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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Haruki Murakami

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10:47 / 11.04.04

I recently finished Norwegian Wood, and blatted through After the Quake and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World earlier in the year.

Norwegian Wood continues Murakami's knack for writing characters who I fall desperately in love with. I was practically shouting at the book, "Go with Midori! Go with Midori!" The inevitability of the ending is so unbearably soft and sad. And Reiko rules.

I can't remember a lot of After the Quake, as my life was pretty intense at the time. However, Superfrog Saves Tokyo has become my joint favourite short story, along with The Quantity Theory of Insanity. If you have a spare lunch break and happen to work near a bookshop then I highly recommend spending it in the company of Superfrog.

Hardboiled Wonderland... is the most sci-fi of all the stuff I've read, and it's fairly bonkers stuff. It loses a lot of the subtlety of his best stuff, the execution of the ideas is quite clunky, and Murakami's hand is slightly too obvious. But still, beautiful and captivating.

Haus of Mystery

23:29 / 11.04.04

Hardboiled Wonderland was a puzzling one. I wasn't that gripped for the first third, but by the end I found myself incredibly moved. Incidentally I saw an amazing adaptation of three stories from 'The Elephant Vanishes' at the Barbican last year - did anyone else catch it?

Haus of Mystery

23:32 / 11.04.04

Just properly read thread and saw that it's already been recommended. Sorry. Naughty, lazy Celebrity.

14:58 / 22.04.04

Elephant Vanishes is back at the Barbican this Sept 04! Get tickets!

Just discovered that there are other Murakami works but not all translated. Bum. He doesn't want his first Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973 (both translated but out of print) reissued for some reason. But you can print your own copy of Pinball 1973 here http://www.geocities.com/osakabe_yoshio/Haruki/Books/Pinball_1973.html
I think both these early novels feature the narrator of Wild Sheep Chase and his pal The Rat. So I guess that's a quadrilogy when taken with Dance, Dance, Dance.
You can read a fairly recent short story by HM called Ice Man here http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/?030210fi_fiction

11:07 / 06.08.04

The play seems to be on at the Barbican on the 2nd - 25th September. I am hoping to see it.

17:42 / 25.08.04

Just reread the skinning scene from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle last night.

You know, for a laugh.

Jeebus...

Haus of Mystery

10:36 / 26.08.04

Go see the play! See the play, all of you!!

08:25 / 27.08.04

D'you think it's sold out now, though, or is it still worth a shot ?

09:49 / 27.08.04

I looked at the website a week ago or so, and it wasn't sold out then, so might be worth looking?

13:20 / 15.12.04

I’ve just re-read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle – jesus, it’s magnificent (I have re-read the skinning scene before though, Seth, just, as you say, for fun). What I can’t believe is that there’s so much there that I didn’t get the first time. You get so lost in the wonderfulstory with Murakami that you (or perhaps rather “I”) miss the underlying themes he returns to again and again. A lot of the events that happen to Toru and the people that surround him – I don’t really know how to put this - but they seem like extended meditations on and the impossibility of ever really knowing anyone else. More later.

17:03 / 15.12.04

Wind up Bird is indeed an amazing book. Totally blew me away. I'd read it straight after Hard boiled Wonderland which i'd loved and which had given me that great feeling when you discover an author and think to yourslf, 'Where have you been all my life!'. A re-read is definatly in order soon.

Has anyone read his new one, Kafka on the Shore, yet?

11:53 / 20.12.04

Yeah, The Wind-Up Bird is the shit. Having read Wild Sheep, Dance Dance Dance and Hardboiled Wonderland he clearly has a fascination with naming, and so it’s interesting that Okada stops hearing the Wind-Up Bird after he has named himself Mr Wind-Up Bird. He becomes the one who winds the world’s spring.

22:05 / 29.12.04

Well i'm halfway through Kafka on the Shore and it is sheer brilliance.

A wonderfully written 15yr old narrator runs away from home to go and live in a library in peace until he wakes up in a ditch, with no memory of the previous 12 hours, covered in blood. Towards the end of WW2 a group of school children all pass out during a school outing in the woods and wake a few hours later with no memory at all of what has happned. An old man who can talk to cats is employed to track down a cat and is led to Jonnie Walker who steals cats souls by ripping out and eating their still beating hearts and keeping their severed heads in his fridge. In Tokyo it is raining fish and leeches.

You get the idea. If you're looking for something to spend that Xmas book token on pick it up!

22:23 / 29.12.04

Just reading over the last few posts. Murakamis main themes of naming and memory really come out in his new book. The idea that by naming something or yourself you fix its identity and by extension fix a memory to that name. So if you give yourself a new name you also give yourself a new identity. But then you can find yourself with a new memory and new connections. In his new book the 15year old runaway renames himself Kafka and finds that the old librarian where he ends up once recorded a single called Kafka on the Shore. All the connections start to tie up.

I should shut up really for fear of spoilers but when other people are reading it it would be good to discuss...

The Prince of All Lies

16:21 / 02.01.05

I just finished The Wind Up Bird Chronicle last night.. the ending was interesting, not quite what I had expected. I'll probably read it a few more times to find all the stuff I missed. I too read it as an intimate tale, a long meditation on identities and fate, but with the sheer complexity of interweaving stories you can make of it what you want. I read it like one man's struggle to accept that his life wasn't what he believed it to be.
Of course it's all wrapped in deep metaphors and sidestories, and I could definitely detect the magickal elements in it (the well as an isolation tank for meditation, the fading barrier between dreams and "reality", the sinchronicities, the importance of names..)
I'd like to hear more from those who read it more like an "epic struggle"

19:27 / 04.01.05

I read it more as a political treatise, and a condembnation (sp?) of rightwing japanese politics and authoratarian politics genrally.The fact that the japanese government has yet to admit all the pretty dodgy things that it did to china during world war 2 and this denial is institutionised, the the characters in the past and the presents "interelatedness" was about bringing continuety back into japans self perseption...or something

11:27 / 10.01.05

Anyone else reading Kafka On The Shore yet? Suitably bonkers so far, with all the classic Murakami elements: displaced protagonist, flashbacks through official reports, "imaginary friends", fucked-up parents, urban isolation and cats. Loving it up to now.

19:56 / 13.01.05

I had a brand-new copy of Kafka On The Shore in my mitts just after Christmas, and then I remembered I'd forgotten to get my flatmate a present...

But I'll be right on it directly, when I next hit the shops.

22:20 / 13.01.05

Well like i said in the posts earlier, i loved it. Saying that though my initial raving has slightly worn off in retrospect and looking back over it a week after i finished the book does bring out some flaws. But i think flaws that often apply to a lot of Murakamis books. I think this boils down to people as props. I'm really too drunk to rabbit now but things like the sister in Kafka didn't work very well at all.

more later

11:48 / 14.01.05

I'll say this for Murakami, he writes a good hand job.

09:27 / 15.01.05

But not as good as Jane Austen, surely ?

08:20 / 18.01.05

While reading it, I strangely found myself humming, "Kafka on the shore, Kafka on the shore.."

12:00 / 01.02.05

Just finished Kafka on the Shore: Pretty wonderful, though I read it too fast (three days, I find reading novels amazing for procrastination when I have important stuff to do)). As as have been said, it has very similar elements to all his othr books, though this time, his obsessions seem spelled out really explicity. Perhaps too explictly, because to say these things out loud reduces their mystery? The life-changing moment, after which one can't go back, or move on.... much like the Lt. Mirmaya (?) stuck in the well on the steppes, in Wind Up Bird Chronicle. This time, it seemed to that Murakmai was dealing much more strongly with themes of memory, and release of the past, than in his other books - these themes are normally played out with an absent partner, rather than a distant event. These themes actually reminded me a lot of Buddhist ideas, though this may just be my extrapolation. Very good though, and I know there are lots of little nuggets that will leap out to the front of my brain in coming weeks and have me fishing the book off the shelf.

The Prince of All Lies

18:19 / 13.02.05

Bumping up this thread cause I just finished reading Sputnik Sweetheart...it was a breeze compared to the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I did like it, though I think it should have been a little longer. Sumire's relationship with Myu was depicted a bit superficially in my opinion.
What do you lads think?

The Return Of Rothkoid

04:08 / 14.02.05

It didn't grab me as much as I thought it would, which is a shame.

After The Quake, however, is proving quite lovely.

Haus of Mystery

12:14 / 14.02.05

Midway through 'Kafka..' - it's good, but not quite as engrossing as 'Wind-up' his other 'long' novel. I wonder sometimes about the effect different translators have on texts. I've definitely felt more comfortable with some of Murakami's translators than others.
Anyway. I'll report back when I've finished.

03:41 / 15.02.05

Sorry if I'm butting in, but I have a Murakami fixation.

His books are disorienting in a lot of ways, it seems that in his universe there is little or no volition, everything's preordained. No matter how fast or slow things get, the stories are framed in such a way that it's like there are no choices being made. The characters are in a vise, and they seem completely aware of this but are somehow unsurprised and unflappable. Dogged. No matter what. With some exceptions, um...like that weird blip with the baseball bat in Wind Up.

I don't know if anyone feels the same but they're very unusual characters to begin with. Either alien or alienated, but mostly both.

I thought it was interesting in Dance Dance Dance how he lampoons himself with the character Hakuri Mu***i, the author-golfer in Hawaii.

Murakami's been criticized at times in Japan for being too Western.

15:26 / 22.02.05

Here's a little factoid for the Murakarmy:

I studied with a friend/editor of the author a few years ago and he related this anecdote:

'Back in the mid-90s, a woman's magazine in Japan (don't ask me which) did a survey for what the ideal mate of their readership would be - exactly what was a Japanese woman looking for in a potential mate? Oddly (and unprecedentedly) the winner was hands-down the protoganist in Murakami's novels. This was not a multiple-choice survey.'

Not only is *he* fictional, but there's a perception that it's the same character in all of these novels, which is nice. Maybe this adds to the discussion about the perception that Murakami is too Western. His main influence, other than Carver, is Kobo Abe, who minced no words about wanting to be considered part of an international writing community, rather than a specifically Japanese one.

Also, apparently Murakami is just as invested in talking to cats as his novels would lead us to believe.

The Prince of All Lies

17:03 / 01.08.05

Bumping this again cause I just finished South of the Border, West of the Sun... and..

I loved it. LOVED it. Much better than Sputnik, more intimate than Wind-up Bird. I loved everything about it, really. The writing is exquisite during the defining scenes (the trip to the river, the conversations in the bar, the sex scene in Hakone). He really managed to bring that world alive in a very visual (and musical, since he always seems to describe what he was listening to at a specific time) way.

He DOES write good sex scenes, doesn't he? What strikes me is that he doesn't seem inhibited at all to talk about the details, whereas most writers portray sex in an almost PG13 way.

What do you guys think?

21:24 / 01.08.05

See page one, dude.

I've just finished Kafka. It's a lot more overt than a lot of his books. The scene with Oshima and the feminists in the library was almost like Murakami preaching.

hapax legomenon

07:59 / 09.08.05

I wanted to read Kafka on the Shore this summer, but as of my last trip to the bookstore it was still available only in pricey hardcover. I picked up Hard-Boiled Wonderland instead, which was inventive, I suppose, but left me wanting more.

10:19 / 12.07.06

My ma is doing the Wind Up Bird Chronical for her book club tomorrow night. Can anyone suggest any questions for them to talk about?

Much obliged.

18:27 / 28.07.06

I'm about three quarters through Kafka, this being the first of his books that I've read. I was wary of even beginning it, because I don't tend to like stories that are open-ended and surreal sort of for the sake of being weird - and I feared that's what I would find. Of course, that's not at all what I found, and I have barely been able to put it down. It's rare to find a book that is dreamlike and disorienting and waxes philosophical, but is still totally gripping in its storytelling, the way this book is. He also has a remarkable ability for establishing a sense of place, even for a reader who is completely and totally unfamiliar with the actual setting. His attention to physical details, going over the grooming habits of the characters or what they're eating, reminds me a bit of Nabokov and the "thing"-ness and plasticity of a lot of his writing.

02:35 / 02.08.06

I'm in the middle of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a collection of short stories.

I love Murakami's books, so I am surprised at how uneven I am finding these stories. While some of them are brilliant - moments of Murakami's world distilled down to their essence - others are leaving me feeling flat and unfinished. I am wondering if this is because I am better able to cope with unresolved narratives in a novel, where I feel priveleged to have occupied the world that he has created for the hours that it takes to read the book, and so not as invested in the outcomes.

I'd be interested to hear how other Murakami fans are finding the stories...

12:50 / 06.08.06

I can't tell you how many people my wife has alienated by giving them HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD. It's a good book, but a terrible starting place for Murakami, and most of the recipients make pleasant noises and change the subject whenever it comes up.

Two totally unrelated thoughts: I think UNDERGROUND is his best recent book. A non-fiction account of the Aum Shinryko sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, the first half is interviews with victims of the attacks and the second half of the book is interviews with members of the cult. It's incredible.

SPOILERS- --- -- -- -
Also, did anyone else think SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN was a ghost story? It has a spooky feel to it, but at the end I was suddenly hit by the fact that Shimamoto was dead and that those were her ashes that were being spread. I went back and re-read the book and there's so much stuff that could support this conclusion (the way she suddenly appears and disappears, the way she's only around when Hajime can see her) that it's now firmly established in my mind as one of the great ghost stories of all time.

Interestingly, there's going to be a horror movie coming out from Korea that's somewhat inspired by this novel. Lee Myung-Se (who directed DUELIST and NOWHERE TO HIDE) is making a horror movie called M right now and two of his big sources of inspiration are Truman Capote's short story MIRIAM and Haruki Murakami's SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN. There's a million other influences in there, but I know these are two of them and I'll be interested to see how much of them makes it to the big screen.

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