Rogueish

Trying to assemble some kind of coherent thoughts about flat affect in Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Houellebecq’s Whatever, and Tao Lin’s Shoplifting From American Apparel. Well, Tao Lin does flat affect to an almost parodic extent (but not actually parodic, as that would imply some kind of external standpoint from which to draw a contrast between his affectlessness and something else); Norwegian Wood isn’t exactly about flat affect, but rather a narrator who purports to have emotions but describes them to us with a cool distance; trying to figure out how exactly to position Houellebecq in relation to the other two.