Haruki Murakami is one of the most intense, imaginative authors I’ve ever come across. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, #15 on the Klaw 100, destroys the line between our world and the world in our dreams in a way that goes beyond mere magical realism, creating a second, parallel existence for its characters and the reader. Kafka on the Shore (#92) mines similar territory, with a slightly more mystical bent, while Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World mixed in a scientific explanation for a fantastical setting and saw the main character jumping back and forth from reality to a strange world that exists only inside his head.
Norwegian Wood
The protagonist, Toru, is a stand-in for Holden Caulfield but is more directed and a lot less frustrating to follow. He’s in a relationship with Naoko, formerly the girlfriend of Toru’s best friend who killed himself without warning or explanation one night, and the suicide has left both Toru and Naoko broken inside. Naoko comes undone gradually over the course of the novel as Toru happens into another relationship with the unpredictable, liberated, impetuous Midori, who co-opts Toru to fill the holes but ends up finding more meaning in their relationship than she does in the one she has with her boyfriend. Toru is gradually drifting through university as these various affairs occur, where he has a foil in Nagasawa, a materialistic, cynical boy who mistreats his subservient girlfriend yet can’t seem to feel remorse or stop his selfish behavior.
Even without his usual conceits of alternate realities, Murakami still writes in bold strokes, leaving Norwegian Wood open to quite a bit of interpretation, and the novel’s postscript implies that he wasn’t thrilled when the novel became a favorite among Japanese teenagers who read it as a straightforward story of love, sex, and loss. I found it largely unromantic, but at the same time Murakami was offering a view on what Aldous Huxley referred to in Island as “the Essential Horror” – the knowledge that we must die, and, in Norwegian Wood, that many of the people we love will die before us, leaving us to deal with grief, loneliness, and depression. He litters the book with examples of characters who choose not to deal – some kill themselves, others withdraw from society or flee their existing lives – but, of course, Toru does not choose an easy exit and instead has to face the reality of our existence, first choosing to live …
I’m never sure if it’s Murakami’s style or a loss in translation, but his characters often speak in an unrealistic manner even as what they’re saying is interesting, clever, or witty:
“I’m much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.”
I love that analogy, but have never come across anyone who speaks remotely like that. Then again, Norwegian Wood is populated by characters who dance on the edge between sanity and insanity, and over the course of the book several of them fall into the abyss, so one might forgive the author his creation of characters with slightly stilted or awkward speech.
Nagasawa was the one poorly drawn character among those who appear for more than a page or two, and he’s more of a stand-in for a way of life Toru rejects, one that sits between stoicism and nihilism with a healthy dose of selfishness mixed in. But I did enjoy his take on languages, even if I can’t share his view on the fairer sex:
“The more languages you know the better. And I’ve got a knack for them. I taught myself French and it’s practically perfect. Languages are like games. You learn the rules for one, and they all work the same way. Like women.
There is, as I mentioned above, a lot of sex in this novel, and I saw one review that referred to it as Murakami’s “most erotic” work. That deprecates Murakami unfairly, since the novel is attacking larger themes and – I hate to break this to you – people have sex, especially people in romantic relationships, so it’s not as if he went out of his way to include it. More importantly, the different ways various characters in the novel view and approach sex gives the reader windows into their personalities, and to me made it more apparent that, for example, Naoko was a stand-in for an unsupportable path through life, where one refuses to give up one’s innocence and then is unprepared to cope with tragedy or loss.
Next up: Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, True History of the Kelly Gang
There is, actually, an earlier English translation by Alfred Birnbaum, but it was never published in America. It was only published in Japan (in 2 vol.s) as part of a series of books intended to teach English to Japanese speakers by reading their favorite authors. It’s this same series that provided the only English translations of his first novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. You can sometimes find copies of them online, but they can be pricey.
I haven’t read Birnbaum’s Norwegian Wood, but he did the American translation of Wild Sheep Chase, among others. Murakami himself reportedly prefers Rubin’s version, and I think they worked together on it. But Birnbaum’s dialogue is often quite good, so it might be worth checking out if you can get your hands on it.
Bob: True, but it’s not an authorized English translation – as you said, it’s for students learning English, and I wouldn’t recommend that anyone choose it over the Rubin, which was translated for English speakers.