The Style Files
My thoughts on design, writing and entrepreneurship.
Photo credit (background): www.pexels.com
Photo credit (background): www.pexels.com
A Tale for the Time BeingSuffice it to say the cover is great but not something I have permission to use! Here's a close second. Photo credit: www.pexels.com If there's one thing I could convey to designers, it's that some words are definitely worth reading. Most visual people can't be bothered with books or content outside the confines of what's required to get by everyday. That's where magical realism comes in! Even ardent linguists have to admit that some books are a bore. Not so with magical realism: words on the page are as descriptive and alluring as tiles in a mosaic. Why is it still such a hard sell to design geeks?
June also happens to be the month of my birthday so I spent most of the actual day reading. I'm usually a Haruki Murakami fan but have been shopping around for other authors for a while. Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being is nothing short of raw and hilarious. It's like going on vacation to a last-minute place only to have everything work out in your favor. What a beautiful happenstance! Sometimes writing about writing is not nearly as good as the original. Nothing's ever as good as the original, anyway. With that in mind, here's a short excerpt from the book I'm reading with bated breath: "So, everything was great and we were just cruising along, except for the fact that we were living in a total dreamland called the Dot-Com Bubble, and when it burst, Dad's company went bankrupt, and he got sacked, and we lost our visas and had to come back to Japan, which totally sucked because not only did Dad not have a job, but he'd also taken a big percentage of his big fat salary in stock options so suddenly we didn't have any savings either, and Tokyo's not cheap. It was a complete bust. Dad was sulking around like a jilted lover, and Mom was grim and tight and righteous, but at least they identified as Japanese and still spoke the language fluently. I, on the other hand, was totally f$%^#(, because I identified as American, an even though we always spoke Japanese at home, my conversational skills were limited to basic, daily-life stuff like where's my allowance, and pass the jam, and Oh please please please don't make me leave Sunnyvale." Those of you unfamiliar with magical realism might be surprised by its casual style or colorful language. As a rule, it doesn't follow the same structural restrictions as really any other type of writing although it's usually not quite stream of consciousness, either. These stories are often told from the first person narrative and can be incredibly revelatory in nature. That's half the reason the genre is so unpredictable from one story to the next: you're literally bouncing around someone else's mind in a sort of surreal, unfiltered way. I haven't made it very far but do have to say that this book already ties in much larger, more timely themes in its convincing adolescent tone. Issues of self, cultural identity, mental fragility, religion, gender and translation have all made an appearance in the first 60 pages. The web of bubblegum speak is deceitfully sophisticated in its quips and quirks and all the richer for it. I could go on and frankly would love to! Anyway, you get the idea. In summary, this month's inspiration speaks to two timeless loves of my life: artful storytelling and visual overload. It's more like sensory excess in a way though the visual descriptions characteristic of this genre are unparalleled by any other. Do yourself a favor and hit the books! This should make the top of your list though others like Laura Esquivel's classic Like Water for Chocolate or anything by Haruki Murakami would easily pass muster. It's time to revel in your summer reading so you can report back to me later.
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AuthorHi, my name is Martha Oschwald and I'm a content writer focused on design. This page is meant to give you a taste of my writing style and latest musings. Archives
April 2022
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