Monday, October 31, 2011
Thai Observations #3
Unlike many parts of America, there is an intriguing lack of any distinction between the residential and the commercial in Thailand. Developed roads appear as an endless stream of advertisements regardless of whether one drives along Khao San Road or a dirt track winding through mountain communities. Most homes seem to double as businesses.
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Mike,
ReplyDeletesome time has passed, any updated thoughts on Blood Meridian? I'm considering reading it again.
One of the effects of the thing you describe here- which, alternatively could be described as "commercial developments envelop half this country"- is that it's difficult to be plopped down somewhere and know what region of the country are. The banners for White Shark, or Air Asia, or the little stores that sell Ramen and water, the 7-11s, are this country's strip malls, its generic features. It's a little sad, actually, how generic and repeatable main strips are.
Also, my favorite restaurant in town has Khao Soy Gai, and it was delicious.
Meh, I have unfortunately not been devoting much cognitive effort to that book. These first couple weeks back at MFU have been trying, to say the least. Making me work a lot more than last semester and not paying me for it...plus the culture here doesn't exactly embrace being called out for propagating injustice. Anyway...
ReplyDeleteI do want to reread passages relating to determinism. I didn't pay much attention the first time through, but the judge seems pretty preoccupied with it and a quick Google search reveals many scholars writing about this aspect of the novel. One thought I had while reading was that the summaries that preface each chapter are effectively deterministic. They both determine how we read the chapters, always on the lookout for the particular highlighted episodes, and give the plot away before it unfolds, much like the events of the world could be known before they happen if determinism were true and were we capable of doing all the calculations (cf. Laplace's Demon).