December 2013: Haruki Murakami

Our last author of the year! Murakami's pretty mainstream-popular these days, and has even made it on the 1001 list for more than one title. Have you hopped on the bandwagon? What do you think of his writing, does his style appeal to you?

Poly, my first Murakami was 1Q84 which I loved. After that I read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle which I also loved.

My bookshelves have Kafka on the Shore and The Elephant Vanishes awaiting attention. It has been difficult to stop myself from purchasing all his available works.

Do you propose a particular novel for December?

Nope, it's entirely up to everyone which they want to read here. :) Folks are welcome to discuss their plans first, and maybe some choose the same title, but no pressure at all to do so; many of us simply choose what most appeals to us, and we discuss opinions of both the book and the author's style and message and whatnot. It can actually be pretty interesting when people are weighing in with thoughts from various books and still sharing similar things. :)

I read Kafka on the Shore earlier this year, and frankly was not a big fan when I sat back and reflected afterwards. It wasn't bad, and it actually pulled me in pretty thoroughly, but... well here is my review if you want to see my thoughts. (Warning: I tossed out some questions that bothered me that are potentially a tiny bit spoilery, but there's also a warning on the review for that paragraph.) So, I'm not especially looking forward to reading more of his work, personally. I will in fact pass him by come December. Eventually I will read at least one more (I won't judge an author solely on one work), but my library has only two others, and I have my own goals for the year that I'm already not going to be achieving without the help of one of his huge volumes, lol.

My reaction to Murakami's work would appear to be the opposite to yours. I liked his style and found the surreal elements, and even some loose ends, appropriate in that these were mechanisms he used to ask questions about life issues and were not the core to the message of the novels.

I can see how he would not be everyone's cup of tea but the works I have read so far have hit the spot for me.

I read your review up to the spoiler alert and I think my next Murakami will be Kafka on the Shore so that I can better appreciate your review and discuss the book.

Peter

I don't mind the surreal stuff, as long as it's fitting to the story. But I expect things to be fully incorporated and go somewhere, you know? I'll hold off commenting further until you've read it :P

I read Kafka on the Shore a while back and only rated it 3 stars, but it still resonates with me and I remember it more fondly. I didn't write a review, so I can't put my finger on why I didn't rate it higher. For December I think I will read After the Quake. This should be quite a bit different because it is a collection of short stories that are the imaginative response to the 1995 earthquake. Looking forward to it!

i just started reading 1Q84 and cant put it down. i read wind up bird chronicle and loved it.

After the Quake was my first Murakami, which I read after seeing a well done play based on it. It hooked me, and I read nothing but Murakami for a long time after that. My favorites are Windup Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84, but they're all good, IMO.

I have read 1Q84 and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and loved them. The thing that grabs me is Murakami's ability to get the reader to look at situations in a different way; to help the reader see different worlds in the real world.

I've only read Kafka on the Shore. I became a big fan of his right away :) Loved it!

I agree with pgmcc's comment above, that his writing inspires me to see novelty in the mundane. Seems to open up new connections. I found his writing to be quite spiritual.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle will probably be my next pick.

I've read everything I can get my hands on by him. There's someone on Twitter who tweets when there's a short story available for download. S/he feeds my addiction!

The first novel I read was Dance Dance Dance. I was looking for something new and liked the cover. I read it and was hooked. I read its prequel A Wild Sheep Chase after it, which didn't matter because the stories overlap and at times seem to be the same story viewed from a different angle. A few years later, when the internet had improved (or my ability to wrestle it to my will had), I tracked down Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, because I'm a completist.

I'd say that if you like the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or the kind of distortion of reality that you get with Franz Kafka, you'll like a lot of what Murakami does.

My absolute favourite is The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, but 1Q84 has recently given that a run for its money. Wind Up Bird had that unsettling feeling about it that it had been written just for me.

I like the dreamlike quality to Murakami's writing - the feeling that you don't know what's real and what isn't, or even what's possible and impossible. I like the minute details like his fixation with food or the shape of women's ears mixed in with the ridiculous like a cat that can speak, or a woman who has to stay up all night because her sister is in an enchanted sleep.

His nonfiction is good, too. Underground is a very touching look at the Japanese people and their reaction to disaster, centred on people affected by the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway. I don't usually like to read about authors whose work I love, because I'm scared of shattering the illusion, but What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a very oblique non-autobiography.

I think the thing I like most about Murakami is the way he puts Western literature through a Japanese filter. He isn't a straight Japanese writer, in the way Mishima or Soseki were, focused on Japanese culture & character. His twin author crushes are Raymond Carver and Franz Kafka, both of whom he has translated into Japanese (as well as Trueman Capote), and his writing feels to me as though he is trying to understand his own Japaneseness through their eyes. Maybe I'm over thinking it, though.

But anyway... Aside from the books referenced above, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World is also worth a look.

As for me, I've subscribed to The New Yorker just so I can access their back issues to read the Murakami short stories scattered through the archive, and I'm waiting for the English translation of Colourless Tsukuru to come out.

It's an illness, I guess!

missizicks -

I think you're going to like Colorless Tsukuru then. I read it and really enjoyed it, more so than 1Q84.

lilisin, I really can't wait! I'm getting butterflies just thinking about it. Did you read it in Japanese? I can just about cope with books for 6 year olds in Japanese! My teacher told me that it's great.

Yes, I read it in Japanese right when it came out! My best friend sent it to me and then we read it together in case there was something I wasn't understanding since I'm still building up my reading skills in Japanese. Fortunately Murakami Haruki is quite straightforward to read as he uses fairly basic sentence structure and repeats his vocabulary a lot.

Happy to find another Japanese lit fan on the LT forums!
If you're interested I have a thread devoted to Japanese lit here.

あぁ、凄い！ありがとうございました。I've already added your library and will be gleaning titles from your thread, too.

I bought Murakami's translation of Breakfast At Tiffany's a couple of trips ago, thinking I could compare it to the original, but haven't tried yet. My husband bought ダンス、ダンス、ダンス, so maybe I'll have a go at reading that in Japanese. It would make for a nice symmetry!

>11 missizicks:. "I'd say that if you like the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or the kind of distortion of reality that you get with Franz Kafka, you'll like a lot of what Murakami does."

Well, that explains it. I recently read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and I really wanted to like it. I remember that really I wanted to like One Hundred Years of Solitude too (I lived in Colombia for a few years), and I just didn't get it.

It's not as though I dislike either book, but I really felt like they had no cohesive force and that the "magical" parts didn't add anything to the story. And I am an avid science fiction reader, so I don't mind fantastical asides (for example in Slaughterhouse Five), when I feel that they add a level of meaning to the story. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the magical parts of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle added. I really enjoyed the writing--particularly the parts about the wells and the war--but I came away from the book feeling that it all just didn't mean anything.

I am not afraid of big complicated books. I loved Dhalgren, Infinite Jest and even 2666. I dragged myself through Ulysses in college, and while I didn't exactly enjoy the experience, I felt like I "got it."

Can anyone help me understand what I am missing? I would like to read IQ84 but I don't want to end up with the same empty feeling.

>16 vwinsloe: I think we feel fairly similarly about Murakami. I don't have issue with fantasy at all, and I thought the writing in general (of Kafka on the Shore) was pretty good. I even thought that some of the -make you think- kind of angles weren't bad. But put all together, I just didn't feel like the parts added up right and was just more annoyed than anything.

#16 Can anyone help me understand what I am missing?

I won't claim I can help you understand what you are missing but I can tell you my take on both The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

In relation to the Marquez book first, I found strong parallels between the isolated town and a place I used to live. The isolation where I lived was not as severe as that described in One Hundred Years, but some of the attributes of life in the town were similar to what I observed. Firstly, the place seemed to exist in a parallel world to other places. It had its own social evolution. There were characters who people knew but who seemed to live apart and locals had strange perceptions of these individuals. New from the rest of the world impinged on the locals only slowly and often in a distorted fashion. In addition, many people were not very sophisticated but some of them acquired status through being the oracle of all things. They interpreted news from the outside and their explanations often bore not relationship with the truth, yet their explanation was what became accepted wisdom amongst the local community.

In the Wind Up Bird Chronicle I saw most of the "unusual" events and actions as a mechanism to have the reader break from his/her normal view of the world and look at things from a different angle. One aspect of this was the main character becoming unemployed and then discovering the world around his apartment appeared to be like a parallel universe in which things happen differently. Having been out of work for a period some years ago I can relate to this notion. The world did seem to be a different place. I was going places and seeing things that I would never see had I been off at work. Murakami just plays on that difference to force the reader into a different place. I felt the unusual setting helped emphasise the elements of the story that were the main subject of the tale, i.e. relationships, growing older, friendship, loneliness, pain, etc...

1Q84 has a lot of this sort of thing, and I would be hard pressed to explain the precise elements of any particular piece of the magical realism, but I felt that was unimportant, but was simply a means to an end. I think if one tries to look for an explanation of that sort of thing one will be driven mad. Take for example Kafka's Metamorphosis. The fact that the protagonist turned into a giant insect is irrelevant. The critical aspect is how he, his family, and his work colleagues reacted to the change and how they coped or didn't cope with it. I have used Metamorphosis as pre-reading for training programmes on Change Management and it works very well for this purpose.

Now, vwinsloe, perhaps you can help me, how on Earth did you manage to get through Ulysses? I live in Dublin and I find the book to be one of the most banal pieces of writing I have ever come across.

>18 pgmcc:. That helps a little, pgmcc.

I don't have any problem with Metamorphosis either, because like Ulysses, I understood the point of the exercise. Yes, Ulysses was a chore, and it took an act of sheer will to get through it. The only enjoyment that I got out of it was, I'd have to say, academic. And, of course, the bragging rights. ;>)

I don't demand that things make sense, or that they be realistic, I simply want to know how things relate to one another and what the point is. Is there any book that Murakami has written that might be considered entry level?

how things relate to one another and what the point is

Yup, that's definitely my big issue with him.

#19 1Q84 was my entry point. I loved Books One and Two. Book Three was enjoyable but not entirely necessary in my opinion. It had a different translator and I do not know if that had a big influence in what for me was quite a change in focus in the third book.

And, of course, the bragging rights. ;>)

I am inclined to think that is the primary, if not the sole, reason for people to have read Ulysses. ;)

#19 & #20
how things relate to one another and what the point is

You have reminded me of a "Far Side" cartoon. There is a chicken standing at the side of a road looking across the road at a large billboard. On the billboard are the words, "DOES THERE HAVE TO BE A REASON?"

:-)

My first Murakami was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I gave it 3 stars and left the note "I don't quite get it". The next book I read is really a short story and I watched the movie as well and I recommend this one, Tony Takitani. Next I read his autobiographical or memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I also really liked it and it gave me insight into the author and his writing. Since then I read Kafka On the Shore and I just finished 1Q84. I liked the later quite a bit. My negatives for Murakami writing is the sexual content. Its a little much for me but I do think he is a great author.

>23 Kristelh:. Thank you, Kristelh. The memoir may be the way for me to get into his head a little bit to see where he is coming from. I will look for Tony Takitani, too. I was considering getting the audiobook of 1Q84 from the library, but I think that I will hold off and get some more insight first. Thanks again for the suggestions.

I found a pdf on Tony Takitani on line. Its a quick read.

>25 Kristelh:. cool! I'll google it. Thanks again.

Updated: Got it at http://www.macobo.com/essays/epdf/MURAKAMI,%20Haruki%20-%20Tony%20Takitani.pdf

PolymathicMonkey, you might be interested, too!

>22 pgmcc: If someone is writing a story that you are meant to follow, yes, I believe there certainly does. Editors normally chop out sections of work they don't see a point for, that doesn't tie into the rest of the book. So...

I'm going to take a pass this month even though I squeaked in last month with Vonnegut. I read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle a couple years ago and hated it so much it ended up being #1 on my Worst books list for that year. Funny since I ended up really enjoying the Vonnegut I read, which isn't exactly literal, but made way, way more sense and had fewer gratuitous attempts to shock and/or gross out the reader.

LOL! Yeah, I passed too, he's just not for me I think.

>23 Kristelh: & 25. Okay, I read Tony Takitani twice. I get how he has examined the relationship between "alone" and "lonely" in the story. I can see how it would make a very good film, and I will make an effort to see the film version.

Interestingly though, I discovered another difficulty that I had with Murakami's writing in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. His writing doesn't seem to make me feel much emotion. In the Tony Takitani story, I did have a faint glimmer of emotion when the newly hired secretary cried after seeing the deceased wife's clothes collection. But other than that, I just didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them. I remember a similar feeling that there was no emotional payoff in the novel.

I won't give up on him though. I will look for the memoir as well as the film.

>30 vwinsloe: For what it's worth, I do think there was more of an emotional connection to most of those in Kafka on the Shore.

I just went back and read your review, PolymathicMonkey, and it didn't really make me want to run out and get Kafka on the Shore! But it is probably inevitable that I read it. I first saw that book on my grocery store's 30% off shelf back when it came out in paperback. Gradually all of the other books were sold (they discontinued the book section in the store) but Kafka on the Shore remained week after week when I went to do my shopping. I kept picking it up and looking at it and then putting it back. I had never previously heard anything about the book or the author at the time. I have seen the book around at used book shops several times since then and I definitely have the feeling that it is "meant to be."

I'm not rushing into it though.

But does that ever happen to anyone? Everywhere you go a particular book seems to be stalking you? I have a couple that are following me now... am I just weird? lol

lol, I don't think I've experienced that particular odd circumstance, that's funny though. And yeah I don't blame you. I'm eventually going to read 1Q84, I imagine, but not for a while.

I think the emotional connection that you get with Murakami characters is the aloneness. Maybe that is a hard emotion to face or feel. The best book for emotional connection to his characters is 1Q84 and it reads very, very fast! It is a love story.

#32 I had the same experince with The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. It was published in 1989 and I saw it every time I was in a bookshop. It attracted me but it was such a monster book I shied away from buying it. About ten years ago I finally bought it and loved it.

#34 Hear! Hear!
I think you hit it on the head.

I just read that we'll get an English translation of the newest Murakami next year in the fall: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/14/translation-new-haruki-murakami-nov....

>33 .Monkey.:, 34 & 36. 1Q84 is on my wish list. I'll probably wait until the 3 volume paperback turns up at a used bookstore, 'cause that's how I roll.

I also read everything I can get my hands on by him in English (Which in Germany can be hard sometimes.)

So far I've read...

Wind Up Bird Chronicles
Norwegian Wood
Kafka on the Shore
Wild Sheep Chase
1Q84
Dance Dance Dance
Blind Willow Sleeping Woman (Short Story Collection)

What should I read next?

There are a number of others, but be sure to get to After the Quake, another short story collection. Also, the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World.

>34 Kristelh:. Okay, Kristelh, I have been thinking about what you said in this post and about the Tony Takitani story a lot over the past few days. I think that I might be getting to the bottom of why Murakami's characters and themes don't particularly resonate with me. I don't really recall many times in my life that I have felt lonely. I cherish my time alone and usually prefer being alone to spending time with other people.

This makes sense to me now! Perhaps I am more like Tony Takitani than I cared to admit? ;>)

>41 vwinsloe: Interesting. I'm an introvert who very much prefers being alone to around others, too. I don't think I have trouble empathizing with loneliness, though, so I'm not sure whether that'd be the case for me. Maybe it'd depend on why a character is feeling that way and how it's portrayed and such...

#34, #41 & #42 (Spoiler warning and probably only suitable for those that have read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.)

Poly, in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, the main character has left full-time employment with the support of his wife. He is feeling a disconnect with the world and Murakami made me, as a reader, feel that the world at home while others are at work is a different world from the world when I am at work. Things happen that he is not used to and many of the surreal elements reinforce that sense of difference.

Then his wife disappears and any information he manages to get indicates that she has left him.

I even forgot to mention that the cat has wondered off.

The establishment appears to be against him with his hated brother-in-law gaining power.

Things that are revealed indicate that his whole understanding of his life to date is flawed.

He meets new people whom he forms a link with but these people are strange to him and do not fit into his normal model of life.

I think he was feeling fairly isolated and subsequently susceptalbe to the influence of others.

When I read Murakami I believe he is helping me look at the world differently and question things about myself: my values; my perceptions; my relationships.

I remember reading the opening pages of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and being amazed at his writing style. Every sentence raised a question in my mind and the next one went half way to answering the question of the previous sentence and raised at least one more question. (That is a slight bit of hyperbole but the writing had me wondering what is happening next and just dragged me along.)

He works for me but I can see how his writing would not be everyone's cup of tea.

As kristelh stated in #34, 1Q84 is a love story and one does get to know the characters quite well.

I have not read the Tony Takitani story yet, but I think that will be happening soon thanks to this discussion thread.

Every sentence raised a question in my mind
That's how I feel when reading Tom Robbins. But he does it without leaving gaping holes in the story ;P haha

:)

I think you're drinking coffee. One needs a tea ceremony for Murakami.

I don't like coffee or tea! :P

QED

I would suggest that most avid readers might prefer alone time and maybe more apt to be introverts. I think the aloneness that Murakami paints is a more uncomfortable experience than the alone time that the reader grabs to share with the characters in the book they are reading

Spoiler*******the especially loneliness for me in The Wind Up bird Chronicles was the time in the empty well. That part was especially uncomfortable to me.

45 -

Actually, Murakami is really into whiskey and beer!

And jazz and running

#48 I agree with your view about the well. Also I would add to your description of the loneliness. It is almost total desperation with no apparent relief or rescue in sight.

Wow, I completely forgot about Murakami being the author this month. Usually I try to have something on hold at the library in advance of the month starting. I just placed an ILL request for The Wind-up Bird Chronicle since that sounded the most interesting to me based on the conversations here.

There are lots of things mentioned above that chime with me about why I love Murakami. pgmcc, your experiences in particular. I've been out of work and felt the strangeness of life without real routine, trying to create a routine for myself by taking the same walk every day, for example. I've lived in places where I haven't felt I belonged and haven't been able to comfortably make friends, existing on a periphery, and again trying to create a routine at weekends to counteract the solitude. Speaking frankly, I'm an introvert, but I also have a deep sense of being alone, even when I'm in company with people I love, that goes beyond introversion. Murakami articulates that sense well - the feeling that life going on around you might not be quite accurate and could slip at any minute, changing all the things about your life that you thought were true, leaving only yourself to be relied on as a constant. As the youngest child of older parents, I'm also aware that I had a different experience of childhood to a lot of my peers. The people I get on best with, and who also tend to like Murakami, had similar childhoods to mine. For me, my childhood gave me an awareness that life isn't the Cornflake Family Perfection that it's supposed to be. Life is surreal and unexpected.

I dream vividly, as well. My dreams are like Terry Gilliam films or David Lynch films! Murakami delivers a similar dreamscape in written form. For me, there doesn't have to be a point, it's about immersing myself in the slightly skewed alternative reality.

vwinsloe, I wonder if the apparent lack of emotion might be down to Murakami's being from Japan, which has a social structure different to the West. Emotion is only really shared with close friends and family. I also wonder whether, as good as the translations are, something that is present in the Japanese gets lost in translation. When I was studying Japanese, I couldn't get my head around the way the expression of ideas in words involves few actual words, but acres of interpretation and lines to be read between! Murakami's books can be a bit like that.

Kiwi_Jim, I echo jnwelch's suggestion of Hard Boiled Wonderland.

#53 missizicks I was the youngest of seven and my nearest sibling age-wise is seven years older than me. (He still hasn't forgiven me for spoiling his wonderful life - I'm 56 now) My experience of growing up was that of being in a house full of adults and I was the only child. Living on a main road there was little opportunity to mix readily with neighbouring kids and so much of my early experience of other children, apart from school, was pre-arranged visits to my parents' friends and playing with their children.

I think this supports your hypothesis. By the way, in Winter we had porridge. Cornflakes were reserved for the Summer. ;-)

I think we all have an internal dialogue running in our heads to one degree or another. I suspect that dictates our level of loneliness in crowds. A smaller number of people is much more comfortable in my opinion. I used to dislike going to crowded pubs. If I was due to go to a pub with friends I liked to get there early so that we could get a corner where we would be out of the bustle.

Murakami's work helps me relax and realise that everyone is different. I think his "other worlds" help convey that message.

53 -

I've read Murakami both in English and in Japanese and I feel his works are easily translatable. It would actually be hard for something to be lost in translation. Now, he does have a tendency to edit his own works before they are published in translation. He'll actually talk to the translator (Jay Rubin) and he'll make changes. He does it to make sure something is translatable and also he has since found a better way to express himself. There is a blog I enjoy who has compared many of these changes and they are very interesting. If I weren't typing on my iPod I'd post the link. But the blog is called "How to Japonese" (yes that spelling is intentional) if you're curious to look it up.

"in Winter we had porridge. Cornflakes were reserved for the Summer. ;-)” Love it!

lilisin, I will look that blog up, thanks. I knew I was being presumptuous taking the lazy European stance of 'Oh, he's Japanese, therefore he's *different*...'!

Anyway, I've just spent a happy hour after an afternoon of navigating the Christmas scrum in town by reading a couple of Murakami short stories from The New Yorker's archive: 'U.F.O. in Kushiro' and 'A Shinagawa Monkey'. U.F.O. was too short. It ended just as I felt it was beginning, but I enjoyed the oddness of it. A Shinagawa Monkey was very good - teenage life casting odd spells on adulthood, hollowness of existence and, on top of that, a talking monkey. You could call it classic Murakami.

Now I might read The Year of Spaghetti.

I wasn't going to tackle it this month (we move in a few weeks so really should be packing) but I picked up 1Q84 just before Christmas and am now halfway through. This is my first Murakami and I really like it. I love how all the random stuff is now starting to come together in a cool way.

Better late than never? I am a huge fan and have read many of Murakami's works. I just finished South of the Border, West of the Sun and thought it was marvelous! I like the way his dreamlike prose draws the reader into his characters' psyches.

Better late than never indeed, threads are always welcome to be revived at a later time! :)

One day, I will read more Murakami and see if my opinion changes any to reflect the masses. ...But not for a while. :P

Well put, hemlokgang. I love relaxing into the world he creates.

A December 2013 reading thread I know, but I have just finished Norwegian Wood. Another wonderful book from Murakami, but I can see people having difficulty with it because of the concepts it deals with. It can pull up the reader's emotions and memories. I know it did this to me.

Well I'm glad other people are enjoying him. ;) One day, I'll try another. One day.

>62 .Monkey.: :-)

Poly, I can understand people liking this book but not enjoying reading it, if that makes sense to you. I can also understand people not taking to it at all.