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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Haruki Murakami

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
Foust is SO authentic
15:30 / 23.09.06
An otherwise misanthropic friend of mine gave me his copy of Kafka just as I was leaving South Korea.

I've had to think long and hard about whether I preferred this or Wind-up Bird, which I had quickly proclaimed to be the best book I've read since LotR.

Murakami has become my new comfort author. You know, when you're stressed and need to relax... he's my go to guy.
 
 
aluhks SMASH!
00:00 / 08.10.06
Has anyone here read Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami's new short story collection yet?
 
 
Dusto
15:54 / 31.10.06
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman has one of my favorite short stories ever in it. It's called Dabchick. That said, I haven't read the collection yet.
 
 
El Directo
04:05 / 12.11.06
About Blind Willow seeming uneven... I've not read it yet, but I have heard that it's collected from stories he wrote all the way through his career, from very early to brand new. Having just finished a hard-to-find translation of Hear the Wind Sing I can safely say that he does have some ropey stuff in his early canon. Amazing how fully formed he is thematically right from the outset, though.
 
 
Corey Waits
02:19 / 13.11.06
I've read After the Quake, which is a collection of short stories, Wind up Bird Chronicles and Underground.

After the Quake might be my favourite, just 'cause Murakami has the ability to distill all of the beauty of one of his novels into each short story.

WUBC has already been raved about in this thread, so I'll leave it at that.

I thought Underground was an amazing look at the culture and peoples of Japan. I'm not sure if it's entirely accurate (in regards to the picture it paints of Japanese society and culture, not the actual sarin gas attacks), but the guy that leant it to me had lived in Japan for a few years, and he seemed to think it was.

I've got Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World lying around somewhere, but I haven't got around to reading it yet.
 
 
Sylvia
06:26 / 24.12.06
I just finished Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World a few minutes ago. It's the first book of Murakami's I've ever read. I hadn't even heard of him until I recieved it as a Christmas present last year (left it lying on the shelf for a while). I'm going to look for Wind Up Bird Chronicles as soon as I have the chance.

I thought HBWATEOTW (phew) was lovely and funny and sad and wry, even if some parts felt like they were drifting by a little slowly. Some chapters of its 400 pages definitely felt like filler, although they were amusing filler. But I'm definitely glad that I finally read it.

SPOILERS!
























MAJOR MAJOR SPOILEEEEEEEERS









RUINING THE END OF THE BOOK SERIOSULY DON'T READ IT IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SPOILED SPOILERS


















The pages after the professor reveals what's going on and our protagonist decides to get out into the world for one last day in reality were agonizing not to blaze through in order to see how it all ended. I was surprised to realize just how much I cared for the characters after I read that explanation and started rooting for the hero to cheat it somehow. He almost made it. SO CLOSE. (I suspected it really would end up in the End of the World but he was right there! By the pool! On the second to last page!).

I liked how despite the proffessor's sheepish assurances of doom that the protagonist's mind was apparently on its way towards figuring a way out of the "tertiary" fantasy world anyhow. And the chubby girl and the girl from the library were great fun (In the end the protagonist's fate was sad but I feel worse for the girl from the library, who'll understand the least of what happened and will have had two men in her life depart unexpectedly on her now. They were having so much fun before the end too)

Also, was I the only one who wondered if the INKlings were real at all or just some weird made-up concoction/delusion of the chubby girl and professor for about 3/4s of HBWATEOTW? The INKlings intruded just a little on the flow of the rest of the narrative, but I loved the discoveries of the creepy alter and bas-relief of their ominous god-fish. If the mood took Murakami, I'd be interested in a seperate book on the INKlings and the rest of the weird underground. (While I am dreaming, please make it feature the chubby girl as the protagonist)



















































END SPOILERS







Not having read very many novels from Japan, how exactly is Murakami considered a Western author by some people?

Thanks for the recommendation of Ghostwritten too - it looks interesting. I'll check it out once my current reading backlog has gone down to a managable level (and things are looking surprisingly good on that front).
 
 
The Prince of All Lies
21:38 / 24.12.06
I just bought myself a copy of Kafka for Christmas. I was a good boy this year. I'm saving it to read it on my vacation (I'll have to wait till february, though). I'm going to the beach, so I can actually read Murakami on the shore!
 
 
Foust is SO authentic
01:05 / 26.12.06
So, when I think "Haruki Murakami," I don't just, you know, say the words in my head. I practically shout them as some kind of samurai battle cry. "HARRRUKI MURRAAAAAKAAAAMMMI!"

Anybody else do that?
 
 
El Directo
19:41 / 28.12.06
No, but every time I say the name "Terry Pratchett" I picture myself with a monacle and a pipe, wearing a dressing gown and slippers, sipping Earl Grey and taking potshots at indigenous peoples.
 
 
intertwine
18:22 / 11.01.07
Ive read Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up bird Chronicle, and ive been planning on reading Blind Willow for a while now. i'll probably get to it stat.
 
 
Bots'wana Beast
(prev. Busts'wana Beast)
02:20 / 15.01.07
After Dark is due in March, so the paper told me today. Already, I am internally revving for it.
 
 
The Prince of All Lies
18:40 / 25.02.07
Damn...Kafka on the Shore was good! It's stylistically closer to Wind-up Bird, given the alternating narratives and weird dream-like qualities. It was brilliant, but I think suffered a little with the Nakata-Hoshino angle, not that it wasn't good, but detracted from the clearly more poignant story, that of Kafka and Saeki.
Loved the military reports and the town for lost souls. The "entry stone" and the white worm were too out-there and lacking subtlety compared to Kafka's journey in the woods, but made some sense regarding "Johnnie Walker's/Kafka's dad" plans. It reminded me of Wind-up Bird, where the protagonist clubs his brother in law to death in a dreamscape, because he was an evil spirit or somesuch.
I still rank Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun as his best books, since they seem to be stripped of most of the magical aspects that permeate the other books. It's not that I don't like them, since both Kafka and Wind-Up Bird are all-encompassing works with metaphysical needs, but I tend to like the character-driven stuff more.
 
 
locusSolus
07:14 / 16.03.07
I enjoyed the Sputnik sweetheart and the dance dance dance. But I personally consider Haruki Murakami to be a little overrated... Lately some of his works began to read very similar to his earlier works.

But make no mistake about it, he is an amazing writer on his own right, and far better than most out there.
 
 
Dusto
16:01 / 16.03.07
locusSolus: I know what you mean about his repetition of themes, but it's interesting to me that you single out Dance and Sputnik as two yu like, since those are the only two that I haven't been able to get into.
 
 
SuperBeast MachineGod Transfer
(prev. Rail Transfer)
08:43 / 10.06.07
Here's a link to a review of After Dark. It sounds absolutely mouth-watering. I certainly hope it manages to explore Murakami's characteristic themes without being as schematic as Kafka turned out.

Damn it, why doesn't bittorrent work for books?
 
 
Tercerintento
09:58 / 14.06.07
I'm reading Kafka on the Shore at the moment. It's my first Murakami book and I must confess I'm having mixed feelings about it. The plot is mesmerizing from the very beginning, but the narrative style is quite disappointing.

Maybe it's just the English translation, maybe I feel too far away from Japanese culture, but I can't help feeling that the style is too plain.
 
 
Happy Dave
12:20 / 14.06.07
Tercerinto, I had the same feeling when I read 'Norwegian Wood' (although that's the only Murakami I've read). Sometimes it was almost Joycean in the 'and then' style. Like,

'Hiro took off his shirt because it was warm, then heated and ate some noodles. He popped the metal lid from a bottle of beer and drank it. The beer was cool. Outside, he heard a cat miaow.'

I can't help feeling as I read things like this that there is a subtlety and beauty in the original Japanese that I'm missing.
 
 
El Directo
18:47 / 14.06.07
Murakami is pretty famous for emphasising the mundane details of life. Most of his characters spend most of his books just pottering around. And yeah, his prose style is very simple indeed. They're certainly not books for everyone.
 
 
Dusto
20:45 / 14.06.07
I would check out the books translated by Alfred Birnbaum. I think he does the best job of conveying the "cool" simplicity of the style. It reads more like Raymond Chandler than Raymond Carver when Birnbaum is translating.
 
 
Locust No longer
18:18 / 05.09.07
I just finished Kafka on the Shore last night. I found it fascinating, but ultimately I don't really know what it was about. I recognized distinct themes of memory and dreams and communicative power of music but I didn't understand the plot that well. I'm sure I wasn't reading it deeply enough... or maybe I was. I often find myself trying to find things that aren't there in books like this. Although, I've read that Murakami wrote it to be like an interconnected riddle that reveals itself differently to who is reading it and only become apparent over time. The problem is that I don't really want to invest much more time in it.

I also didn't enjoy his style tremendously, maybe I'm reading too much Pynchon and McCarthy or something to enjoy it right now. But I do want to check out more by him, simply to see what more of the hubbub is about.
 
 
Teppichkind
17:20 / 11.03.08
I read "kafka on the shore" after someone recommended it to me and i very much liked it. it was refreshingly diffrent in style and theme(s) from what i was used to.

i read "the wind-up bird chronicles" a couple of months ago and liked it very much, though it took me a while, for there are some tough parts that took me ages to read (in a series of picking up the book and putting it down again, after only having read half a page), but i still enjoyed it very much.
 
  

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