Missing Review Catch-Up III- International Edition

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The Dragon and Other Stories (1913-1937)
Yevgeny Zamyatin

Penguin Modern Classics

After Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita failed to melt the solid wall of ice standing between myself and the great unexplored mass of classic Russian literature, I wasn't to be put off so quickly. Rather than run towards the possible safety of recommended heavyweights like Dostoyevsky and friends, I rebounded in the only way I know how- something completely random, that in this case just happens to also be pretty obscure. The Dragon and Other Stories stood out with its odd cover, and of course Penguin Modern Classics status. Everything I learned about Zamyatin (not much- Russian dissident who wrote a letter to Stalin so he could leave Russia) came from a quick scour of the internet, so I went in to the book mostly ignorant. Sometimes a random book read at a random time can be a game-changer.

But not this time. Again I totally failed to connect with a piece of Russian literature, to the point where it'd be stupid to even try to write a proper review, hence this short one appearing here just to sooth my obsessive compulsiveness. Zamyatin's various short (and less short) stories collected in this posthumous volume describe with authority seemingly-meaningful tales that drift between the harsh realities of Russia's past and then-present and some more fantastical parables that take on dark fairy-tale like scenarios. I think since my knowledge of Russian history is confined to... um, no, can't think of anything... nothing, then, I was probably the wrong person to appreciate the layered allegories that I'm sure permeate Zamyatin's dense stories.

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Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words (2005)
Jay Rubin

Vintage

This book, on the other hand, I was very tempted to write a full-length (by my standards, anyway) review for, only to decide at the last moment that its content and topic might just be too obscure to be interesting . Jay Rubin is a very familiar name for English language-reading Murakami fans, for being perhaps the most prominent of all yet to translate the author into our language (as well as translating Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Rashomon collection), and so it seemed only natural for Rubin to write a book about his life and works. Part biography, part critical interpretation, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words looks at the inspiration, creative process and public reaction to every Murakami novel, as well as his most important short stories.

I'd straight away recommend this to any serious Murakami fan looking to put his work into a greater context. The biographical information is interesting, though not particularly in depth- personally I prefer this to be the case, as Murakami's mystique works better without the obvious-in-hindsight revelations that he's actually a fairly normal man. As someone who pays little-to-no attention to the contemporary Western literary scene, let alone the Japanese one, it was also interesting to read more information about Japanese literary history, especially Murakami's influences and contemporary critics.

The one major criticism I found was that the book attempts to cover too much ground in too little space, particularly in regards to Rubin's interpretation of Murakami's fiction. I often found myself disagreeing with Rubin's ideas, but that made them no less interesting, and so the problem was that Murakami's longer works really need more space to accurately discuss. Rubin's reluctance to persist with spoilers also damaged his analysis for me, especially since I can't imagine there are many people who'd read this without already having devoured Murakami's own bibliography. Other than that, this was an enjoyable and informative take on an author very deserving of further public discussion. 

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The Immoralist (1902)
André Gide

  

Penguin Modern Classics

Man, French literature is just weird. Everything past the nineteenth century seems to have existentialism burnt in to its very core, and each author I read has an unstoppable fixation with looking at the worst parts of human nature in one way or another. Everything's constantly intense, everyone guilty of something, and nothing ever gets resolved neatly. Andre Gide's turn of the century novella The Immoralist was decried for years due to its homoerotic overtones, though reading it over a hundred years later it seems hard to see what the fuss was all about. Instead this novel to me, rather than focusing on the protagonist Michel's growing attraction to men was really all about his generally horrible treatment of his wife, Marceline.

The plot of the novella revolves around Michel recovering from a near-fatal bout of tuberculosis, on his Tunisian honeymoon with Marceline, who has lovingly nursed him back to health and attended to his every whim. Michel responds by re-discovering himself in the arms of young Arab men, and waxing lyrical on the new realizations he understands about life. I couldn't connect with him whatsoever, and thus the story was lost on me. Gide's work is well-written in translation at least, with an extensive vocabulary and poetical nature, but it's contents said little to me. Michel came across as such an unlikable character, with his over-bearing self-realizations clashing with his actual behaviour, that I was the most disappointed I have been by a piece of French literature.

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Haruki Murakami- The Strange Library

The Strange Library

Penguin Random House

Haruki Murakami
2008 (Japan)/ 2014 (English)
Translated by Ted Goossen

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage- Strange Library

"Mr. Sheep Man," I asked, "why would that old man want to eat my brains?"
"Because brains packed with knowledge are yummy, that's why.They're nice and creamy. And sort of grainy at the same time."

It came as a nice surprise to fans of Haruki Murakami when Harper Penguin imprint Harvill Sacker revealed that they would fill the post-Colourless Tsukuru Tsukuru depression caused by a Murakami void just in time for Christmas, with a new illustrated edition of short story The Strange Library. On the surface, this 77-page compact hardback admittedly doesn't look like much at first glance, designed as it is to replicate a generic library book, with an academic maroon cover and a replica old school ticket template fixed to the front. As an aside, the size and colour closely resemble that of Paul Auster's similarly-illustrated short story Auggie Wren's Christmas Story, so much that I had to check that they didn't have the same publisher. Upon opening the book, the first thing that jumps out is the immaculate artistic design; the illustrations were mostly taken from unspecified old books found in The London Library, and the sadly-uncredited graphic designers at Harvill Sacker have re-appropriated them into an immersive backdrop for Murakami's story. 

The Strange Library tells the story of a boy who one day innocently visits the library for research, and is shown by an old clerk through an impossible basement labyrinth into a single room with the books he needs, and a strange figure known only as the sheep man (whom Murakami fans will recognise from his appearances in early novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance). The old man tells the boy if he will return in a month. If the boy has memorised the contents of the books, he may leave. The Sheep Man tells the boy the truth; the old man wants him to learn because it will make his brain taste better when he eats it. The boy must rely on the help of the sheep man and the ghostly spirit of a beautiful girl who talks with her hands, if he ever hopes to escape. Haruki Murakami at his most fantastically surreal.

The art and text flow within each other, entwined so neatly that the evocative Victorian Gothic feel to the varied images seeps into the story, combining wonderfully with Murakami's deceptively-plain narration. It has the same power as a dark fairytale, flowing with the same ethereal dream quality of a Neil Gaiman story (it felt like it could've been an issue of The Sandman), given more power through the help of the design and pictures. It's one of the most memorable of all of Murakami short stories (though not my favourite, that will always be Superfrog Saves Tokyo), a creepy little tale that also distintly reminded me of Benecio Del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth in its heavy use of magical realism. I'm struggling to find any reason to be critical of it really, the only thing that might bug someone is that it's quite expensive for a short story- but even then the craft in the art and designwork makes it much more than that. I wouldn't ever want to encourage Murakami (or any author I like) to make a habit of releasing full-price short stories, but if they're as engaging as this then it'll be easy to forgive.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa- Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

Penguin Classics

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

2004 (Collected)

“He disliked his own lies as much as his parents', but still he continued to lie -- boldly and cunningly. He did this primarily out of need, but also for the pathological pleasure of killing a god.” 

When I found this book on the shelves of my favourite of all book emporiums, my local Oxfam Bookshop (other bookshops are available), it was an easy purchase choice, despite never having heard of the author before thanks to my woeful ignorance of world literature. I'm enough of a literary hipster to easily be coerced into buying anything presented as a progressive Japanese classic, so when a quick browse of the cover and blurb told me this collection of short stories contained an introduction by none other than Haruki Murakami and had been translated by regular Murakami translator Jay Rubin, it was a no-brainer. A part of me (the snobby part, probably) hates admitting to my ignorance on, well, anything, but it seems pretty clear that this new collection of translations had been designed as an entrance point by publishers Penguin for the millions of English-reading Murakami fans to delve into the otherwise seemingly-inpenetrable realm of older Japanese literature without requiring a degree course or something- and that really is fantastic.

Murakami's introduction was an interesting lead, and I'd be lying if I said that the chance to read more of his writing wasn't a big factor in my desire to pick this up next, such is the state of my fandom for the author. Murakami's detailed, thoughtful biographical analysis of the short life and career of Akutagawa gave me a welcome head-start on what to expect from the author, but also hinted at a strong familiarity with the cultural impact of his work that I feared might be initially lost on me. The older I get and the (hopefully) more well-read I become, I've become more and  more certain of the power of familiarity in understanding the true craft of each lauded author. That may be an obvious statement now I read it back, but its importance lies within the ability of the first time reader to recognise the hidden depths of subtle writers, particularly ones who obsess over themes and explore them inside out in their novels and short stories.

The first story in this collection, the eponymous Rashomon, was a fine introduction to Akutagawa's style. One of the shortest stories in this collection, it nevertheless left the biggest impact on me, thanks to the playful narrative adding an almost-indefinable edge of the surreal. The story of a servant exploring the earthquake-ravaged city of Kyoto is too short for an unraveling plot, instead encapsulating just one scene with an air of poignant mystery. Akutagawa's influence on Murakami, meanwhile was already clear. The next story, In A Bamboo Grove shows Akutagwa's playfulness with the short story format; presented as it is as a succession of witness statements from a murder trial. It's also a very bleak story in tone, something which it becomes apparent is a common feature of Akutagawa's work. It's at this point that if I had more experience with the author I'd be able to analyse more succinctly what he was feeling, but I only know a few facts; that Akutagawa feared madness, was obsessed with death, and committed suicide at the age of only 35.

Such bleak facts cast somewhat of a clearer eye on the status of Akutagawa as not only a popular author, but as a tragic cult icon, a Japanese literary Kurt Cobain-style figure who's voice transcends typical narrative. There is undeniable power in his bleakest work; Hell Screen is a longer story of an obsessive painter interested only in depicting visions of hell on his canvasses, and whose drive to envision the images leads him to setting up real-life scenarios of hell in which to witness for inspiration. It stuck out as me particularly for its similarities to classic romanticist literature of the west, ingrained comfortably with Akutagawa's voice. The later stories in this collection veer more to autobiography, and, to be honest, these lost my interest in comparison, probably requiring a greater appreciation of the writer to enjoy.

As an introduction to an author from a time and place a world away from me, this was an engaging, thoughtful read. Though it's so easy for me to compare Akutagwa to more familiar contemporary Japanese authors, many of whom have a western tint, Akutagawa's work was unique to me thanks to its lack if such influences. As a result it seemed naturally more foreign, though that added to a feel of early magical realism. Though I feel as though my own cultural distance from this work and lack of understanding limited my full enoyment, but at the same time gave me the great excitement of exploring a new period of literature. Haunting and memorable, this is something that will grow on me.

Haruki Murakami- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Vintage

Haruki Murakami

 2005
Translated by Jay Rubin

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

“There are three ways you can get along with a girl: one, shut up and listen to what she has to say; two, tell her you like what she's wearing; and three, treat her to really good food...If you do all that and still don't get the results you want, better give up.”

Haruki Murakami's third short story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman was one of the first works I ever read by the author; taken out from the library in hardback format not long after it was released, almost ten years ago. In the meantime, despite becoming a massive Murakami fan, I somehow managed to forget all about it and, crucially, failed to notice I didn't own a copy (I think I just subconsciously assumed that I did, my mind playing assumptive tricks). It wasn't until after finishing and reviewing Murakami's latest release, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, that I noticed via a goodreads list that I was missing this book from my collection. Thanks to the magic of Amazon, that was soon rectified, and soon after I was jetting off to Greece with the rather larger story collection in my suitcase. As it turned out, though, I ended up reading the vast majority of it upon my return to England, during an otherwise torturous seven hour wait for a bus from Gatwick Airport, from two o'clock in the morning.

Like his earlier collection The Elephant Vanishes, Blind Willow is comprised of various previously published short stories,  originally published in various Japanese periodicals and a Japanese-only smaller collection (Strange Tales from Tokyo). The big difference between the two collections, however, is that the range of stories in Blind Willow cover Murakami's writing career for over twenty years, from 1981 to 2005. Such a diverse range, then, gives the reader the opportunity to look at how the authors' style changed and hopefully improved over the years, as well as offering a pretty diverse selection of story ideas. From a more negative standpoint though, the sheer comprehensiveness of this collection left plenty of room for a few inclusions that, for me, brought the standards down just a little.

In the introduction to the book, Murakami explains to the reader that he is, at heart, a short-story writer, one who has to work very hard at composing long novels but who loves to sit down and create a brief window into strange and haunting worlds. I can completely understand this; while I love his long-form work, the effort and composure it must take to create and sustain such intensely specific yet ethereal plots, characters and themes must be immense- a novel like Kafka on the Shore or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle can be overwhelming to read in long bursts, I find, thanks to the concentrated intensity, but each one of Murakami's short stories revels in its lack of space; free from the confines of expectation, his words float across the page with as much or as little context as he feels like offering, inevitably leading the overall feeling of unsettling magic- something even more powerful when you're reading at four in the morning in the entrance lobby of a massive airport, for some reason. 

So, the stories themselves then. The book opens with its title story, but I found it to be somewhat of a false start., at least in terms of its quality. Thematically it's very recognisably Murakami; the simple story of a very introspective narrator who tells of his strange companionship with his younger cousin, and compares their trips to hospital together to memories of his own youth. It's initially absorbing, but lacks a strong direction and seemed somewhat bland as a choice for an opener- to the extent where I think a reader checking him out for the first time might find him uninspiring. Thankfully I found the second story, Birthday Girl, to be much more interesting, and probably one of his best stories. It's an almost perfect slice of magical realism, the author at his best as he mixes mundane life with unexplainable surrealism, and crucially doesn't try to explain it. The collection continues on in this vein, with a run of stories that I found to almost all be great.

There were a few notable exceptions that broke up the flow as I read them. A 'Poor Aunt' Story is comfortably the longest in the collection, and the silliest, as an example of Murakami extending his postmodern style a little too far for too long. Crabs was just intentionally disturbing with no good reason. "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day" was very stereotypical for Murakami, almost a plot someone might use to satirise him. Although maybe my viewpoint on all of these was skewered thanks to the circumstances in which I read them, for better or for worse. It's difficult to judge Blind Willow as a whole thanks to the wide timespan in which its contents were written, I suppose, but it does highlight Murakami's early focus on blatantly strange and unnerving ideas verses his later development into an author with a greater grasp on his characters. Personally I've never had a preference for his earlier or later works, since it really depends on what the reader is looking for; the earlier stories and novels are abrubtly odd and disconcerting, while the later ones far more emotionally resonant.

As I start drastically running out of steam in this review, I suppose it's fair but easy to say that Blind Willow is a book for the converted, one that I wouldn't necessarily recommend for a prospective fan of the author. It's collective nature cares preaches to the converted more than anything, with some of the author's weirdest short pieces. I enjoyed it again, as I knew I would, but I do think it struggles as a single piece when compared with The Elephant Vanishes or after the quake. It's a treat for the completest with some individually outstanding stories though, so if you're already a Murakami fan then there's literally nothing stopping you.

Haruki Murakami- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Haruki Murakami

2013 (Japanese)/ 2014 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

Around two-and-half years ago I, like an idiot, decided to create a simple blog with a single objective; to obsessively compulsively review each book I read, as a personal exercise designed to make myself write more, and to understand the literature I'd read a little bit better. One of the first things I (badly) reviewed was Haruki Murakami's probably magnum opus 1Q84 (it really is quite a bad review, sorry about that), a book that I'd been extremely hyped for ever since I heard about it. So, when I finished reading, and after writing and posting my review, I automatically started tormenting myself with the knowledge that it'd no doubt be quite a while before Haruki Murakami wrote another book. From that point forward like any crazed fan I scoured the likely news sources for anything I could find, devouring each  eventual new snippet of information with aplomb. In the meantime I re-read After Dark and read Dance Dance Dance for the first time, and even wrote a pretty lazy preview of the upcoming Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I think what annoyed me the most about waiting was how the novel was being quickly translated into seemingly dozens of languages from all around the world, but the English translation (from the trusted Jay Rubin) kept me waiting and waiting.

When Colorless (which I'm going to spell without the 'u', even though as an Englishman this sickens me) finally arrived in the post, I didn't have the patience to allocate it a spot on the to-read pile and as soon as I'd finished The Art of Hunger I happily dove into it. Twenty-four hours later and I'd finished it, though its imprint has held tightly onto my thoughts ever since- to be absolutely honest, to do a fair review of this book I think I'd have to read it twice. I did contemplate doing that but there's only so many hours in the day and so many books to read, so for now I can only give my still raw impressions of a fascinating book. First things first, the immediate urge for many people on the Internet has been to classify this book within Murakami's bibliography in relation to its fellows. I hesitantly have to agree with the majority of opinions in classifying this as a 'minor' work, in that it's not an extremely complex odyssey in the manner of his longer works like Kafka on the Shore or 1Q84, but more in the vein of a more realistic psychological character study through relationships, like Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun. Again I emphasis I hesitate in using the word 'minor' since it seems to downgrade a book by its usage, which in this case would be very unfair. 

So, to the plot. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is the tale of a man named Tsukuru Tazaki who was caused great pain under mysterious circumstances in his youth and as an adult is finally ready to discover what happened. As a student and adolescent, Tsukuru was part of a very close-knit group of friends whom he loved and relied upon, until one day the other four ousted him from the group permanently, without a single explanation. After going through a period of great sadness, Tsukuru is pushed into confronting his past by a new girlfriend, to finally contact his old friends to discover just why he was ostracized. I'll refrain from going in to more detail, since the magic of Murakami's writing is in his beautiful contemplative prose, the quality of which is so great that my clumsy attempts to describe it only does it a disservice. I will say that the hook of an interesting mystery, one that proposes more questions when investigated, drew me in to the narrative very quickly, but, in a slight criticism, I must confess to being disappointed that the book doesn't really follow the detective direction for very long.

The overriding factor to Colorless is that it's extremely introspective, and Tsukuru Tazaki might be Murakami's most introspective character yet. Murakami goes to great pains to describe his mind, to emphasise and clarify the emotions that life's troubles have forced upon him, and how his discoveries through the novel change him in certain ways. The theme of psychological rebirth is fairly upfront, as is the trauma of emotion, the pointlessness of hindsight, and a constant feeling of surreality. Unlike say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, here Murakami chooses to limit his supernatural surrealist tendencies to strange dream sequences, leaving a few open-ended possibilities for the reader to mull over (that I won't spoil, but which hark back to previous situations in Murakami novels where characters are unsure what they have or haven't done and can never find out the truth).

Overall I can't help but agree with the majority that Colorless isn't on the same level of quality fiction as Murakami's epic longer novels because in comparison it's very limited. The cast of characters is small, the events are subdued, and it lacks a particularly dramatic ending. It's based around an easy to understand concept, tackled from a few different directions with the aid of a likable, normal main character, but without the aid of the excessive surrealness Murakami gives some of his novels. It's an experimental character study that revels in the development of said character, using episodes of his past and present to paint a cohesive picture of depression and eventual recovery, of the folly of youth, and of the power of a good relationship. I really enjoyed it on the same scale as I did Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart, where the weirdness is controlled and mostly limited to tone, and the characters can breathe with the advantage of a realistic environment. I do, however, admittedly prefer Murakami's weird side so this definitely wasn't amongst my favourites, but I did remain enthralled throughout. It demands a re-read, and although that probably won't happen for a little while, the events of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage will be floating in my mind for some time to come.

Ryu Murakami- Piercing

Piercing

Bloomsbury

Ryu Murakami

1994 (Japanese)/ 2008 (English)

“That's when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn't bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn't any such thing as help in this world.”

 Normally when I pick a quote to slap at the top of these here reviews, I try to (quickly) choose one that feels to me as though it presents the essence of its originating book in a positive light. Today it's a little different, as the above quote from Ryu Murakami's psychological horror novel Piercing very much annoys me, more so, in fact, the more I look at it. It's the short, stark sentences that attempt to punch through the page in a blunt, straightforward manner that purports to give the reader no-bullshit truth. It desperately wants to look both cinematic and alternative, and it sounds like something written by an author desperate for you to think he's really cool, like the next coming of Chuck Bukowski or something. Of course it's possible I might be looking a little too much in to this, but, to get to the point, to me that quote does indeed represent the essence of its origin, but this time as a collection of pretty much everything wrong with it. Yes, this is going to be a negative review of a book written by a man named Murakami, but thankfully this time it's a different one.

I first came across a book by Ryu Murakami almost ten years ago. I took out In the Miso Soup from the trusty Aberystwyth Public Library and told myself afterwards that I enjoyed it and wouldn't mind reading more of this man. I'm not sure if I trust my more adolescent self with book reviews (and thus inevitably seem to always find myself going back to those books), and my experience with Piercing suggests I'm right to be suspicious. Let me start off by saying that I didn't hate the book by any means, and actually read through it very quickly, curious to witness the ending. In a sense, my quickness in finishing Piercing can be seen as a quite relevant criticism based on what Murakami was trying to achieve. The blurb on the inside of the hardcover jacket sums up what that is quite succinctly, by describing the scenario of a main character who is trying to resist the urge to stab his newborn baby with an ice-pick. So, incredibly weird Asian horror bloodbath it is, then.

Ryu Murakami

In reality though, that blurb fails to accurately describe the bulk of the book, which is about the psychopathic inner struggles of a very disturbed man named Kawashima Masayuki. As the book begins he's leading an apparently normal life as a married man and new father, but Kawashima suffered a stereotypically disturbed childhood that left him with demons he struggles to conceal from his family. In a bizarre attempt to alleviate the pain, Kawashima decided that the thing to do is to murder a prostitute, and so he books a holiday off work, tells his wife he's going on vacation, and sets his plan in motion. Once Kawashima decided upon a suitable victim, Murakami inserts her into the narrative as almost a co-lead character and starts delving into her own twisted back story. The girl, named Chiaki, is just as insane as Kawashima, and the main action of the book takes place once the two of them properly meet.

I do respect Ryu Murakami for the effort he put in to writing what is intended to be a very thoughtful, philosophical psychological horror novel, and efforts in trying to make it more than the average horror genre peace through various narrative techniques (the most prominent of which being the parallels between the two main characters), but unfortunately it didn't make the grade. The chief problem for me was that the quality of Murakami's prose is far too limited to achieve his goals. I think the movie director in him was searching for a precise atmosphere of darkness, unpredictability and self-loathing to reflect the characters, but I found almost every sentence to be far too clunky and detached to achieve that effect. It was detachment from the attempted atmosphere that enabled me to read the book quickly; since I wasn't apprehensive about what might happen to any of the characters and I didn't at all feel the need to slow down to absorb any impressive prose.

From what little I know of Ryu Murakami as an author, film maker and all-around creative force, it seems to me that he was looking for something that reflected  notable alternative literature like Palahuniuk's Fight Club or East Ellis' American Psycho, a modern suburban mindfuck designed to leave a long-lasting mark in the reader's mind. Unfortunately I don't think Murakami, Oriental renaissance man that he is, is a particularly good writer, or at least no better than an average horror genre scribe. Coming up with a shocking premise with hidden depths sounds great, but when what's meant to be meaningful is lost in generic mediocrity then the shock value isn't worth much either.

Haruki Murakami- Dance Dance Dance

Dance Dance Dance

Vintage

 Haruki Murakami

1988 (Japanese)/ 1994 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin
 

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”

In a somewhat morbid realisation of life being too short, I recently decided to stop spacing out as-yet unread novels by my absolute favourite authors, hence more Charles Bukowski and Paul Auster reviews recently. The daddy of them all in this regard was Dance Dance Dance, the last unread book available from Haruki Murakami, which I'd been saving on my to-read pile for a long time. It was kind of like my own tribute to Desmond Hume from Lost, the man trapped in an underground bunker  on a really weird island who saved his copy of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend so it can be the last thing he ever reads before he dies. I wasn't going to take it that far, but I liked the idea of having that one book by (probably) my favourite author left over to constantly look forward to.

But then he wrote Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Jay Rubin translated it to English, and it's scheduled to turn up on my doorstep sometime around mid-August. So, after taking a short reading break following Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions, I began to read Dance Dance Dance, albeit not without a sense of apprehension. Written in an early stage of Murakami's superstar novelist career, it sits nicely in his bibliography nestled between Norwegian Wood (the novel that gave him national fame) and the novella South of the Border, West of the Sun (one of my personal favourites)- all of which sounded great, until I saw that it was a sequel to his earlier work The Trilogy of the Rat. Of those three books I haven't read the first two because they haven't been printed in English aside from an early limited run (second-hand copies of which go for annoyingly high prices on the 'net, and I haven't given in to temptation yet), and the third is A Wild Sheep Chase.

As my hasty review of it showed, I didn't really get on with that book. The prose style and characterisations were fine, though naturally not as well-mastered as later novels, but most importantly the use of magical realism (or postmodernism or surrealism or whatever you want to call it) felt too poorly controlled in its portrayal of what was actually going on. Murakami can write labyrinthine stories, yes, but on this one occasion I wasn't spellbound. The thought of returning to that style or similar was disheartening.

The nameless narrating lead character returns, not surprisingly, still blunt, not particularly friendly, and full of hard-boiled dialogue; this time, I found, with a more pronounced sense of fatigue. Straight away I knew there was a much greater chance of me enjoying this book, as the author's voice and style seemed so much more well defined and evocative. Though A Wild Sheep Chase was described as a postmodern detective story, I felt the latter aspect dominated the former to such an extent it became irrelevent, but Dance Dance Dance readdresses that balance through the superb narration; there's plenty of pulp detective fiction embedded, of the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. As Murakami begins to lay the story out things become even clearer; while returning characters and some references to prior events in The Trilogy of the Rat do exist, the reader doesn't need to be aware of them (or in awe of them) to make the book work whatsoever, as instead they sit back comfortably after initially helping to set the scene.

The plot revolves around the narrator's unwavering need to return to the mysterious Dolphin Hotel, to confront and understand the horror-like past memories it once left him with. When he does return, he finds the hotel rebuilt and restaffed, superficially seeming completely normal but retaining the ethereal sense of dread, an aura like the Overlook Hotel of King's The Shining (and you know when I say King I really mean Kubrick). While vaguely investigating, the narrator comes across a new set of important characters, some of whom link him again to his past, some of whom change his life very unexpectedly; like Yuri, a neglected 13-year-old daughter to rich parents, whom the narrator befriends and takes care of in a unique relationship that was the highlight of the book for me, such is Murakami's brilliant way of transposing two different characters across each other to create a relationship that almost feels real.

The thematic bulk of the book turned out to be something I absolutely loved, in that it was preaching to the choir by presenting a well-structured post-modern detective story, where, without giving too much away, Murakami focuses on the mysterious nature of unexplained connections between people and places as his character investigates a possible murder mystery. In actual fact it's probably a much more straightforward book than his other longer novels (Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle spring immediately to mind as far more complicated structurally), which somewhat limits its full potential, compared to later Murakami novels, but allows it to more fully embrace the notion of twisted genre fiction. It continues this way mostly to the end, which is again a lot clearer than other Murakami and provides somewhat of a happy send-off to his narrator or four books. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending and it added to my enjoyment overall, concluding the novel as a strong example of the author balancing his experimental nature with his control over the story. As his writing developed in the years to come he was able to more fully engage his experiments without damaging the narrative, and this book felt like an important stage in that development.

And so, unless I can quickly find copies of Murakami's first two novels for a reasonable price (ie less than a hundred pounds) I'm currently caught up on his available bibliography, around six years after I started. I can't wait for his next book to come out, I'm going to gush over it until I make everyone who reads this blog sick.

The web of Dance Dance Dance

L-Space- A Colourless Preview

Although people catagorise reading fiction in the same vain of popular culture as films, TV, video games etc., for this writer one of the key differences that makes the former uniquely stand out is that I find it to be an almost exclusively past-based past-time. What I mean by that is that there's very little market beyond absolute hardcore fans of individual authors for upcoming books in the same vein as other mediums. A great deal of this is likely down to the fact that it's quite difficult to come up with exciting advertisements for novels, compared to the glory of film trailers, game adverts (though most of those usually have a 'not game footage' disclaimer at the bottom of the screen which makes me not want to buy it out of spite) or even for albums, since the overall appeal of a good book generally just isn't something that can be described in a short blast without lacking. There are exceptions, of course, usually resulting in massive sales for something like The Da Vinci Code, but these are few and far between.

I didn't queue at midnight for this...

This isn't something that's ever bothered me, because I think that one great feature about becoming a literature fanatic is the beautifully ever-growing realisation that there are far more unread genuine classics out there just waiting to be found than you ever might have expected. For every author you already enjoy there are three others with a similar style you might enjoy just as much. For every genre you become a fan of there are at least five other sub-genres spinning out of it waiting to offer you a brilliant new perspective on the same themes. Even if changes in the English language mean you don't particularly enjoy reading older work (and to be honest I've been getting lazier and lazier in that regard the further I move away from my past academic life) there's still an uncountable amount of amazing books from the last one hundred years out there.

But in some ways it is a bit of a shame that I very rarely get excited about new books coming out, because there's a lot to be said for the sense of anticipation arising from expectation. In the past I used to get this feeling at least once a year when Terry Pratchett announced a new Discworld book, so that when I finally grew up (a bit) and got a job I made sure I bought a new hardback copy as soon as possible. For a little while I used to do the same with new novels by Michael Crichton, until my fan love for him brought on by modern science thriller classics (by the standards of the genre) like Jurassic Park and Sphere was eroded through increasingly dull new books. As regards to Pratchett, the sheer number and apparent limitlessness of his productivity meant that the allure of a new Discworld book lost its shine over the years.

Sadly boring cover.

But what was supposed to be a short intro has gotten way out of control, so time to get to the point of this post; in five months I'm finally going to be able to get my hands on a book that I've been waiting for for about two years now- or three if you count the time elapsed since the release of 1Q84 (clumsily reviewed in its two parts here and here). A new book by the best author in the world, Mr. Haruki Murakami is almost here. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage was first announced by the author in February 2013 and arrived on Japanese shelves only two months laster. Since then I've been scouring various sources for the announcement of the inevitable English translation (I would learn Japanese but I can barely speak English), and in that time it seems to have been translated into every damned language except English, which has been really annoying me.

Regular Murakami translator Phillip Gabriel is once again translating, and I know that the reason for the wait is simply the difficulty in performing the task to the quality that fans expect. In fact a gap of a year and a half is actually the shortest time yet for a Murakami translation (Norwegian Wood had a thirteen year gap), presumably thanks to the increased interest in his work shown by the midnight openings for the 1Q84 release, so I probably shouldn't complain. And anyway, at the start of this column I was somewhat bemoaning the lack of enjoyable anticipation in the book world compared to more up-to-date media, so I really definitely shouldn't complain. Thankfully the cycle should begin again after because I'm fairly sure I read recently that Murakami's next project is already in motion, a new collection of short stories that have already appeared in various places, so that shouldn't take too long to come to fruition. The anticipation cycle continues.

 

... But I did queue at midnight for this.

Haruki Murakami- After Dark

After Dark

Vintage Press

Haruki Murakami
2004 (Japanese)/ 2007 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin
 

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.”
 

After Dark was one of the first Murakami books I'd read, back during the times where I'd read through an author's bibliography relatively consecutively, and I didn't like it very much at all. Five years on, and my growing infatuation and obsession with the work of Haruki Murakami, including the need to have my own copy of each book, led me again to After Dark. This time, though, I was confident I'd enjoy it, because it's much easier to doubt the reviewing credentials of my younger self than it is to imagine that my current literary hero wrote a bad book. To cut a long story short, I really enjoyed it this time.

At only 201 pages of decently-sized font, After Dark only just escapes the 'novella' catagorisation. In truth before I just checked the number I would've guessed that it was even shorter than that. In both size and atmosphere, I'd compare it to Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun (one day to be reviewed), though really it's a fairly unique piece of work from the author considering both its length and the short space of time in which the story plays out. It's also written in the present tense, which is something that nine times out of ten annoys me, but here wasn't a problem because of the large amount of dialogue.

After Dark is set over the course of one night, focusing around the experiences of a small group of characters. Each chapter has a small illustration of a clock at the beginning, showing the story progressing in real-time, in a manner of speaking. The main character is Mari, an intense and withdrawn 19-year-old girl who misses her last train home and settles herself in an all-night diner with a book. Soon after she is interrupted by Takahashi, a jazz-loving (Murakami staple alert) student who recognises Mari from going on a date with her sister. As the night progresses, Mari is dragged into a series of events at a nearby low-class hotel involving gangsters and a Chinese prostitute. Segueing in between the chapters, the reader is shown Mari's sister, Ari, who two months ago went to sleep and hasn't woken up since. 

After reading this again it became clear to me that Murakami was having fun with this book. He changes his narrative tone somewhat, talking to the reader very directly in the manner of simulated stage directions, as thought this were a short movie of sorts, where he as the narrator is the omniscient god cutting between scenes. As a result, the cuts between the adventures of the main characters and of Ari, the sleeping beauty seemingly in danger from typically Murakami-esque mysterious ethereal dangers are presented in a much more direct way than the author's usual manner. 

Essentially what I feel the reader has with After Dark is a short story that Murakami enjoyed so much he extended it to a small novel. The noticeably different style of narration and the rather direct positioning of the two events occurring that night suggest to me the attempts of the author to establish the context for the mysterious existential happenings in a short space, only to find himself extending the whole narrative. Personally, I'm not entirely sure what to make of the brief flashes into Ari's strange sleep in relation to her sister's very urban, realistic experiences through the night. It's so brief and mysterious that lodged itself firmly into my brain, but without leading me to mull over it as much as I did with a novel like, say, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It's more like a dark fairy tale, a tribute to the intangible uniqueness of the witching hours. I enjoyed it very much, though perhaps its brevity and unenlightening conclusion forces me to place it only about half way on my mental list of Best Murakami that one day I might even write.

Kobo Abe- The Face of Another

The Face of Another

Penguin Modern Classics

Kobo Abe
1964 (Japanese)/1966 (English)

“Of course, according to one theory a mask is apparently the expression of an extremely metaphysical aspiration to give oneself a kind of transcendental disguise, for the mask is not simply something compensatory.”

Apologies, these reviews recently all seem to start in the same way; I first read a book by insert-name-here a long time ago, and because I'm very haphazard it took me five years to read another one. This one isn't going to be any different, I'm afraid, though it should be a lot shorter than recent efforts because I just didn't care enough about this book to put in any more effort than that. On to the next paragraph;

Anyway, I first came in contact with Kobo Abe about six years ago, in the legendary Aberystwyth Town Library, not long after I'd read my first taste of Haruki Murakami and was enthused enough to pick up anything remotely Japanese-looking (which, thanks to the unfortunately limited range, led to just Ryu Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguru). That first Abe book was the memorable The Woman in the Dunes, a short novel of a man trapped against his will in a strange desert town. I liked it so much I made a mental note to read more from the author. About five years later, I ordered The Face of Another from our overlord the great Amazon, and about six months after that I started reading it.

Part of the delay included confidence that I was going to really enjoy it. It comfortably hit all of the hipster bookmarks I needed, and promised to further entice me into the lengthy bibliography of a well-regarded twentieth-century author. The novel's plot ticks all of the boxes too, with a potentially chilling and intricate plot; a distinguished scientist suffers extensive, horrific facial burns in a laboratory accident that makes normal every day life impossible. After contemplating his fate, he endeavors to create a detachable, indistinguishably perfect mask to allow him to live a normal life. Though successful, suddenly he begins to learn of the real-world possibilities that come with the mask, and of the imminent identity crises that inevitably comes with his new face.

 While this idea intrigued me in concept, in practice I found The Face of Another to be unfortunately dull and meandering. Though there's nothing wrong with self-analytical, perhaps existential and deconstructive character analysis in the face of an incredibly unlikely possibility, in the world of the unnamed scientist it far too quickly becomes laboured and self-indulgent. I enjoyed the early parts of the book, before the character has his mask, especially as he discussed aspects of his plan with disbelieving doctors, once he begins to experience his identity shift it became very boring. It's possible to compare the concept to Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but it's a world away from the drive and dynamism of that. A more modern comparison could be to Paul Auster's City of Glass (from The New York Trilogy), but where Auster's incredible tale of confused identities felt vivid and alive against the backdrop of a shifting parallel New York, The Face of Another feels stagnant and dull.

So, no recommendation for this book from me. Though published as a Penguin Modern Classic, the novel flatters to deceive, not taking full advantage of the premise and mistaking self-indulgent self-analysis for interesting philosophical musings. I would like to re-read The Woman in the Dunes at some point and hopefully it's as good as my simple memory recalls, but until then I'm in no rush to jump into Kobo Abe's bibliography. 

Haruki Murakami- Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

Vintage

 Haruki Murakami
1998 (Japanese)/ 2000 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

“I feel very strongly that all Japanese at that time had the idea drilled into them of 1999 being the end of the world. Aum renunciates have already accepted, inside themselves, the end of the world, because when they become a renunciate, they discard themselves totally, thereby abandoning the world. In other words, Aum is a collection of people who have accepted the end. People who continue to hold out hope for the near future still have an attachment to the world."

Okay, I'm not exactly a consistent blogger. These these gaps are unavoidable, I'm afraid; I'm such a willing slave to pop culture that my attention drifts between film, music, comics, games, and, of course, books with such gleeful abandon that sometimes I'll float away from one medium for a little while. Recently the mostly-unloved distraction of computer games jumped back into my life with the acquisition of a Nintendo DS and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which consumed my life for a little while. Since I finished it's been sheer willpower that's held me back from slotting in the sequel cartridge and merrily continuing the saga, and so I'm going to do my best in that time to try and catch up on my book reviewing. So let's talk about that.

Old pal of mine Haruki Murakami's Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche is perhaps the most curious and unique of all his bibliography. While the celebrated author captured my literary heart through his collection of brilliant works of fiction, Underground is, alongside What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, one of his only forays in to non-fiction. The autobiographical nature of that book and its peaceful and often lighthearted nature made it very easy to swallow and enjoy (although it lacked Murakami's usual powerful narrative), but Underground has a far more difficult premise to gravitate towards, at least for me, anyway. It's perhaps best described and categorized as an example of investigative journalism, and was originally published in two installments; although every Western example I've seen has it collected entirely in one piece.

Underground studies the Tokyo subway system terror incident, where religious cult (slash political party) Aum Shinrokyo sent a number of agents to release deadly sarin gas on five different subway trains on March 20th, 1995. Despite the potency of the gas and the planned co-ordination of these acts of domestic terrorism, 'only' thirteen people were killed, but another fifty were severely injured, and literally thousands of others experienced temporary health problems, most of these with their eyesight. The first portion of the book, is about the people who found themselves unwittingly experiencing probably the most harrowing and dangerous experience of their lives, many of whom continued to suffer mentally and physically ever since.

Other critics more professional than I attribute this impassioned attempt by the author to portray the true extent of the tragedy to Murakami's own return to Japan; having lived in the United States for some time, the author wished to reconnect with his grieving homeland. In this book he does this by compiling a detailed look at many varying perspectives of the incident through interviews with victims and unassuming heroes of the day; each giving detailed accounts put into form by Murakami to comprise a fuller picture. The different voices and experience provide the reader with a clear view, offering pictures of bravery, tragedy, and every other human emotion when experienced amongst chaos and danger.

For this reader, such presentation came with both positives and negatives as a reading experience. The problem I faced was simple; despite Murakami's talents and despite his efforts to interview a wide variety of personalities, there were only so many times I could read about variations upon the same theme and settings without losing interest. To be honest this is probably true of most non-Japanese readers, and perhaps a somewhat inevitable problem with such a specific genre of book.

As a result, I took my time (and thus my blog stayed silent), and it was a while before I finished the first portion (the longer portion, I must add). When I started part two, however, the change in tone hooked me and I flew through the rest of the book with renewed vigour. Part two of the book is subtitled The Place That Was Promised, and was originally published a year after the first. It continues the interview format with one crucial difference; while the first section only spoke with victims of the subway sarin incident, the second only talks to members of the perpetrating group; Aum Shimrokyo. To be honest, after reading the testimonies of the victims became somewhat of a repetitive slog, learning more about Aum, it's origins, philosophies and inner-workings was far more interesting. Needless to say, they seem to be a pretty crazy group of people, combining elements of religion and politics under the command of a single leader, awaiting armageddon. When interviewing these people, Murakami is far more inquisitive and challenging, making things even more interesting.

For me, Underground really was a challenge through the middle segments. While I'm familiar with Murakami's portrayal of Japan in his fiction, there's still a massive culture gap in reality, and as such it's difficult to truey invest in the accounts. Murakami's intentions of encapsulating the horror of suburban terrorism upon daily lives only intrigued for a certain length of time. The second part of the book was a lot better to me; partly because the depiction here of Aum strikes me as the definite inspiration for the plot of Murakami's magnum opus (well, in my opinion) 1Q84, but mostly because insane death cults are a lot more interesting than normal people. Ultimately though, Underground won't stay with me as a book by one of my favourite authors, but as an interesting curio; an experimental non-fiction that left me with a lot to think about.