Twenty Revolutions

The birthday I feared most was my 20th.

For people older than me, the most significant birthday was their 21st.

But when the age of legal adulthood was reduced to 18, turning 21 no longer had the same significance it once had.

Before then, you could be conscripted into the armed forces at 18, but you could not drink alcohol until you turned 21.

So, if you were old enough to die for your country, surely you were old enough to have a drink?

Either way, turning 20 for me meant that I had ceased to be a teenager, a group of people linked only by the fact that their age ended in the suffix “-teen”, but still it felt special not belonging to the grown up crowd.

On the other side of 20, you emerge from university (if you’ve been lucky enough to go there) and dive straight into full-time employment, maturity, responsibility, expectations and adulthood.

Suddenly, things are all a lot more serious, more permanent, less experimental, or this is how it seems.

Japanese-Style

Haruki Murakami writes about the Japanese experience in “Norwegian Wood”.

It’s set in the years 1968 to 1970, so it mightn’t be the same now.

However, it seems that the transition into adulthood is more demanding, more stressful.

It also seems that there are more casualties, more teenagers fail to make the transition and end up committing suicide.

Murakami writes about the transition almost like it’s a game of snakes and ladders.

You can climb into the future, success and normality, or you can slide into darkness, failure and death.

Well, Well

Murakami’s protagonist, Toru Watanabe, pictures the darkness as a well-like abyss early in the novel when he recounts the events of a day he spent with the girl he longs for, Naoko.

“I can describe the well in minute detail. It lay precisely on the border where the meadow ended and the woods began – a dark opening in the earth a yard across, hidden by grass. Nothing marked its perimeter – no fence, no stone curb (at least not one that rose above ground level). It was nothing but a hole, a wide-open mouth…You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world’s darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density.”

As a teenager, Toru’s life had been fairly innocuous, he had been playing in a meadow compared with the thicket that awaited him in the future.

But first he had to avoid the well in making the transition.

As his friend Reiko says in another context:

“She and I were bound together at the border between life and death.”

There is a sense in which we have to negotiate the boundaries as safely as we can, to cross the border and close the gap.

If we are lucky, we can do it together.

Unfortunately, not everybody is destined to make it into the forest and out the other side.

Vanishing Act

The overwhelming feel of reading “Norwegian Wood” is one of being in a blank, dream-like, ethereal world.

Although Murakami describes people, surroundings and objects with precision, it all seems other worldly, as if everybody lives and breathes in a world beyond this world.

There is a sense that at any moment, it could all disappear, that it might all just be part of some cosmic vanishing act.

Even if we make it through, we might turn around and discover that some of our friends haven’t been so lucky.

Talking about My Generation

Most of the action in the novel is dialogue, the characters talking about themselves and their relationships.

They are preoccupied with themselves, introspective and self-centred.

They converse, they play folk songs on the guitar, they write letters that are later burned.

Nobody makes anything that will last, other than perhaps themselves and the relationships that are able to survive into adulthood.

They struggle for permanence, when everything else around them is ephemeral.

Even their memories fade.

In the “frightful silence” of the forest, Naoko asks Toru:

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”

Of course, he responds that he will, although 20 years later, he finds that his memory “has grown increasingly dim.”

“What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?...the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow.”

To which he adds, “Because Naoko never loved me.”

“Norwegian Wood”

The Beatles song features throughout the novel.

It’s a favourite of Naoko’s and Reiko plays it frequently on her guitar.

For much of the novel, the lyrics could describe Toru’s relationship with Naoko and his other love interest, Midori:

“I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.”

There is a sense of sadness in the sexual subject matter of this novel, almost as if it's been written in a minor key.

Reiko sums up the Beatles pretty accurately, “Those guys sure knew something about the sadness of life,” she says, before adding, “and gentleness”, almost as an afterthought.

She Never Loved Me

I love all of this talk of love and longing and loss and loneliness and labyrinths (all the “L” words).

Not everybody feels the same, though.

You should have heard my wife, F.M. Sushi, when she noticed my tears and stole a look at what I was reading.

“Why don’t these people just stop moaning and get a life. Can’t they just grow up, for chrissake. Everybody’s responsible for their own orgasm.”

Then she flicked the book back at me across the room, adding defiantly (and defeating my prospects that night in one fell swoop), “Especially you.”

I pick up the book, find my place and resume reading where I left off (page 10), equally defiantly, and aloud...“Because Naoko never loved me.”

My wife turns her back on me as I snicker at her lack of understanding of my gentle side.

Growing Up (How Strange the Change from Minor to Major)

Still, a few hundred pages later, I am stunned by her prescience.

Toru grows up in Murakami’s delicate hands.

He has to stop dreaming, he has to live in the present, he has to embrace the now that is in front of him, he has to love the one he’s with.

He has to distance himself from the past, so that it becomes just a lingering memory.

Reiko tells him:

“You’re all grown up now, so you have to take responsibility for your choices. Otherwise, you ruin everything.”

Midori (who he has ummed and ahhed about) tells him:

“...you, well, you’re special to me. When I’m with you I feel something is just right. I believe in you. I like you. I don’t want to let you go.”

In the pouring rain, she reveals to Toru she has broken up with the boyfriend that has prevented her from committing to him.

“Why?” he asks.

“Are you crazy?” she screams. “You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don’t know the answer to something as simple as that?

Then in a scene that could come straight out of "Casablanca", she says:

“Drop the damn umbrella and wrap both your arms around me – hard!”

How did F.M. Sushi know this would happen?

That Toru would grow up and get a girl, not just any girl?

That they would fall in love and not into a deep, dark well.

Still I prefer Murakami’s way of telling the story.

It always comes as a surprise the way he tells it, the change from minor to major.

What would my wife know of these things?

What I find mysterious, she finds obvious.

When I find the harbour hard to fathom, she appears to walk on water.

If you put her in a labyrinth, she would always find her way out.

Whereas sometimes I prefer to hang around and enjoy the experience of being down in the rabbit hole.

Mystified. Confused. Excited.

At least for a little wile.

Original Review: October 3, 2011



Audio Recording of My Review

Bird Brian once initiated a Big Audio Project, where Good Readers record and publish their reviews. Unfortunately, BB deleted his page after the amazon acquisition of GR.

My recording of this review was my first contribution. You can find it on SoundCloud here:

http://soundcloud.com/inksterpop/soun...

Norwegian Wood is unlike any book I've read. It tells the story of Toru, a quiet and uncouth college student who is in love with Naoko, a beautiful and withdrawn woman. Their relationship is ensconced by their best friend's death that took place a few years prior to the beginning of this novel, and because of that Naoko retreats further and further away from Toru. He finds solace in Midori, a sexually passionate and powerfully independent individual, though he knows his feelings for both of them cannot be contained forever.

This is, I think, the first work of fiction I've read that features a protagonist studying at college. The uniqueness of the setting struck me, and there were several poignant themes that ran throughout the novel that: Toru's coming of age, the romance/love triangle/sexuality, suicide, etc. Though my reading of the novel may have been a bit fragmented due to my schoolwork, I can see why one of my good friends recommended it to me despite the fact that she had not yet read it herself - right from reading book jacket, you can tell that Norwegian Wood is going to be something different.

And it was. However, not everything about the book had me blowing up in delight. The writing, while pretty, did not captivate me - I don't know if it was because of the translation, but irrespective, I did not feel any force behind Murakami's words beyond what they literally meant. The plot, while intriguing, did not pull me into the story and the characters as much as I would have liked, and by the end I didn't suffer from any severe emotional impact - something that I do take delight in doing.

Recommended to those looking for an abstract, abnormal coming of age story. I must warn you now that there is a lot of sex. It's somewhat graphic but shouldn't be an issue in terms of one's enjoyment of the story - just don't give this to your nine-year-old niece as a birthday present.

*cross-posted from my blog, the quiet voice.

Still the best Murakami book. He has a way of talking about devastating things that makes them endurable. He does it by distracting the reader with weird moments in the middle of all the drama — and here, unlike in his other works, those weird moments come at just the right time.

Many people criticize the sex scenes, but I found them deeply revealing of the characters, so I can only disagree with the criticism. I simply couldn’t suspect Murakami or Toru (the protagonist) of bad intentions. Everything felt honest, because mistakes were made. Definitely, a favorite.

I was absolutely riveted by this haunting novel of a young man's coming of age in the 1960s and his search for connection. Toru Watanabe is a serious young man at university in Tokyo trying to understand the world and his part in it, and focuses on his relationship with two young women: Naoku, a girl he knew in high school, when he was part of a friendship triangle with her and another more glamorous boy, Kizuku--who killed himself, but who remains an invisible part of their attachment to each other; and Midori, an opinionated, high-spirited girl whose presence on the page is a sheer joy.

Actually both of the girls are very 'sixties types--the beautiful mournful haunted girl and the wacky fun-loving one who breathes life into a room. There is also the jaded rich boy on his way to becoming master of the Universe, who takes Watanabe under his wing... All the characterizations in this book are glorious and very specific, the people just jump off the page at you. Murakami perfectly captures the searching young person--how everything becomes an object of serious contemplation, and 'how to be' is an urgent matter. The way literature and the music are so much a part of his young seeker's life.

But what I admire most is how the novelist weaves the tale--it's a very talky novel, a lot of storytelling by the characters--and yet it's all extremely effective and engaging. Not much "happens" in a Murakami novel, but relationships and the internal life are beautifully and accurately portrayed, I can't get over how skillful he can be in his ability to put his finger right on the most evanescent impressions.

*Norwegian Wood by The Beatles plays softly as a single tear slides down my face*

“And when I awoke I was alone
This bird had flown
So I lit a fire
Isn’t it good Norwegian Wood?”

Oh boy...Where to I even begin.

Pros: The writing and storytelling are good.

Cons: Every time I started to enjoy this book, the author made sure I didn’t.

1. The way the female characters would be compare to babies or kids during sexual scenes was a dealbreaker for me.

She had the breast of a little girl.(p.290)
Yeah that’ll do it.

2. I, once again, have to point that this is another book where the author seems obsessed with the wrinkles of a ~40yo woman. It’s now a personal pet peeve of mine. We literally get a whole paragraph about them when we first meet her. It’s a recurrent discussion throughout the book and I can already hear the excuses that it’s often for the POV of the 18yo or that maybe she’s insecure about it. Sure. Maybe. But ever since I started noticing how common this is, especially from male authors, I can’t unseen it and it annoys me.

3. The sex scenes, let’s talk about the sex scenes.

I wanted to explain to her, "I am having intercourse with you now. I am inside you. But really this is nothing. It doesn't matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies. All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh."

I’d rather go back to reading fairy porn by Sarah J Maas.

4. My most serious complaint… the female characters didn’t ring true to me at all. Why are they all acting and saying these things around the MC?! The most flagrant one is when Reiko tells him about her SA. Why do male authors seem incapable of talking about SA without fetishizing it?
I'm referring to the "lesbian scene" where Reiko gets assaulted by the 13yo. She makes sure to give all the details about how wet she was to the MC she just met...

But this one is probably my favorite:

“Know what I did the other day?" Midori asked. “I got all naked in front of my father's picture. Took off every stitch of clothing and let him have a good, long look. Kind of in a yoga position. Like, "here, daddy, these are my tits, and this is my cunt." (p.229)

Why does female trauma always have to be sexualized? Her dad just died and this is how she copes? By getting naked and showing him her vulva?? (Then telling the MC all about it??) Please.

Could some of it be cultural differences? Because it’s set in 1968?
Maybe but I rate my books based on my enjoyment and I didn’t enjoy myself.

I don’t get the hype.

*It made it to my worst books of 2022: https://youtu.be/jOcHnWSUOEw

I don't have many meaningful things to say about Norwegian Wood. First, a disclaimer. This is, by no means, a romance book - no offence meant. I cannot suffer to attach such a tacky word on this book. Oh, what do I know, it IS a romance book. But it is laterally more than that.

Like Dickens, Murakami fuels his potboiler with death of the innocent. Each one is offing herself. That's right. What really matters is the subtext. In all superficial opinion, Watanabe is having a normal college life. But though the actions of his peers unravel with robotic neatness, in the background there's chaos going on.

Watanabe's best bud, Nagasawa, plays the devil's advocate. Showing himself as an evil guy, which he partially is, he prompts and tempts and gauges. He teases with Watanabe's rhythm of orderliness.But stuff was happening before they met. The one humanitarian thing that Watanabe does, in the hospital, attending upon Midori's dad, is hefty in its purity. That's what lacks in classical literature, ambivalent people who have their own set of morals. People who still are heroes.

There is the question of death lingering throughout the book. Near the end I was fed up with these upheavals. But then the hero himself put him in purgatorial madness. The sex in the book doesn't appear obscene at all. It feels natural. The people who don't feel real, such as Midori, are still full of a palette of colours. She is a healthy caricature. And she does her job of making me laugh. In a way Midori is the most generous girl of the bunch.

Murakami had always been a closed door for me. But if his other work is like this one, then I need a second crack at one of his other books. I tried hard not to let spoilers show, but man has Murakami got the talent to keep churning interesting words. The best thing is that few people notice that beneath this seamless flow of words, lie a lot of twists. Twists are what make art great. And this was great art. It contains lots of films, literature, the Beatles' music, Bach, Mozart. And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.

Thanks to my cyber friend, Manju, to recommend this book to me.

2.5

Primer libro que leo de Murakami. Me esperaba mucho más. Me parecieron demasiadas muertes y demasiado sexo coqueteando con el sinsentido. Todo era muy inverosímil. No sé si el autor no sale de su casa o la cultura oriental es mucho más diferente a la nuestra de lo que pensaba, pero, Murakami, lo que pasa en tu libro no pasa en la realidad. La historia nunca llegó a resultarme creíble.

La único que me gustó y disfruté fue solo el penúltimo capítulo, que fue la única parte en la que el autor logró quebrar algo en mi interior. Solamente eso. Porque lo demás, sinceramente, es ridículo.

I straightened up and looked out the plane window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of what I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.

I almost stopped reading after this maudlin and downbeat opening passage. There are doors that I have kept closed for years, memories of my own I thought are better left alone there, regrets and lost connections with people that were at one time the most important presences in my life. When I read about Toru Watanabe’s walk in the meadow, all I could picture was myself at 20, up above the treeline in the mountains with the girl I was in love with at the time, drunk on summer sunshine and deafened by the song of the cicadas in the high grass. I put the book down and spend the next hour trying to remember all the details of that day. They are mostly gone. I wish now I had written it down, like Murakami tried to do here.

Where could we have disappeared to? How could such a thing have happened? Everything that seemed so important back then – Naoko, and the self I was then, and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? […] Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

I’ve noticed mixed reactions from the readers regarding this novel. Some complain that it is atypical, too conventional and lacking the daring, the weirdness and the depth of other works by him. Others give the highest rating. I am in the second category, mostly for the way the experiences of Watanabe bring forward and shine a light on similar moments from a youth more focused on having fun than on trying to understand life and relationships.

Murakami makes it easier for the reader to recognize himself in Watanabe : I was just an ordinary kid who liked to read books and listen to music and didn’t stand out in any way that would prompt someone like Kizuki to pay attention to me.
I think it will be hard to find somebody who doesn’t like to read books (at least here on Goodreads) or to listen to music. Or who didn’t walk for hours on the street of a big city without any other purpose than to absorb the sights, the smells, the faces of the people around you. Or who doesn’t look back with nostalgia on his school days, where friendships came so easy to us, when we could afford to be careless about the people around us. Anyway, I found Tore Watanabe easy to relate to and this made it easier for me to ignore some of the less convincing aspects of his character, like his political apathy or his social success despite his self-confessed introvert nature, not to mention his slightly promiscuous sexual emancipation.

Watanabe is the central character, and the story revolves around his emotional growing up, his learning to accept responsibility for his actions and his ability to deal with loss and rejection. The first loss that marks Toru is the suicide of Kizuki – his best friend from highschool, an event he deals with mostly by moving away and bottling up his emotions. When he moves to Tokyo to continue his studies at a higher level, he seems both self-assured and rudderless. Two contradictory character traits that illustrate his above average intelligence and his lack of ambition or passion for any particular subject. He is content to drift along and let events happen to him.

Soon though, he gets reunited with Kizuki’s emotionally fragile girlfriend, Naoko, and they start going out in a casual way. Toru also befriends another very intelligent boy from university, Nagasawa, his exact opposite in terms of ambition and motivation. They share a passion for books and for casual sex with girls they pick up in bars. Later additions to the cast include a non-conformist and exuberant girl in Toru’s drama class and an elderly lady musician with psychological issues, Reiko Ishida.

Since Toru Watanabe is kind of bland and generic as a main character, most of the charm, the tension and the change in the novel are provided by these secondary characters and the impact they have on Toru’s emotional development.

Naoko is sensitive and vulnerable, definitely marked by the people around her who committed suicide, unable to adapt to the realities of the world. She lost both a sister and her boyfriend Kizuki, and now she is half eager, half afraid of starting a relationship with Toru. She knows she has psychological problems and checks herself into a mountain retreat. I may not find her morbid tendencies very appealing or easy to relate to, but her letters and her conversation are very convincing:

Ordinary girls as young as I am are basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not it’s beautiful or will make them happy. Fair is a man’s word, finally, but I can’t help feeling it’s also exactly the right word for me now. And because questions of beauty and happiness have become such difficult and convoluted propositions for me now, I suspect, I find myself clinging instead to other standards – like, whether or not something is fair or honest or universally true.

Her influence on Toru is subtle yet powerful, as he tries to love her for what she is (“Why do you like weird people?” / “I don’t see you as weird!”), accepting that all of us are damaged to one degree or another, and that we need somebody beside us to ‘help us make it through the night’. Toru calls his daily struggle to keep living his ‘winding up the spring’, a reiteration of the theme from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, while Naoko uses the metaphor of the well at the bottom of the garden as the illustration of her fears, another theme used in TWUBC. Other recurring themes that I have come to recognize as Murakami’s signature touches are his love of music, of cooking, of books and of time spent alone, I think there are a couple of cats also somewhere in the text.

The conversations between Toru and Naoko capture perfectly the sudden enthusiasms of youth, followed by moody silences and retreats into the inner self and sometimes by philosophical musings well ahead of their age:

“- So if you understand me better, what then?
-tYou don’t get it, do you? I said. It’s not a question of ‘what then’. Some people get a kick out of reading railroad timetables and that’s all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?
-tKind of like a hobby? She said, amused.
-tSure, I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a hobby, that’s OK, too.”

Up until now the plot develops into the romance of two young people trying to get together. Complications arise when Toru falls under the spell of Midori Kobayashi, the temperamental opposite of the introverted Naoko. Midori is outspoken and reckless and flouting conventions (“Midori said she wanted to climb a tree, but unfortunately there were no climbable trees in Shinjuku.”) The reader, and Toru, can’t help being charmed by her vivacity and curiosity and even the slight hint of danger she confers on every encounter. With the novel being placed in 1968, the year students all around the world demonstrated against the establishment, it was easy for me to see her as a flower power child, especially after she declares:

“I’m not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I’m going to believe in.”

As we get to know her better, we learn that Midori has her own struggles with death in her family and shallow relationships. She sometimes lies to cover her vulnerabilities, but overall she is a brave soldier who refuses to take the easy way out (that damn suicide fascination so many people in the novel manifest). My favourite quote from her is an echo from the movie Forest Gump, another example of a story that some people find fascinating while others find corny and contrived, just like Norwegian Wood:

You know how they’ve got these cookie assortments, and you like some but you don’t like others? And you eat up all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don’t like so much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. ‘Now I just have to polish these off, and everything will be OK’. Life is a box of cookies.

One of my issues with the novel is that I liked both of Toru’s love interests, and every time he went with Naoko I was sorry for Midori, when he came back to Midori I felt sorry for Naoko. The boy faces a difficult decision  and Murakami made quite angry when he chose to kill off one of the girls in order to free his protagonist for the other one. And speaking of spoilers, I thought the final sex scene with the older lady for totally gratuitous. Well written and argued, but unnecessary.

The most annoying character in the book is the smart, but selfish Nagasawa. I might have disliked him most because I felt guilty of some of the same attitudes in my youth: focused on keeping my freedom and my options open in relationships, arrogant about the books I’ve read and about good results in exams, careless of the feeling of others. Nagasawa is particularly cruel to his girlfriend Hatsumi, who puts up with all his infidelities and his lack of commitment. One quote from this boy illustrates best his attitude. It starts good, but then reveals his elitist and disdainful core:

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the world of hicks and slobs.
or,
“Don’t be sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”

Until now I’ve presented all the young actors in this character driven drama. The exception is Reiko Ishida, a lady battling her own personal demons in the mountain sanatorium where she becomes the best friend of Naoko. Her own story arc is one of the best rendered sections of the novel, probably because she has a better grasp on her feelings and of her goals that the still seeking youths. She gives me the closing quotes of my review, the kernels of wisdom that Toru gets to keep after all his emotional journey, and she also gives me the soundtrack list for the novel, always a major feature in a Murakami novel, setting the mood and anchoring the story in the pop culture of its period. So here’s what Midori has to say to urge us to embrace life in all its beauty and pain:

“Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.”
and,
“All of us (by which I mean ‘all’ of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don’t live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring our lines and angles with rulers and protractors.”

The musical score focuses extensively on the Beatles songbook, with the title song referring to the fleeting nature of young love and later songs to a sense of loss or solitude, like Eleanor Rigby or The Fool on the Hill, all sung by Reiko on her guitar. Other tracks include:

-tBurt Bacharach – “Close to You” (with Karen Carpenter being my fav version)
-t“Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” (remember Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid?)
-tJim Morrison “People are strange when you’re a stranger” (very appropriate in this context)
-t“Walk On By” (this one was in Valley of the Dolls)
-tLaura Nyro – “Wedding Bell Blues” (don’t know it, must check it out)
-tRavel, Debussy, several bossa novas, Rodgers and Hart, Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Carole King, The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder,
-tKyu Sakamoto – “Sukiyaki Song” (must check it out)
-t“Blue Velvet” (this one I know from the David Lynch movie)
-t“Green Fields” ( I think I prefer Loreena McKennitt version)
-tNot in the book, but my own submission as a good choice for Midori theme songs: Melanie with her 25th Anniversary album.

I love the melancholic mood of this book and how it moves along the life stories of young students in Tokyo in the 1960's/70's without being overly message-driven - it's quiet on the surface, but with a high emotional impact. Our protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe who, at 37, looks back at his past: His best friend at school, Kizuki, took his own life when he was 17, and when Toru moved to Tokyo to attend college, he met Kizuki's former girlfriend Naoko and fell in love with the troubled young woman. Naoko soon had to leave Tokyo to seek treatment in a sanatorium, and Toru started spending time with the lively Midori, a fellow student...

Murakami empathically and tenderly explores the troubles of his characters, how they struggle to adapt to the world around them, how they explore their sexuality, how they cope (or can't cope) with the demands of society. The text shines with its dialogue and letters in which people share their emotional damages and passions, their longings and experiences. Even the smaller characters like Toru's ambitious, rich buddy or Naoko's friend Reiko are rendered with such detail and precision that they immediately come alive. One can certainly argue that the depressed Naoko is the counterpart to the outgoing Midori, but at the end of the day, they are both hurt characters trying to fight the odds. How do you face life with all of its trials and tribulations? The student movement of the late 60's works as a back drop but is ultimately dismissed as a theoretical endeavor, while Murakami's characters are attempting to come to terms with real, everyday issues (I'm already curious to read Ryu Murakami's 69 which has a similar set-up, but I suspect Ryu will take a different viewpoint - I love both Murakamis though!).

The novel's title refers to the Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" (check out the comment section under this YouTube link which features Murakami mentions with thousands of likes!:-)), and the notorious music enthusiast Murakami (H.!) adds tons of other references from jazz (obviosuly, with this author) to Bach. Toru shares numerous traits with the author, e.g., they both studied theater, love cats, enjoy modern American literature and perceive themselves as very average people, but who knows how similar those two really are. One thing is for certain: They are both introverts, and Murakami fled Japan because the notoriety that came with the immense success of this book was too much for him.

A fascinating, moving, beautiful novel that once again proves that I prefer Murakami's more realistic works. Here's the movie trailer.

جنگل نروژی،
رمانی‌ست غمگین که «هاروکی موراکامی» نویسنده‌ی مشهور، دوست داشتنی و پرآوازه‌ی ژاپنی آن را به سبک رئال نوشته است.
در ابتدا عرض می‌کنم که فرقی نمی‌کند به سراغ کدام ترجمه از کتاب بروید چون این کتاب به اندازه‌ای سانسور شده که خواندنش به فارسی هیچ (تاکید می‌کنم هیچ) ارزشی ندارد، من بعد از خواندن ابررمان «کافکا در ساحل» می‌دانستم آثار موراکامی به چه شکل سانسور شده‌اند و آماده‌ی مواجهه با آن بودم، در ابتدا جهت کنجکاوی با خواندن ترجمه‌ی آقای «مهدی غبرایی» خواندن را آغاز کردم و همانطوری که پیش‌تر نیز در این سایت نوشته‌ام آن پولی که انتشارات و مترجم بابت این نوع آثار دریافت می‌کنند چیزی جز لقمه‌ی حرام نیست.
بنابراین کتاب را به گوشه‌ای انداخته و خواندن را با نسخه انگلیسی به پایان رساندم. پیشنهادم به شما عزیزان هم مانند کافکا در ساحل اینه که یا از ابتدا به سراغ نسخه‌ی انگلیسی بروید و یا اگر می‌خواهید حتما فارسی بخوانید همزمان با متن انگلیسی به همراه یک لغت نامه جلو بروید تا چیزی را از دست ندهید چون تقریبا هر چند صفحه بخشی از کتاب یا حذف یا به مسخره ترین شکل ممکن تحریف شده است.
نام این رمان برگرفته از نام یک تِرک موسیقیِ مشهور به نام
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
از آلبوم Rubber Soul
نوشته‌ي John Lennon
و اجرای گروه موسیقیِ The Beatles می‌باشد که شخصیت‌های داستان هر کدام به شکلی با آن ارتباط خاص برقرار می‌کنند.
در ابتدای رمان شخصیت اول داستان این ترک را در فرودگاهِ هامبورگ می‌شنود و ناخودآگاه هم خود و هم ما رو به گذشته‌ي خود می‌برد و تا پایان ما را غرق می‌کند.

این رمان داستانِ زندگیِ پسر نوجوانی به نام «تورو واناتابه» را روایت می‌کند، او ۲ دوست به نام‌های «نائوکو» و «کیزوگی» دارد که آن‌دو از کودکی با هم بزرگ شده‌اند و هم اکنون باهم رابطه دارند و با یکدیگر یک اکیپِ دوستیِ ۳ نفره ساخته‌اند و همیشه باهم هستند.
من مطابق روال همیشه در ریویوهای خودم هیچ اشاره‌ای حتی مختصر و کوتاه به متن داخل کتاب نمی‌کنم بنابراین فقط به نقل جزئیات قابل ذکر اشاره میکنم.
این رمان از زندگیِ جوانانِ ژاپنی در ده‌ی ۱۹۶۰ توکیو روایت می‌کند که شور انقلابی داشتند و به دنبال تحولات گسترده بودند.
جنگل نروژی به هیچ وجه تنها یک رمان عاشقانه‌ی معمولی نیست، آنقدر جزئیات اتفاقاتِ آن دوران مو به مو توسط نویسنده روایت شده که در نگاه اول می‌توانیم حتی به این فکر کنیم که این روایت‌ها داستان زندگی خود موراکامی‌ست!
در این رمان غمگین که تم خودکشی هم در آن پررنگ هست، درگیری‌های شخصیت‌های جوان در مواجهه با عشق و روابط و پس از دست‌ دادنش روبرو می‌شویم.
شخصیت‌های دیگری هم در این کتاب هستند که معروف‌ترین آنها «ناگازاوا» که یکی از هم اتاقی‌های خوابگاه واناتابه، «میدوری» یکی از عشق‌های واناتابه و همچنین «ریکو» هم اتاقی نائوکو که شخصیت مورد علاقه‌ی من در کتاب بود و وقتی داستانی از گذشته‌ی او روایت شد یکی از سوپربخش‌های این رمان بود.
همانطور که می‌دانیم اگر داستان‌های کوتاه موراکامی را کنار بگذاریم، می‌توانیم رمان‌های او را به ۲ دسته‌ی رئال و رئالیسم جادویی تقسیم کنیم، بنابراین اگر کافکا در ساحل بهترین انتخاب و پرچمدار آثار رئالیسم جادویی اوست، این رمان نیز پرچمدار آثار رئال اوست و اگر علاقه‌ای به رمان‌های پایان باز و پر از معما و ابهام موراکامی ندارید می‌توانید این بخش از آثار او را با خواندن این کتاب آغاز و از آن لذت ببرید.
به این رمان هم بدون هیچ تعارف و خجالتی ۵ ستاره میدهم و خواندنش را به همه‌ی دوستانم پیشنهاد می‌کنم.
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امروز مورخ بیست و چهارم خرداد یک هزار و چهارصد، ریویوی فوق پس از اینکه بار دیگر توسط دوستانم مورد اقبال قرار گرفت، به دلیل رویت چند اشتباه نگارشی مورد ویرایش قرار گرفت.

I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to get out of this book apart from gross descriptions of sex


(my actual reaction to most of this book)

n  As far as I can tell, this book is about:n
- n  Toru not being able to keep it in his damn pants.n When Midori tells him she wants to lie down with him, he tells her, "If I go to bed with a girl, I'm going to want to do it with her, and I sure as hell don't want to lie there struggling to restrain myself. I'm not kidding, I might end up forcing you." You expect me to sympathize with Toru when he says shit like this? THERE ISN'T A SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER IN THIS BOOK WHO DOESN'T HAVE SEX WITH TORU. Also, if I have to hear about how big Toru's penis is one more time I'm going to lose it.
- Toru wallowing in his Manpain because he can't have sex with the girl he wants
- Toru getting wasted all the time
- Midori being oh-so-Quirky and Edgy (not to mention REALLY FREAKING PETTY)
- Naoko having no personality apart from the fact that she's a) Toru's love interest and b) mentally ill

Yeah...this book was not to my taste, to say the least.