[1]I have a bone to pick with one of my favorite writers, Haruki Murakami. I love his books, and breathlessly await each publication. I’ve been tearing through his blockbuster novel, IQ84 [2], which arrived in the States a few weeks ago to rave reviews. And then I saw this, on page 179:
“The teacher was a single woman in her mid-thirties. She was far from beautiful and she wore thick, ugly glasses…. A small woman, she was normally quiet and mild-mannered but she could be surprisingly quick-tempered; once she let her anger out, she became a different person, and no one could stop her.”
Murakami is such an inventive writer, and it slays me to see him engage in one lazy stereotype after another. Can you count them?
Photo by Patrick DeMarchelier [1]