On the usage of the phrase "an enormous fund of time"
In an English translation of Haruki Murakami's story "Sleep", there is a sentence that goes like this: What, then, of the enormous fund of time I had consumed back then reading books?
The original Japanese means that she is wondering about what became of all that time she had spent reading. (She had been a voracious reader but is realizing she doesn't remember much of what she read.)
My question is this: to a native English speaker, does the phrase "enormous fund of time" come across as being unusual? weird? Or is it okay (perhaps because "fund" is used with the verb "consume"... but do you even say "consume a fund")?
Tomoko
Here is the definition of fund (from Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary [2003]) that I suspect the translator had in mind in using the phrase "enormous fund of time":
fund n ... 2 : an available quantity of material or intangible resources : SUPPLY
If you accept (as I do) that time qualifies as a "material or intangible resource," it seems reasonable—despite not being especially common—to refer to "an available quantity" of that resource as a "fund." At any rate, the Eleventh Collegiate's definition 2 suggests that such usage is reasonable.
It does not sound natural
It doesn't have to. It's literature.
'Fund of time' is not correct usage.
It doesn't have to be. It's literature.
An enormous amount of time and long hours as alternatives miss the point. "A fund" is a limited amount of something kept in reserve. Once a fund is exhausted, that's it. No more. A large part of the reader's life has been consumed, never to be replaced. Consumed will do fine. If you "invest" in a fund, you put money in. When you "consume" something from a reserve, you take it out.
"What then", as the OP explains, implies the speaker's dismay at the waste of part of her life, which she has used to no profit. So much of the meaning of this sentence is "invested" in the word "fund".
Strong narrative writing manipulates language in forms we are not used to. That's one of the ways in which literature differs from, say, a service manual.