1Q84 - Murakami

I've read Murakami for a couple years now. You'll find I've read him frequently. Perhaps far too frequently. 

I stumbled across his "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" book on a wikipedia page. Considering the author's popularity, it was a unique way of finding him. I liked the sound of the novel, the author was dubbed "Kafka's successor". It was a very surreal work, compared to his most popular non-surreal "Norwegian Wood". 1Q84 is in his surrealist works, too. The only novel that he's done that isn't is NW. As far as I'm aware, there are 3 books for 1Q84. I've got a copy with the first 2 of the books in 1 physical book. I'm going to be talking about book 1, which was a real slog and an abandoned ship.

Laying my cards on the table; I've read a lot of Murakami. This might just be my 6th or 7th. This is hailed by some as his magnum opus. It's big enough to at least be hailed as something. Some people say it has a "complex and surreal narrative". It wasn't complex. That's why I read so much of his stuff. It's something you can read on a bus, or pick up for 5 minutes here and there. I'm not saying it's cheap rubbish, it's just got a simple prose, interesting characters, etc.

If, like me, you've read a lot of this guy, and you are actually interested in reading other books, you'll find this stale. It's the same recycled characters. The same pace in all his books. You can read a few hundred pages in 1Q84 and it doesn't really say anything. It's just like his other stuff, but drawn out. I'm being very unfair. I didn't even get half way through one of the books.

After those few hundred pages, I felt my efforts weren't helping me to "get to grips with contemporary Japanese culture", or any of the praises this book and Murakami gets. In a way, it was no more than two adventure stories with a tad of surrealism mixed in with pop culture references. It wasn't bad. It's just overly stale if you're used to it.

To conclude, I'll come back to it. I'll read a few hundred pages more of that monotonous dialogue, irrelevant plot "filler", and then I'll no doubt have to read the other two books in this series. Perhaps it gets good -- but how much do you have to read of it before that happens? If I want to read a large book, I always have Tolstoy.

Murakami - ダンス・ダンス・ダンス

 dance dance dance - Haruki Murakami

This was my seventh Murakami novel. I find it ranks quite highly from those I've read. It's a loose sequel to his previous A Wild Sheep Chase, which I've also read and enjoyed, if feeling it a little sparse.

Murakami has said he really enjoyed writing this one, as he'd received unexpected fame from the publication of Norwegian Wood -- a bildungsroman work (Catcher In The Rye et al) . This was a "healing act" for him, and I believe I used this novel as a "healing act" for myself. Murakami is something that isn't overly difficult to read, to comprehend, to enjoy. I feel this is why Murakami is such a modern writer; we can all use his work to mellow the blows dealt in our society.

I'd discovered Murakami when I was trawling though wikipedia.org. I'd never heard of him before, but was looking for surreal Kafka-esque works, and stumbled across a page for the novel "Hard Boiled Wonderland & The Edge of the World".

I found this a fairly fresh novel, but I've come to realise there isn't much variation in Murakami's work, which isn't such a bad thing, and why I find myself turning to him in times of need. It's as if his books are all stories based in the same surrealist world, but do actually offer a direct channel between reality. Perhaps it's not so surreal after all? He is becomming very popular over here in the west, whilst already being Japan's most popular author, something I was unaware of when discovering him. He's very in touch with western pop culture, as is Japan, and at times I don't feel I'm reading something written for the audience of a different culture.

In dance dance dance, the major themes in Murakami's work shine. The surrealist barriers paint over the loss of abandonment, isolation in society, the absurd, and of course, the joyous connection we get from reading his work: the building and discovery of human relationships to others and to art, especially music. I've actually discovered a lot of literature and music from the namedropping, especially some of the jazz standards. This is why  he has more unique style and approach than simply a modern-day Kafka.

This novel stands as a midway mark for the author's current bibliography, and after writing his renown "Norwegian Wood" it's a great return to his more surreal, metaphysical world. I found the balance between realistic and surreal content spot on, as well as the books size and chapter breakdown.

It's a fun, exciting, well paced read that you'll draw many strong comparisons to real life situations and fundamental meanings, if any. I find the confines of his work explore the sense of these meanings more than accomplished works of metaphysics.

Murakami can drift into non-accessible fantastical elements, drawn out adventures that supposedly resemble something in real life, especially his more lengthy works like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and what I've read of the latest 1Q84. It's about seeing past those clouds with enough of the connection that makes his work a joy to read, and dance dance dance is a perfect example of this, making it one of the author's finest.

鍵 -- Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

The Key by Tanizaki is one of the most interesting short novels I've read to date. Being written entirely via diary entries between man and wife and set during post-WW2, I thought I was in for something very oblique and dated.

Perhaps the cover should have told me more. It's not overly explicit, and by today's standards certainly isn't.

This is a completely absorbing and exciting novella formed via such intricate diary entries yet I find it absurd how Tanizaki managed to convincingly write the wife's entries... This is the first work I've read by Tanizaki; perhaps his at times cynical writing portrayed the bitter attitude women have towards their husbands; perhaps that's how he felt women in his life viewed him?

This bitterness and disgusts towards men seems to be an extremely accepted standard by women in real life and in the media,  and it  definitely isn't something I expected to relate to in a Japanese novel from the 50s which is how unique this very short book is.

ねじまき鳥クロニクル

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle -- Haruki Murakami

This book is my 6^th Murakami novel. I've read half of the short stories published in one of his volumes too.

I made the decision to jump straight on to Wind-Up Bird after Sheep Chase (another of his novels). Bird is a big book. Okay, at 600-something pages it's not a tome that's going to give you wrist strain, but what I'm saying is that this book feels big. It reads as a long book, it's very slow to get going. Pages and chapters don't go down quickly, and there's not a lot of depth to them either. There is suspense at the end of the chapter – as in most of his stuff I've read -- only to open with a disappointing conclusion next chapter.

This is hailed as Murakami's best thus far. Well, I've seen it said that this is “his most accomplished”. A lot of the material here started off as short stories, seen in the pages of literary magazines and the like. It's interesting that the Japanese and English versions of the book differ; different chapters are in some; the content is chopped up and moved about all over the place.

There is some fantastic writing in this book, and there is also some extremely mundane filler content that really feels like the book was an experiment of short stories trying to be sewn together. For someone that's had a fair share of Murakami's stuff, perhaps I was able to see where the threading in this book lay.

You'll find yourself reading letters from a 16 year old, a main plot that never quite satisfies your thirst, recollections of the Russo-Japanese war by an old man, with a meagre sprinkling of surrealism. Once you uncover the details of the recipe, you're left with a taste of something that never quite hit the spot, but leaves you hungry for more of the content that respectively held itself as a decent short story in its own right.

羊をめぐる冒険 -- 村上 春樹

This is my fifth Murakami novel. For English speakers, this is Murakami's first novel. He has written 2 novels prior to this, but apparently finds them “weak”, and those books cost a hefty price if you want them.

A strange right-wing political figure sends the protagonist on a task to find a sheep. The main character has a girlfriend with ears that have special sexual powers. It's no surprise that years later Murakami won the Franza Kafka award. When people discuss Murakami they'll struggle not to mention how surreal some of his work is. After reading a fair amount of Murakami, I can tell you they're not all this crazy.

A Wild Sheep Chase, despite sounding like a fairy tale, contains philosophical undertones yet has my respect for remaining accessible, interspersing his writing with comical, humane moments. It's interesting how an author can write so imaginatively, yet still put forward profound thoughts on modern life and people. I think that in the realm of Murakami, once you venture into a few chapters of his work, you'll realise how much depth his world holds. Despite our common perceptions of everyday life, inside all of us are worlds full of insanity. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes distraught, sometimes unbearable. I feel that I relate to Murakami's average-man protagonist (which are likely based on himself). The unnamed main character in Sheep Chase is summoned away from his mundane existence via bizarre exposure to this world inside the book and finds his real identity, just by glimpsing underneath the surface of our consumerist culture. Perhaps there is a metaphysical adventure inside all of us, or solely in our dreams. Murakami not only gives us as readers enough introspective leverage to really think about our lives and the society we live in, but enough to challenge it.

The anonymous man in our book has an intriguing relationship with 'the girl with the ears', which is beautifully portrayed, without fighting the clichéd constraints of 'modern romance'. As I progressed through the novel, I found the book losing all convention, and morphing into the completely surreal; diving head-first into an allegorical nature. After I'd finish it, the presence of the characters and Murakami's attack on contemporary alienation stick with me even now, a day later... even months later.

This is his first accessible book, packed with a terrific ending that I found myself reading the last 50 pages without any breaks. When I finished it, I sat there trying to make sense of it all, warranting the book numerous re-reads. It definitely does make sense, but only internally. I was moved with a completely unique sense of loss, something that actually made me happy. Whilst Murakami has written a book like this, it shows he still has the power to invoke human emotions and highlight the issues of our lives and emotions without being completely depressing.

I found myself absorbed in the prosaic setting, slowly transferred into this bizarre universe that's only just outside my doorstep.