#But they truly are the pain of the english editor and writer’s existence

[theriu]

If I were faced with a WIP full of misplaced commas, I would simply put all the commas in the correct places. RIP to other editors and writers but I’m different.

[lushscreamqueen]

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

Friday, August 29, 2008

OPENING: Hello, good evening, and welcome to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Tonight, for your viewing pleasure, the incomparable Vincent Price successfully carries an entire movie assisted only by a horde of sluggish zombie-vampires and several flashbacks, and he actually does a damn good job of it. Remember how impressed everyone was with Tom Hanks for carrying Castaway all by himself and he was just the last man on that little island. Well, tonight, Vincent Price is The Last Man On Earth! Or is he? BREAK: From the blackest pits of Hell, insatiable evil creeps forth to claim your minds and souls! Then after the ads we'll be right back with The Schlocky Horror Picture Show and The Last Man On Earth! MIDDLE: Welcome back to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show, and me, Nigel Honeybone. This apocalyptic vision set in the late 1960s chronicles the final days on earth of Doctor Robert Morgan, played by the great Vincent Price, as he fights off vampire-like zombies which are taking over everywhere. He equips his home with garlic and mirrors and dispatches all his many intruders with long stakes which he drives right through their vicious black hearts. The Last Man On Earth was an obvious influence on George Romero and the people who gave us Night Of The Living Dead in 1968. Another interesting note regarding this production is how pains have been taken to make the story appear to be set in America rather than Italy. The Italians used to think the British and the Americans were the only experts at horror cinema, having no faith in their own domestic product. This changed in the 1970s when the films of Dario Argento swept the cinematic planet with his bravura Suspiria. Directors Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow helmed The Last Man On Earth. Salkow had been Vincent's agent but had also directed a great deal of television, including The Addams Family and 77 Sunset Strip, and quite an extensive number of westerns. Salkow had directed Price the previous year in Twice Told Tales in 1963. Ragona, on the other hand, had a mere three other films to his credit. No doubt this co-production was financed on the strength of Italians and Americans working together on the same feature, irrespective of who really did the work. The stark black and white cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli captures the ethereal desolation of Roman neighborhoods, streets and avenues. Of course Vincent Price loved Italy and was required by contract to make a couple of films there. He was also cooking and collecting art on the side, so he was quite happy to be in the country which itself is a cradle of both art and food. But the star of this production is unquestionably the screenplay by Richard Matheson, a writer who, in my humble opinion, could do no wrong whatsoever. This opus was based upon his novel I Am Legend which would be adapted a few other times, including Charlton Heston's The Omega Man and more recently Will Smith's I Am Legend. Richard Matheson was responsible for scripting a record number of unforgettable genre hits which include The Incredible Shrinking Man, The House Of Usher, Pit And The Pendulum, Burn Witch Burn, Tales Of Terror, The Raven, Comedy Of Terrors. The Devil Rides Out, The Legend Of Hell House, What Dreams May Come, as well as made-for-TV movies like Trilogy Of Terror. Matheson also scripted sixteen immortal episodes from Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone series. Furthermore, I'd bet at least a quarter of The Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror stories are inspired by Richard Matheson's work! His work is carried on by several talented offspring, including award-winning horror author Richard Christian Matheson, and Christian Richard Matheson is a screenwriter of such fantastic films as Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure as well as their Bogus Journey to Hell. Oh, and Christine Matheson was script editor for Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories television series, if I remember rightly. For decades Richard Matheson disavowed this version of his novel until recently. Time has been kind to The Last Man On Earth and remains the definitive

version of his novel. Let's get back to the film, and I'll see you again when it's all over. CLOSING: If I've learned anything from Stephen King's The Stand, it's that one should never, ever enter a walk-in freezer after an apocalyptic plague! The Last Man On Earth is a strange film for the average English-speaking viewer. Of Italian make, it may seem alternately comic, horrific and super-theatrical. The sets are poor, and the editing and plot far from seamless, but the film's message is superior to standard horror fare. The true horror is an unvarying existence of unconquerable loneliness. Vincent Price is the linchpin of the entire affair. Through his skill and will, the production is graced with believability and pathos. At times, though, even he cannot overcome the schizophrenic tendencies of the work, and his character is rendered overwrought. It is indeed he, more so than the vampires, who infuses unease in the audience. Because of this, one of the most disturbing scenes in the film is where Vincent, overwhelmed, laughs dementedly and unbroken for several truly scary seconds. Anyway, please join me next week when I have the opportunity to burst your blood vessels with another terror-filled excursion to the dark side of the Public Domain on...The Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Toodles!

by Lushscreamqueen

[alsharqawy]

💫

instagram.com/AstroMouda

⛵

facebook.com/Beloved1s    

♀

#Nothing_But_The_Best

♂

💫

Don't ever "hurry to judge ; nor to make any assumptions ;

no matter what"...

Please, I ask you this,

because I (for an example) am "unpredictable" in every way & so is my fate/destiny, as it actually been always, and will continue to be... Therefore, I've learned a lot, to not ever do or think or feel in such a way that made me realize through the experiences that it'd turn the whole fated-specific-situations into an entirely different "mixed-up, foggy" outcome...

💫 May be this is why I've been keeping it all out there, on the table, with all of my cards are being faced-up...

💫

Then I even have brought it with me to that point/level of both:

"Authenticity, Integrity, Honesty and Being-truly"

&

"Letting-it-all-go

and

Creating-anew"

🌟

I

"by the way"

work

as a freelance-

"Writer/Editor/Translator along with all the writings & editing in these languages (Arabic+English+French)

+

"All Inclusive Computing Services"...in which I can apply all of the mentioned above while using the programs that I personally installed on my computer 💻 along with all the windows installation specifications and working professionally on most of the common programs including the "Office suite" & the "Photoshop" of course.... And I have added the services that's relevant to the e-marketing + web-development & such... And that's when I ran by chance to work with one of the famous business leaders in our city (which is also famous for its unique location "on both the River-Nile & the Mid-White-Sea) and on top of all that, its famous Carved/Engraved Wooden Furniture, which I had the chance to work with one of the most popular & successful business-men during the time period of 2008 till February 2012... I worked with several factories & establishments during those years, had many positions in each one of them, specifically in the "exporting department"🏬 till I made enough knowledge, awareness & worldwide connections that could be "way good enough" + my own specialized skills in doing my own work-services to any one who's actually seeking a good & better service than the rest of the nonsense we all witnessed all the time, every where...

That's all good of course, and you may have wondered why have I been transferring myself from one business/work/place to another all the time... And the answer is simply united in all the world🌍 Working for "others" is always draining one's own life' energy...etc... They all are alike, in each country, every where, like a real-life' vampires or something more like it!... Even that 1st one I have ever worked with "my uncle", he's actually the middle son of the only sister to my late father... And that "uncle" turned out to be vicious & has so much weird unexplained hate in his twisted self, to the point "as I remember" he once came to our house to argue with my father about {how rightfully he thinks of himself as he has the right to claim a part of our own"owned" house🏡}, I never forget how angry & sad he caused my father to deeply feel, while my dad was the only one who actually always visited them before & after his sister died & her husband too, my dad never saved his energy in whatsoever as long as it was going to help his nephews & nieces feel better about their lives, in every which way he could...

And although all that contrast & oppositions between such close-humans-relationships ; but that never let any of us down "concerning humanity at least", we (specifically, my father & me) were always up-to-help, without never thinking of any return nor even a "thank you"...

My Dad has passed-over in November 4th 1998, he was my Idol in every way, even though, as a very "rebel" teenager back then before 98 of course, we both were like one & his opposition, with so many arguing situations which all of course been caused by me being...well "me", and he being "his", and with saying "his", I mean a very "idealistic" man who's so compassionate, talented, home&family-oriented with very iconic & still reasonable high standards, modest, down-to-earth human-being!"... That's he being "his".... His birthday was in mid-July (15th) & my mom's in mid October (15th)!  I pray for my father to be in a beautiful better place & resting in peace as I hope for my own self one day, to be all together in the heavenly garden of Aden, and I pray for my mom to be in a good health and to be able to let her worried mind be at ease and care-free as she should very well be in this stage of her life of course, I try & I do help a lot from time to time, if not on a daily basis, indeed... As do my sister as well, my sis is July 31th 1974, single, working as a Doctor Teaching French-literature in the college in the same city, we still all living together, for we already have a home/house of our own, that has 3 floors, my bro (November 3rd 1971) got married & living in the apartment above since 2004, has Jana & Jodie adorable two little angels, he's a Chemist at the Official-Water-Company in the city...

And as I was saying we all (mom, sis & I) have got to be together through this, specially since 2000, when mom had a stroke & moved to be hospitalized in the main "Heart Academy" in the capital city of Cairo, and stayed there for months, and I was forbidden by "her 4 brothers" my uncles, to even go to check on her, ever, they "between themselves & their wives" have considered/announced me as an outsider, since I "in their book" wasn't good enough for their standards & how life should be lived!!!

Because of the way they were "hearing" about me "being me" before that in years!!!

in that mean-time, I was here in my same-old-same-city all alone in the whole house, because my sis did of course go & stay with my mom during the whole time, except for 2 or 3 days to come in here to get something done & go back to mom, while I am still all alone in this house... my bro? You can say I was even loner with my bro at home, than with him not at home at all!

Yes, he's just "being him"!!!

Anyways;

I did "rebel"

as I always do,

but this time in a very different & unexpected way, even from me to me...!...

I (before this rebellion to even begin) was smoking two packs a day, along with pain-killers of very powerful type of course, occasionally drink or smoke weed, both, or not at all,

I just wasn't labeled

nor attached to anything whatsoever...

So, coming in those "testing days" while mom & sis away from me (5 hours car-travel) with no ability to go and see her, I could of course, against all restrictions, I would, but I didn't, because I knew how "caring" mean indeed, than they mistakenly thought they did... for if I ever went there & caused any kind of upset in the atmosphere around my mom, while she's in that very critical condition, they would all "point fingers at me" saying, "he is "meaning I am" wronged in everything and came to make my mom even more ill than she already is & may even cause her to...heaven forbid...! God! Of course, I didn't hand them that satisfaction & just stayed "low", very-unusually-for-my-own-habit "low".... And even did cut-down smoking at once without even noticing any feedback from its own withdrawal-influences & of course, along with whatsoever else that's mainly "bad", for my own health at least & also was a very bog factor of a distraction in a "time" that's just needs a hell of a "fighter", not a "smoker" or another shit... So, I developed everything "good" that's in me, and made it "in deed" out there in the "normal daily life", through at least making the house/home as much as mom would do when she's good as new, so I did it all, I went from a person who don't even make simple fast Sandwich of cheese or any other something, to a person who make a "Cake au chocolat" & a very good one indeed, in each and every morning when mom got home, plus making luch for all of us, and of course I cooked two types of meals as the list of mom's forbidden food on her health was quite long... I made it my job, to just take care of the whole home, basically "mom" and the rest is just as one... every day for 2 years and a half, cleaning, rearranging, cooking, making-errands, taking-care of mom, sis & even my bro... till she got a bit better with keeping on her "med" on due time, and started to get slowly step by step again to make a life on my own for my own... And within a year, I did it, in a very Aquarian way, I became a very artistic hand-writing-designer in the city, making banners by my own bare hands with specific stuff that mold & spark & shine even on its own, with no lights attached to it, not around it... among other advertisements ideas & .... just in 3 or 4 months, I became dealing with the top-business-men & women in the city, without even having an office of my own that they could come by & see it, I worked from home, without a business card, nor a mobile phone, nor any "usual" thing, and they all trusted & dealt with me, on just because I was "being me"... those 3 to 4 month were exactly happening in the winter & spring of the great year of "2003"!!! Only to get a partial "Amnesia" accidentally on 1 sec around 6 or 7 pm on June 12th 2003... I lost a lot of my existing memory back then actually, really, even when my sis came (as they afterwards told me all about what I still not remember at all), when my sis came to visit me at the hospital, I said to her in a very innocent & spontaneous way: "if you just have came 15 minutes earlier; you'd have caught "dad", he was just her & left before you come"!!! AND she just went outside-all-crying....

And the "journey" went on.....

Thanking God in everything & for everything

of which some I know and a lot that I don't, as we all...

💫

Although all of the heartbreaking that I have had my very own large part of, during the very welcoming-heart-open- spontaneous journey of my own way in life...

Through it all ;

along with all the turned-double-face/backstabbing "friends"... And each & every single thing/experience/feeling that you'd actually think of...!

👀

👀

👀

Here

I am

Mahmoud Souliman Alsharqawy

that's my 1st - middle & last name

Born on Jan 26th 1978,

10:30 am (local-time),

Damietta - Dumyat, Egypt.

I really don't know how to be so focused enough to come-up with a specific question that would in its answer open the door for me to a paved road of spontaneity, productivity & prosperity...

I'm just so confused by all that life has already let me go through for all my life, because I have literally been living my life "LIVE" ever since I was just 5 years old... which was the first year I ever worked and began working & continued working ever since, at first it was at my uncle's fashion-factory, they "my family" decided to let me be with him each summer "working", only because they couldn't "handle me, nor my rebel-flowing-energy", I therefore wanted just to be "out & about", no matter what///.... still, I was among the top 3 of my class in school, each year, my overall marks at the finals of every year were all FULL-MARK 200/200. Till the next phase of my life came along & I became so divided on so many varieties of activities & interests that no 24-hours could ever be enough for'em... Practiced Kung-Fu, Gymnastics, Creative-writing {had my own poems in both languages English & Arabic}, Basket-ball, Foot-ball, Swimming, Ping-Pong, and so many other interests/hobbies that all were equally interesting to me & I Aced them all as well...!

Not to mention my ever-lasting-on-going "relationships", world-wide, since the mid-90's through (remember those organizations that were able to let people from all around the world could write to each other, through 1st we send our own info & they compare it to what they have from others & do matching, we wait about 3 weeks or 2 at best to get a letter through the local post-office & all, and see who would be our match is, and gladly write be to her "in my case", and... wait another weeks... I think the organisation named "ICS" & the other organisation was "TransWorld" and both were in Finland as I can recall, I got their address from their own adds in a local popular magazine that was a hit in our country in those days, it was called

"The Youth"  So many great things have happened, in a blink of an eye, in both the 80's & the 90's and suddenly came the 2000 & life just took a whole different turn & a whole different way of turning!!!

💫

As I mentioned before when I fell down on the edge of the sidewalk that we were setting on... with my height 6.1 & without choosing a way of falling as it's all sudden in very fast speed of very short time, and I fell on the back of my right-ear, that thing that is responsible of channeling the fluids from the spine to the brain & also for balance...

I took 2 years in treatment... One year & a half I was re-educating myself from the scratch

"talking & speaking the words that are actually on my mind".... & then 3 years more to remember my own way in living, my skills, my talents...!!!

In the very beginning, after I got home🏡 from the hospital🏥

One night, after midnight,

One of the high-school "sweethearts" when she knew about what happened "she knew from one of the female friends that came and visited me while I was in the hospital laying in bed with those salty-fluids attached in my veins... And when she knew, I was already in the house continued on the medical treatment from one famous doctor specializing in the surgery of the brain and its nerves... And I was working on my "talking" which was so much getting on every sensitive nerve in my already damaged brain... So, that girl 👧 phoned me one night in the very late hours of it... I was setting up on the small sofa that I like, after I turned it around to face the TV 📺 and my headphone 🎧 bugged into the TV so I can watch & hear the voices out loud 🔊 in the MBC 2 movie channel without hurting anyone in the house with any of the noise... So, she called me & after saying hi and how am I feeling during all of this, she noticed that I'm not "being me" at all as she surely could know even on the phone, specially on the phone... So, while she sensed that I'm being hurt deeply inside, for just not being able to speak my mind normally & spontaneously as I have always been... So, without even saying anything about it, she just went from talking with me smoothly in whatever general matter & then into the next, nonstop, with that sense of humor that could actually let me even continue with her in that "life'talk"

&

Continued doing that in every single late-night, for more than 3 to 4 months, as I can remember!

Adding that the entire right-half of my body 🌗 from head-to-toe was hardly feeling anything when touching or even pinching (if I said it right)

And those two very obvious signs "the difficulty in talking & the senseless half of the body" those were just the two obvious signs

about

"me being"

"not me at all"

those two have took over 2 years & 4 months to actually get "better" & then another few years to just be "okay" and as that "doctor" said to me during that last part, he said:

"whatever you do ; do not include (staying-home-till-getting-better) as an option at all & no matter what...

For your real unique treatment is actually during "you being" in living-life-itself... It's always has been the greatest teacher to all & also the most efficient and effective healer of all".

That session was just supposed to be a normal checkup, my mom & sis were inside the the room & setting on the doctor'office-table-chairs that are facing his own main chair, but they're listening to the doctor' as well as me, while I was setting on the side of the Chaslong or what's its proper name?! Anyway, I, during the very first words of his, just put my hand in my pocket & brought-out my cigarettes'box & the lighter and opened it & took a cigarette into between my lips & just lit it up during all the time I was eye-to-eye with him, nodding, not even a blink👀

"mom and sis" could really have a hard/heart-attack, and she both sigh out loud saying my name with a very not believing tone, but the doctor swiftly & smoothly raised his hand ✋ to them while saying "it's okay" and looked at me ; saying "but I'm just concerned if you're a heavy smoker or just occasionally"... In that one moment of pure spontaneity, I actually regained a very important part of my memory, which is "speaking English" and I instantly replied to him saying in English "no, no worries doctor, it's just occasionally & I've been out of it several times as I please when I do, thank you so ; though"

& he in return responded to me with that line I mentioned a bit earlier "about : whatever you do...." he said all those words back to me in "English"

&

The weirdest thing of it

That none of us was even a little surprised by the other... Except of course my poor mom & sis 😂

As life & living go by ; I found myself having spent more than

10 whole years

in life itself

as it is my own completion of the rest of that very treatment!

🔆

& ever since

I've been in & out of jobs

(in which I was working for others)

till I had it

&

got it all over with...

And been on my own,

very very "own",

since March 2012 till this very moment...

💫

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#Nothing_But_The_Best

♂

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13lW93YL37I)

[topmixtrends]

IT’S A SHOCK to see Stieg Larsson’s name appear so much in reviews of Hideo Yokoyama’s doorstop-sized police thriller Six Four, translated from the Japanese by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies. What Yokoyama has in common with Nordic noir’s posthumous leader — deep slices of daily life in their respective worlds, two middle-aged and unlikely heroes, the corruption of bureaucracies meant to help us — is really less important than what’s different.

You won’t find Nazis and neo-Nazis in this book. Or sexual humiliation and cruelty. Or lurid, gruesome deaths (which, in Larsson, tend to happen because of the sexual humiliation and cruelty). Or a diminutive, tattooed hacker. The wheels of suspense don’t spin as quickly as they do for Larsson, either (at least not for the first 400 pages).

All of this may sound like a criticism of Six Four but it isn’t. Early buzz among English and American reviewers had me expecting a Japanese version of The Girl Who … instead of what I found: a startlingly unique thriller, meticulously constructed, that devotes more time and attention to the existential sufferings of its main character than to the crime the book is supposed to be about.

Be forewarned, readers: Six Four doesn’t ask for your patience — it demands it. This is a long book, and the slow pace makes it sometimes feel even longer. Yokoyama builds tension and suspense with a careful accumulation of details, not a rapid run up Freytag’s Pyramid.

A publishing sensation in Japan (according to the publisher, more than a million copies have been sold), Six Four follows police media relations chief Yoshinobu Mikami as he wrestles with the anniversary of a daunting cold case that still casts a chill over his department 14 years later. The turmoil of the looming anniversary — and how to spin it — is matched only by Mikami’s inner turmoil as he realizes what no middle-aged man wants to realize: that his entire professional life has been spent chasing his own tail.

Even so, Mikami’s problems seem a bit steeper, graver, than your average gumshoe’s. His relationship with Minako, his wife, is on life support; his relationship with his rebellious daughter Ayumi is even worse (more on that in a moment); his career achievements, which once gave him a sense of purpose, ring hollow. Even on a bad day, Jack Reacher doesn’t have these kinds of problems, for crying out loud. Why the heck is it so necessary? The answer is simple: because Yokoyama is after something more than creating another conventional entry in the thriller genre.

Mikami was once a detective, a pretty good one — collegial, respected, capable of turning up the heat to the right temperature in the interrogation room — but now he’s taken over a post handling police media relations as the National Police Agency (NPA) braces for that humiliating anniversary.

No department is more vital to handling the optics than Media Relations: in fact, the NPA has decided to send its top cop, the commissioner general, to visit the home of the Amamiyas. Their seven-year-old daughter Shoko was kidnapped and murdered even after the family paid a 20-million-yen ransom. The police bungled the pursuit of the killer, who was never brought to justice, and subsequently call the case “six four” — a reference to the year of the kidnapping, which was also the last year of Emperor Hirohito’s life (in the Japanese calendar, not the Gregorian one).

The girl’s mother died of grief, but the father, Yoshio, lives on somehow — Yokoyama paints a harrowing portrait of a man moving through a sad, twilight world. The commissioner’s planned meeting with him will be a grand gesture — as media relations stunts usually are — to show the public that the Amamiyas haven’t been forgotten, that the hunt for the murderer will continue.

It’s Mikami’s job, and his staff’s, to choreograph that meeting and position it in the best light. That seems nearly impossible, and not simply because the police press corps are harder to handle than a hornet’s nest: Amamiya himself doesn’t want the meeting. Why would he? The police failed him. What’s the point of hollow promises and a photo opportunity now? They won’t bring back his daughter or his wife.

Still, Amamiya allows Mikami inside his home to plead for the meeting. When Mikami sets eyes on him — when the front door first opens — he is stunned by how much Amamiya has aged in the past 14 years. “It didn’t seem possible,” Mikami thinks, recalling what Amamiya looked like at the time of the kidnapping. “His hair had turned white and been left to grow. His skin was pale, leaden […] the very essence of an empty shell.”

It is an awkward meeting, and Mikami leaves Amamiya without accomplishing anything. At home, his own house is just as quiet and empty even though he shares it with another person. He and Minako don’t know where Ayumi is. Their daughter is a troubled teen who has either run away or been kidnapped (though the former seems more likely — in flashbacks we see her clash so violently with her father that running away seems like the only option).

With her disappearance, the oxygen has been sucked from her parents’ lives. Their evenings are spent waiting — hoping for Ayumi’s return — and being troubled by strange phone calls in which the caller listens for several moments before hanging up. Is it Ayumi? Does she want to come home? They have no idea — the caller never says a word.

No signs of their daughter, no satisfaction in his work, no tenderness, no sex or intimacy — this is the atmosphere Yokoyama creates over several hundred pages.

For readers impatiently waiting for something more to happen, what Yokoyama told a Malay Mail reporter earlier this year may be helpful: “In order to describe the main character’s feelings or passions, you need a big organization that is like a big ocean that I let the character swim in.”

Eventually something noirish surfaces in this ocean — finally. As he coordinates the commissioner’s meeting with Amamiya (who hasn’t even agreed to it yet), Mikami uncovers strange dissonances — conflicting messages, a sense of invisible maneuvers taking place, of a conspiracy somehow tied to the commissioner’s visit. A shadowy power struggle is going on between Mikami’s old and new superiors in Administrative Affairs and Criminal Investigations, and he can’t understand why or who it is supposed to benefit.

A longtime investigative journalist in the Tokyo area, Yokoyama offers a wealth of intriguing observations in the course of Mikami’s odyssey. He describes the contentious nature of the police press corps and their use of boycotts to manipulate access, how non-disclosure agreements are used to limit the impact of press coverage on investigations, the cheapest way to disguise a voice on the phone (use a helium-filled balloon), the customs that a grieving parent uses to honor a child’s death, the “kindred fanaticism” that exists between cops and reporters, and more.

All of this detail gives us a thorough sense of the world of police media and press relations. The question is whether we really need all 566 pages.

Any seasoned editor would have found a way to take the book’s final 150 pages (where the story takes off in an unexpected pursuit with an ingenious outcome) and pare down the other 400 to create something truly similar to Larsson or the other writers sometimes mentioned in reviews of Yokoyama’s novel: Jo Nesbø and Gillian Flynn.

But it is the heavy emphasis on the despair of Mikami, a mid-level bureaucrat, and the stifling atmosphere of his life — page after page of his wandering through mazes of bureaucracy — that point us to somewhere else.

With every sling and arrow inflicted on Mikami, with every insult he receives that makes his “face and body flush as a burning shame, furnace-like in its force, began to well up inside him,” Mikami doesn’t evoke one of Stieg Larsson’s characters. Mikami reminds us more of Thoreau’s men leading “lives of quiet desperation.” Of Willy Loman, too. Or the narrator of Fight Club. Even 1984’s Winston Smith — but not Mikael Blomkvist. Mikami belongs in their illustrious fictional company — a litany of characters fighting for their humanity in societies that have forgotten them.

And that brings us back to the novel’s length. Yokoyama’s “big ocean” enables us to watch Mikami as he slowly finds his way back to himself, to a meaning for his life in a world in which the traditional modes of self-identity — as husband, parent, lover, consummate professional — have fallen away. It is a long, painful journey, and along the way he encounters many former colleagues who have faced that same dilemma … and crashed.

But Mikami doesn’t; he persists. He endures. In the face of insults, he disciplines his responses and wears the Zen Buddhist armor of gaman, of stoicism and grace. Mikami “submitted to Akama’s will,” Yokoyama writes of Mikami’s response to one of his enemies. “He’d taken everything on board and donned the uniform of obedience. That didn’t mean he’d stopped hoping.”

This, I think, is another reason why the book has been so successful. Yes, there is a devilishly clever twist in the novel’s later pages, but we spend a lot of time with Mikami before we get there. And we don’t mind it: we like his company. Mikami is so sympathetic, so heroic, even in apparent defeat.

In Six Four Yokoyama finds a way, within the familiar tropes and conventions of the thriller genre, to give us a search for meaning and dignity that transcends its Japanese milieu. Mikami’s struggle is the same struggle that great thinkers of every age have written about. When Mikami uncovers enough of the hidden power struggle to consider exposing it, he knows he’ll be punished and “tossed off to some post in the mountains.” But it doesn’t matter. He decides “he would rather start from scratch in the middle of nowhere. The smallest paths are still paths.”

That line rings with the kind of Thoreauvian insight that makes Mikami’s journey memorable and profound.

¤

Nick Owchar is executive director of advancement communications at Claremont Graduate University; he blogs regularly at Call of the Siren.

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