Ah, my world is riddled with mystery lately. Here’s some from Murakami:
Okawa glanced at the photo and made a gloomy face. Frown lines appeared between his eyebrows and he blinked in consternation several times. "I’m grateful for the sardine [Okawa is a cat] don’t get me wrong. But I can’t talk about that. I’ll be in hot water if I do." (p. 121)
The dual story lines parallel each other as to mood it seems. Just as Kafka is hiding away since he woke from unconsciousness with blood stains on his shirt, here Nakata in his search for the missing cat Goma is running into what looks like something deeper than just a runaway cat.
Murakami does a great job of storytelling. Either story could likely stand on its own but in alternating chapters between them, with the different style of each, one enhances the other as we catch certain points of relativity. The unconsciousness, the sense of aloneness each character feels, their backgrounds, their reaching out in communication to something other than another human being (Kafka’s mental Crow, Nakata’s speaking with cats) are similar and we are eagerly expecting perhaps a meeting of these two.
If this text were hyperlinked, all these connections would perhaps be shown up for what they are. Therefore, the question is raised of whether hypertext in fact does make life easier for the reader–showing rather than allowing the reader to make this connections himself.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology