APŽVALGA

Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" has long been praised, and I have heard of this Japanese writer for a very long time. However, it was only very recently that I had the courage to check it out myself and see what was so special about it. Many people recommended starting to get to know him from "Norwegian Wood" (among the suggestions were also works like "Kafka on the Shore", "Norwegian Wood", "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", etc.). After hearing from one person that after reading "Norwegian Wood", one would either start to worship or not like Murakami anymore, I could only pick it up and read. The first option happened.

As soon as I started reading, the story immediately attracted me, and the writing style amazed me. It was even difficult to describe specifically what I liked about the work. It seems simple and nothing special, but it has that "charm" because of which it is difficult to put the book aside. I think one needs to read at least a little of Murakami's works, and I believe that you will also feel what I have in mind.

I read it quickly, which was very good because it has really become not easy to find time for books lately.

After "Norwegian Wood", I will definitely read more than one book by this writer. I'm already looking forward to which one I will pick up next. I highly recommend it!

Everything about this novel is truly captivating and mysterious. Even the quarry, the central element or theme that one might seek to understand, remains elusive.

Let's start with the genre. It is simply undefinable. The novel commences with an obituary and half a memory. The protagonist has forgotten her name but vividly recalls what she said: “'I'm going to live to be twenty-five...then die.' Eight years later she was dead at twenty-six.” (p.12) He staggers home from the funeral, just in time for the final farewell to his wife. The question of why they even married lingers. “Looking at her back called up memories. Memories of time before I met her.” (p.16) A trail of exhausted imagery follows, and then he sums it all up: “Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. But all in all, this was hardly what you could call a tragedy.” (p.26) If you assume it's a tragic romance, you'd be mistaken. A new girlfriend with an unusual allure appears. Only when she pulls her hair back to reveal her ears does he feel that obsessive attraction. Is it an ear fetish? A sexual parody? A noirish mystery unfolds as a menacing underworld figure tells a bizarre story of his boss' possession by the very sheep in a photo the narrator received from a vanished friend five years ago. The narrator is initially dismissive, but the reader can't help but be intrigued. There's a literary flourish, like the ticking clock of a thriller. He's told he only has a month to find the sheep. But wait. Then we have a metaphoric psychological profile of Japanese ultra-nationalism.

Some label the writing as an example of magical realism. However, this label only adheres if you consider magic and realism to be fixed entities. Murakami must have contemplated his own post-war generation's view of the world and that of his parents as fractured views of reality. In his hands, realism is as fluid as water, structured only by the shifting imagery of memory, dreams, and imagination – all that animates the human mind.

He persuades us to accept coincidence as normal and the absence of identity as logical. Neither the ear-girl nor the narrator is named. A vanished friend is nicknamed “The Rat” for no particular reason, and it's never used like an ordinary nickname. Even the pet cat is just “Cat.” The narrator had already forgotten the name of the woman whose funeral he attended by the beginning of the story. The absence of names gives the characters a mutable existence, despite their unique eccentricities. When they disappear, that too seems normal.

Murakami toys with words. Silence, for instance, is more than just the absence of words. It's a presence, like a cloud of dust. “...there is the silence you encounter on entering a grand manor. And there is the silence that comes of too few people in too big a space. But this was a different quality of silence altogether. A ponderous, oppressive silence. A silence reminiscent, though it took me a while to put my finger on it, of the silence that hangs around a terminal patient. A silence pregnant with the presentiment of death. The air faintly musty and ominous.” (p.123)

There's little sense of agency in the novel. Instead, there are bizarre obsessions: ears, sheep, a quest. Even The Rat claims his actions were out of necessity. “I heard that story and hurried up here….I couldn’t shake the urge.” (p.329)

Does life have meaning? For Murakami's characters, the answer is uncertain. The Rat states “My life had no meaning. Of course, to borrow upon your venerable generalities, this is to say that everyone’s life has no meaning.” Certainly, the structure of the novel implies the same conclusion with its absence of motive. Moreover, his characters all move about with an air of emotional detachment. The narrator visits the town where he grew up and remarks on the connection between an eternally flowing river and the diminished inlet and oceanfront, a victim of development. “Instead of ocean, a vast expanse of reclaimed land and housing developments met my eyes. Faceless blocks of apartments, the miserable foundations of an attempt to build a neighborhood.” (p.107) Something living becomes something static and dead. Is it a warning or a prognostication?

I read this book because it was the selection of a local book club. It will be interesting to see what others make of it.

NOTES:

Translator Alfred Birnbaum on Murakami: https://lithub.com/inside-the-intrica...

Article on translations of Murakami: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/a...