Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Murakami's sketching out of the character Noboru Wataya in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994) is uncannily similar to how I would describe the false dazzling of Jordan Peterson today and his narcissistic use of arguments to elevate his own image as a master of "taking down" his opponent, appear as an authority on a wide breadth of subjects, and ultimately invite harmful adoptions of his rhetoric in the service of propagating his popularity. 

Murakami describes this academic sleight of hand so aptly, the worshipping born from a sense of confusion-turned-awe. It also reminded me of the themes of debate and speed in Ben Lerner's The Topeka School. 

Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter

Another perfect book by Elena Ferrante on ambiguous and faltering motherhood and daughterhood. 

Unfortunately, the film did not at all do the novel justice and missed out on a lot of nuance: the situatedness of the Neapolitan characters and events in Italy, neither the interiority nor the complex psychic dimensions (sympathetic, sensitive, selfish, etc) of Leda, the narrator, and the stories she tells herself to make sense of her own choices. 

Paula Rego (1935-)

Have loved discovering Rego's incredible illustrations at the Arnolfini in her exhibition Subversive Stories.