“A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis would have had the perfect comment: you write well, you argue clearly, but you don't have anything to say.”

Murakami had absolutely nothing to say, it seems, in his early works. I read this because the final two books in this tetralogy are good, apparently. Although some might praise Murakami's writing as it is in this book, I find it nauseating. ( )

Number 2 of the Rat Series was a quite relaxed book. The story didn't take any "big leaps" and almost tended to be a bit too banal, too much describing daily routine. Although I was a bit confused about the title initially but that will be explained at a later point of the book. ( )

This novella has brought to mind everything I don't like about Murakami's writing. The shallow, disaffected characters. The directionless narrative, where every day is much the same until something slightly different happens, causing the novel to end. The sense that there is no past nor is there a future, just a vague sort of present. These things are fine for a writer to employ once in awhile, to make a point as it were, but doing them every single time makes for rather uninteresting novels.

Pinball has a lot of that. The narrator lucks into an easy job, and just as easily lucks into fuckbuddy relationship with a pair of twins. Seriously, he just wakes up and they are there. Which would be fine, in a rock-n-rolla "I get so wasted each night I never know what I am going to wake up to" way, except the guy has an office job and just goes home alone each night. Claims that "this sort of thing happens to me all the time" smell highly suspicious. The job is handled just as neatly -- my friend had the idea, my friend's dad paid for everything, my friend does most of the work. Why did your friend cut you a slice of the pie, then? Maybe he saved him from a bullet, has some blackmail photos, or they shared a bed back in the dorms. The reader will never know.

The character known as The Rat makes an appearance. Mostly just reminisces about a girl, drinks beer at a bar. Engages in butterfly philosophy, flitting between not-very-profound observations about life or people or society, without any of the actual hard work of philosophy: questioning premises, constructing chains of logic, refuting claims. It all more or less goes like this: "You know, maybe people are born with a void, and maybe that void can only be filled with pinball." "You may be right."

Oh right, pinball. At about 2/3 of the way through the novel, the author remembers a pinball game he was playing in college, and then playing again a couple of years ago, and now he must must must find it. Many pages describing the video game and its history (which is, actually, pretty interesting), and maybe three pages covering his quest to find another. Feels kinda tacked-on, doesn't it? ( )

Second of the Rat... almost a real novel, but not quite. Much more defined than Hear the wind sing, but this is still almost entirely episodic. There is an element in the 2nd half that reminds of me of the End of the World book in its back and forth stark stories of the Rat and the Narrator. But they are not moving toward each other but away. The Rat rather tediously becomes disenchanted with everything / the world. Even the Bar and the beer and Jay. He breaks with his pleasant but undescribed girlfriend. He was happy with her, but still must leave (why????). It is a cold phone separation. His harder task to is to tell Jay, the bartender. Hmmm... as unsatisfying as this is, I suppose it does setup the Wild sheep chase pretty well. The narrator ambles along with the Twins (such good coffee), the telephone switch board (and its funeral at the lake), the picking up lost golf balls at the course until he comes to his climax: the long trek to converse with the space pinball machine (with 3 flippers). He finds this with the help of the Spanish teacher in an empty field, in a big barn like place which is suffused with chicken deaths. The conversation (with the pinball machine) is pretty unsatisfying as well. The rat: I have to leave this place where everyone seems to accept the world as it is without even questioning it. ( )

Lacking in the surrealism and magic of his later works, this is nonetheless a sweetly introspective, slightly unusual tale of two men and their quests to fulfill those indescribable desires in each of us. ( )