the four right chords can make me cry

Meditations on Murakami
or
(Times I wished I knew how to read Japanese)

I have been absorbed, almost completely, for the past 3 days, with a singlular narrative. It might be considered serendipitous in that the first murakami i should read would be what some consider to be his finest. However, i consider it somewhat unfortunate, should i be let down by his other works, expecting far too high a standard. Nevertheless, it is foolish to think about such things which may or may not happen, and it is dangerous to imagine, to quote lieutenant mamiya.

I bought, and first read the book, when i was still in secondary school. with a borders voucher. It was the sum of 2 or 3 book prizes, i think I would not have paid $30 for a novel otherwise. I remember my mother frowning upon my selection, which i had chosen quite simply because i liked the cover (its very nice) and the blurb had seemed somewhat more interesting than the others. Perhaps she would have preferred me to buy a book written by someone she had actually heard of before, but i personally found (and still find) jane austen and the like too stuffy for my tastes. ah well, you can't expect too much from a tree frog.

as it turns out though, it WAS a bad choice for a secondary school kid. There was explicit sex, and gratuitous violence. as for the parts that contained neither sex nor violence, well, i didn't understand those, too. but i had liked it.

i'm one of those people who read a book, really like it, but then can't tell you what the book was about in a week after reading it, and in a month, can't remember what i liked about it in the first place. but i'd remember that i liked it.

there was something irresistible about the book that day. (perhaps the cover again?) I picked it up to read, since i had about 2 hours free till i had to go off and give tuition. and i find myself now better equipped with the vocabulary to articulate my feelings about the book. but its still not very good.

When I read a book like this, I am at once overjoyed and dejected. Overjoyed that there is someone else who thinks like I do, who perfectly understands the alienation and disjunction in the world. Dejected that someone else has beaten me to writing it down in a book, with more eloquence or erudition than i could ever hope to attain.

I have yet to mention the book's name, and this is deliberate. Nevertheless, now seems like an appropriate juncture: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.

And here is a brief summary: Weird. Wonderfully so.

The character starts of on your side, he finds the bizarre things that happen to him bizarre and he is just as puzzled and confused as you are. But as he grows, he becomes more and more accustomed to this weird world he happens to be in, and increasingly participates and initiates the weirdness. And still, you understand him, he has been written in such a way that you emphatise with him, and you start to think, "hey, i've often wanted to do that too, but was worried that people would think i was weird". The wind-up bird asks: but what is weird and what isn't?

What is real and what isn't? is another theme running through the novel. Reality and dreams blend, and Okada often states emphatically that his dreams are more vivid. What is the relationship between reality and non-reality? Are the bickering lovers? Are they estranged siblings? or are they in fact two faces of a schizoid janus?

One theme that resonated deeply with me was the inability to explain yourself. For example:
"So this was how secrets got started, I thought o myself. People constructed them little by little. I had not consciously intended to keep May Kasahara a secret from Kumiko. My relationship with her was not a big deal, finally: whether I mentioned it or not was of no consequence. Once it had flowed down a certain delcate channel, however, i had become cloaked in the opacity of secretiveness, whatever my original "intention" may have been."
I've often felt that way, especially with people I don't see often. Things that happen to you day-to-day, small things that are really of no consequence, like how i love the trees near the USP block, or something really nice i ate that day, are suppressed and omitted, because its irrelevant to bring it up in the normal course of conversation or i simply don't remember it. so we talk about absolutely nothing instead, i invent something and feign interest in it. I thought it was an improvement over what i used to do, which was to say nothing, which unnerved other people or even myself sometimes. but now i'm not so sure.

spoiler warning
Toru Okada takes up the second theme that really resonates with me when his wife of six years leaves him, really unexpectedly, one day. he then begins to question: how much of a person can you really know? what is a person's essence? it started with kumiko coming home from a bad day at work, and getting upset over the wrong colour of tissue paper he bought, and the fact that he cooked beef with green peppers, which though acceptable separately, she detested when cooked together. they had lived together 6 years and had not noticed those things about her. trivial in itself, but it made him feel uneasy:

"But this was different. It was bothering me in a strange new way, digging at me like a little fish bone caught in the throat. Maybe -just maybe- it was more crucial that it had seemed. Maybe this was it: the fatal blow. Or maybe it was just the beginning of what would be the fatal blow. I might be standing in the entrance of something big, and inside lay a world that belonged to Kumiko alone, a vast world that I had never known. I saw it as a big, dark room. I was standing there holding a cigarette lighter, its tiny flame showing me only the smallest part of the room.
Would I ever see the rest? Or would I grow old and die without ever really knowing her? If that was all that lay in store for me, that what was the point of this married life I was leading? What was the point of my life at all if I was spending it in bed with an unknown companion?"

One by one you get introduced to a cast of the most strange characters. I really like those oddballs =) Not all of them are well fleshed-out, but they are highly interesting and three-dimensional nonetheless.

Even after having gone on and on blah blah for so long, I still feel i haven't quite sufficiently explained why i like this book so much. Here i will regretfully cop-out with a feeble: aiyah, just read it for yourself lah.

Next novel to hunt down: Norwegian Wood by Murakami
Then: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
and then: Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Other holiday readings i want to finish are an anthology (yeah very ambitious i know), and 4 christian books that I have bought/been given, but haven't read.

sigh. even my tuition kid thinks i'm nerdy. when i told her darryl said i'm a nerd, she said, "yeah what". sniff. just cos i know how to do your maths doesnt mean i'm nerdy OK.

posted by beckyboo @ 11:09 PM