Yesterday I re-read Haruki Murakami's After The Quake. The style is very, well, Japanese: very clean, almost refreshing. It reminds me a great deal of pre-Mao Chinese modernists, although they might take offense. Murakami manages to take the smallest thread of plot and turn it into something cold and interesting. Not cold as in "emotionless," but rather as in the way I would describe Terje Rypdal's (especially Lux Aeterna) or Iro Haarla's music. Smooth as a sheet of ice. No cracks. And once you step onto it all you can do is slide.