at least he had taken care of the skull.
Chapter 8: Woods
Always seems to be in stories like this (fantasy type) that woods are where the bad natives live and town is where the good new people live.
I can't imagine how it would feel to have everything in your place, in your life, overturned or destroyed as precisely as Big Boy went through the narrator's place. It makes my skin crawl with anxiety just thinking about it.
Chapter 9: The Coming of Winter
When the Librarian talks about her shadow living in the world beyond and becoming something apart from her, it makes me think of Kingdom Hearts and the dark versions of people and the Nobodies.
Chapter 10: Dreamreading
I wasn't expecting the Narrator to be so important as to be one of twenty six people to survive the operation and training to be a Calcutec.
Chapter 11: The Death of the Beasts
The scene of how the Beasts die depresses me, and the number of Bests that die each winter depresses me, too.
Chapter 12: Gray Smoke
The "old dreams" thing confuses me. Is he literally pulling dreams from the minds of unicorns, or are the skulls just like external hard drives that the Town puts information into? Either way, what is he pulling from the skulls that is so important?
The idea of growing up and now knowing what singing is, is scary and depressing to say the least.
Chapter 13: Shadow Grounds
Even with the Professors's explanation, I am so confused about the procedure the narrator went under and how he has 3 pathways in his brain and how he got sucked into The End of the World.
Chapter 14: Power Station
So if I'm understanding this correctly, the End of the World is just a perception of the world we are in now. So it's almost like he's becoming schizophrenic or something where he's seeing unicorns where the rest of us see something else.
And when the Professor says that the narrator's mind won't die, is he implying that this "circuit" that he and the System created is actually going on forever, even when the narrator dies and is buried in the ground, he'll still keep living in this unicorn filled, walled in world?
Chapter 15: Musical Instruments
I wonder what the Caretaker is supposed to symbolize. His statements about appreciating items for what they are, not for their uses, must mean more than face value.
Chapter 18: Accordion
I don't understand how the accordion fits in the narrator's pocket. He says it is a fold-able accordion but I still don't see it fitting in a coat pocket.
Overall, I liked the book. It was tough to read two very unique and complicated books back to back like this, but I did enjoy the story. About 60% of the way through I started to understand Carole's "Edgar Allen Poe of Japan" analogy because it was a freaky concept without necessarily being a scary story. However, I don't full understand everything and so I seriously hope the rest of you can give me some insight on, How the two world's existed, and What exactly happened at and after the end?
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Quotes Worth Mentioning
Chapter 1; Elevator, Silence, Overweight
"Maybe I'd gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I'd circled the globe. How would I know?"
(In describing the elevator) "Antiseptic as a brand-new coffin."
Chapter 2: Golden Beasts
"'We do it that way,' he says, 'and that is how it is. The same as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.'" - I feel like I read something like that somewhere else recently, like, just because that's the way we've been doing it forever doesn't mean there isn't a better way.
Chapter 3: Rain Gear, INKlings, Laundry
"'Got the whale and elephant in the storeroom downstairs. Take up a lot of space, they do,' said the old man.
"'Well, I guess,' I said. A few whale skulls and there goes the neighborhood.
Chapter 4: The Library
"Tell her the Town told you to come read old dreams." -- This is an interesting line, and I am intrigued, but still aggravated by the vagueness and not knowing what the character's purpose is (or are).
"There's no such thing as happy evolution." -- Agree or disagree? Initially I want to say disagree but then again, if you believe that we evolved from microorganisms, wouldn't it also be fair to argue that we were better off that way because there weren't wars and such?
"I withdrew a flex-metal document cache from a pocket behind my left knee, inserted the data list, and locked it." -- Okay, confused. Does he literally have a pocket in his pants that is actually a document holder? Is he a robot and the pocket is part of his robot body? Is this just a really unfortunate misuse of word(s)?
Chapter 5: Shadow
"When I came to this town, my shadow was taken away." -- Curious. Makes me think of Peter Pan, curious to see where this takes the story.
"By evolution, you wouldn't be referring to the evolving over millions of years kind of evolution, would you? Excuse me if I misunderstand, but why then do you need things so quickly? What's one more day?"
Chapter 6: The Colonel
"No one tells you anything in this Town," says the Colonel. The Town has its own protocol. It has no care for what you know or do not know."
"Aesthetically, I remembered reading, the flaccid penis is more pleasing than the erect." -- Thoughts? I completely disagree with this statement.
I found the descriptions of the two types of unicorns to be interesting as neither of these are the images that come to mind to me personally.
Greek: "His body resembles a horse, his head a stag, his feet an elephant, his tail a boar; heloweth after an hideous manner, one black horn he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out two cubits in length: by report, this wild beast cannot possibly be caught alive."
Chinese: "It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and the hooves of a horse. Its short horn, which grows out of its forehead, is made of flesh; its coat, on its back, is of five mixed colors, while its belly is brown or yellow."
Chapter 8: Woods
"Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the costs."
"It's not my war."
"Whose war don't matter. Whose money don't matter. That's what war is."
"To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age [15 years] was, by any standard, a tragedy. It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom."
"When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn't make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you?"
Chapter 9: The Coming of Winter
"Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. it is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe it is far more inconstant."
Chapter 10: Dreamreading
"I stopped to take a last look at my scrap heap of an apartment. Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. Sure, I'd gotten tired of this tiny space, but I'd had a good home here."
"But that, as they say, was none of my business, opec would go on drilling for oil, regardless of anyone's opinion, conglomerates would make electricity and gasoline from that oil, people would be running around town late at night using up that gasoline."
"Why do you drink so much?" she wanted to know.
"It makes me feel brave," I said.
"I'm scared, too, but you don't see me drinking."
"Your 'scared' and my 'scared' are two different things."
"Grand father says schools are too inefficient to produce top material. What do you think?" she asked.
"Well, probably so," I answered. "I went to school for many years and I don't believe it made that much difference in my life. I can't speak any languages, can't play any instruments, can't play the stock market, can't ride a horse."
"Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down."
Chapter 12: Gray Smoke
"[the operation done on my brain to give me shuffling faculty] They had shoved memories out of my conscious awareness. They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear."
Chapter 13: Shadow Grounds
"You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less. You get my meaning?"
Chapter 15: Musical Instruments
"Genius scientist or not, everyone grows old, everyone dies."
"Wasn't much of a life anyway. Wasn't much of a brain."
"But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?"
"Word games," I dismissed. "Everyone army needs a flag."
Chapter 17: Skulls
"I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you, don't you think?"
Chapter 18: Accordion
"I located a Schick razor and a can of Gillette Lemon-Lime Foamy with a dry sputter of white around the nozzle. Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used."
Chapter 19: Escape
"Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores, to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek."
