Friday, January 20, 2012
Paranormal / Fiction Week / Lit & Lectures / Books Lost in Murakami
Posted by Mara Shalhoup on 01.20.12 at 05:30 PM
But still, having muscled through 800 pages of what’s 1,800 pages on the iPad (that’s twice as many pages as the hardcover edition, true, but plenty of words on which to form an opinion), I’m as perplexed as a modern Japanese antihero whose woman wordlessly left him. Either 1Q84 is a masterpiece waiting (for me to read faster) to happen, or there’s been an awful lot of Nobel Prize hype for something that might, on a conceptual level, be the culmination of Murakami’s mind-boggling body of work, but is still clunkier than almost all of his preceding novels when it comes to things like language, character, and plot.
Let me say that I’m the kind of person who’s predisposed to like Murakami and I’m perfectly OK with that. One night, following a series of odd coincidences that befell me on a trip to New York, a friend and I ended up at a party where I kept running into people I knew from different points in my life, people who didn’t even know each other and barely knew the host. All the lights were off in the cavernous space and people were dancing, most of them wearing dark clothes which made them difficult to see (except for the woman wearing black tights and white shorts, who ended up looking like a disembodied dancing ass). One of the formless figures gathered up in front of me and deadpanned, “I bet you’re really into The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.”
The strange stranger was right. That was the first Murakami I’d read, years earlier—after which I holed up and immediately read three more. What can I say? I’m a big fan of the slow start. And I appreciate the long, mundane slog that transitions effortlessly into the alternate reality no one questions.
Another thing: I’m fascinated with runaway cats. My childhood cat ran away (we promptly replaced her and gave the new cat the same name), and I once had a cat I was cat-sitting take off on me, never to return. Slightly tangential aside: my ex-boyfriend, who studied at Tufts when Murakami taught there, was asked by a Japanese friend and classmate to verbally deliver Murakami a message, in Japanese. Unbeknownst to the messenger, the phrase he recited to Murakami translated to, “I step on the black cat.”
I’m of course as intrigued as the next gal by yet another Murakami’s trademark: the intentionally vague, maybe-ominous-or-maybe-I’m-just-super-paranoid phone call. (Sadly, those have been all but replaced these days by similarly ambiguous text messages, which are far less menacingly urgent than a phone call, or at least a Murakami phone call.)
I even have experience with foreboding wells. I once lived in a ramshackle, 100-year-old house with—no joke—a fully operational well out front. Long before I read Wind-Up Bird, I found that well to be the source of endless contemplation.
Given all of that, why don’t I buy into the hype and just go ahead and declare my absolute adoration for 1Q84? In many ways, it’s the ideal Murakami novel. It certainly has the slow start and vague-but-creepy phone calls, not to mention a highly alternate reality. And what it lacks in disappearing cats and portal-like wells it makes up for with an exploding dog and a human-mouth-as-portal out of which the freakin' Little People emerge.
It has star-crossed (in this case moon-crossed?) lovers who I’m really hoping will connect soon but who I suspect might not. And I for one can’t help but obsess on tales of ill-fated soul mates who finally pass each other on the street yet can’t bring themselves to express their undying love, including the 1,400-word one (“On Seeing the 100 Percent Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning”) on which the 1,800-page (on my iPad at least) 1Q84 is kinda sorta based.
The best part is that the boy (Tengo?) in the short story knows the 100 Percent Perfect Girl isn’t perfect and he doesn’t care. He loves her no less. I hope, once I finish 1Q84, that I feel the same way about the 100 Percent Perfect Novel.
Comments (16)
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I would bet my last $18 that once you pass the 2/3 mark you won't be able to put it down for more than 3 minutes without wanting to pick it up again to see what happens next :)
like
dislikeI forgot both hygien and food when I ambled through this enormous, exhilarating story!
I suspect you're right. (I won't hold you to the $18, though.) The buildup is there, I can feel it. And it's certainly the right weekend to work on getting to page 1,200.
I agree, it's a bit hard getting into the book(s), but if you read on you'll be completely sold on it. One word of advice though: do not read it too slowly, you must get INTO the reality of it, so take some time off and read on.
If the English translation is as good as the Dutch one (which we, lucky ones, got waaaay before you guys :-) you'll probably consider it Murakami's best work yet.
Having read almost all of Murakami in the past year and a half, I was a little slow to find this the standout marvel from his other works. However, the way the story starts to weave and piece together as well as the bizarre landscape of 1Q84, makes me feel this is an astonishing story and perhaps his best writing. If I had a single criticism it is in that the internal dialogue (and some conversation) is slightly more a way to recap what the character is experiencing/has seen than the more quirky internal chat that made me so crazy for his writing in the first place. It is different but it is a great tool for following the twists and turns along the way. But the story is magical, on many levels. I love it more each page (about 100 pages left!)
I'm torn between the urge to read faster and the will to make 1Q84 last as long as possible. There is no doubt for me, even if I'm only in the middle of Book 3, this is my favorite Murakami. Anybody noticed two moons in their nightsky yet ? :-)
So do I, I can't declare my absolute adoration for 1Q84. It' s quiet different from his other works, the story is so dynamic. Where is the dark well?
But I'm looking for two moons , every night! I miss 50 pages at the and, and I still have time to fall in love.
Marika
I'm still in two minds rather than moons. It has taken what seems lime an age to get to chapter 20. Normally I can't put any of his books down but this one has been difficult to pick up (not a weight thing either!). I just wish the Little People would come to my rescue.
There is a flaw in the trilogy somewhere, as I recall. It has to do with Jehovah's Witnesses. He has their teachings wrong in some important detail. Not that it matters much, but it's the same phenomenon as you sometimes find in detective stories, when the author hasn't studied police procedure enough, and gets some details wrong, which will lessen the appreciation of the whole book some. In Murakami's case, I'm willing to forget about his failure to get it completely right with Jehovah's Witnesses. Then there is another misunderstanding in book three, when he talks about the writing above the entrance to Carl Jung's house, towards the end of the whole trilogy. The latin quote is, in English: "Called or uncalled, God is present". Murakami thought it was "Cold or uncold, God is present", which, of course, is gibberish. So, even a star like Murakami is sloppy at times...
I love Murakami's work, and I do love long stories such as this one....I'll start out with that. Even though I found typos, which is no big deal, I also found that this (3) book(s) could have been pared down just a bit. The third section was translated by someone other than the first two sections, and I found the redundancies over-powered the story on a level of slowing down the reading pace, it was as if in this later section the translator didn't read the first two books!....how many times do you want to say the same things? I found I skimmed a bit through the whole of it. But, as always, I'll keep reading his work because he's a master of fantasy story telling.
I pioneered to the end - Murakami is one of my favourite authors. I found i1Q84 over-long, and repetitive, replete with comic book dialogue and comic book theatrics. In short, not one of his better ones.
It is interesting but also a very strange story. I also like Murakami. If I had to make one critical comment it would be that there is too much sex in there (Kafka did not use it!). I do not think it is necessary. This is where a true artist becomes just another writer.
@Ales, sex scenes seems to be Murakami's trade mark...I'm finding it comes along with reading him.
I think 1q84 is highly overrated. It starts with a bang and slows to a tortuous slog through to a (sadly to say) hollywood ending. It's filled with fantastic thoughts throughout but it's overly long, (actually somewhat boring) and not one of his better works.
I am also not quite finished with the book, but I've been pacing myself all along to make those 900-odd pages last.
The story evolves slowly, kind of like people do. I think any judgment should take place after reading (and digesting) the whole work.
Aside from that, I will say that I'm happily floating through the strange world that is 1Q84, and I think the experience, itself, makes the expense and time/effort worth it.
