Murakami Ryu: Almost Transparent Blue

[Bjorn]

Almost Transparent Blue (1976)

It did get kind of rough, but if there's another party I guess I'd go, there aren't really many times you can have fun, are there? When nothing's fun anymore, I'll just get married.

We get thrown right into Almost Transparent Blue when the narrator wakes up, woken by the buzz of a small insect; a seemingly insignificant detail among many. Ryu is his name, Lilly is his girlfriend who's just shooting up some heroin as they go through their normal morning ritual of talking about what happened the night before; all a blur of impressions, details, people. It's Japan in the early 70s, they live next to a US military base, therey's plenty of junk food and drugs and rock'n'roll if you're willing to provide the sex. What else are they going to do?

I wasn't sure what to expect of this novel; having read one of Murakami's later works (In The Miso Soup) and seen one of his movies (Audition) I had a vague idea that it would be violent and explicit, and it certainly is, but there's one huge difference here. Almost Transparent Blue has almost no horizon. Those other works look up, they make connections; they are vicious critiques of both Japanese society and fascination with US culture, but in ATB all of that is almost only represented by absense and disconnection, everything in microperspective; they're the first generation born after the war, with no ties to the old world, but their only ties to the new one are killing them. We follow Ryu and his group of friends as they move from flat to hotel room to flat to rock concert to flat to hospital, fucking, getting fucked, getting fucked up. 125 pages, no real plot outside of the gradual breakdown of their friendship. Not romanticised, not condemned, just related.

Almost Transparent Blue echoes both Burgess and Ageyev in the way it uses violence and delirium not as exceptions but as the rule by which the world works, and if someone told me that Denis Johnson read this before writing Jesus' Son I wouldn't be at all surprised. What makes it great, though, what makes it more than just a titillating tale of teenage sex and junkiedom, is - much like Johnson's book - the clear, bleary-eyed storytelling, the prose that's so full of wonder and serene beauty in every grimy detail, that wants so desperately to capture all this on paper, as if Ryu the narrator hasn't been able to sleep since he finally looked up that last morning and has to tell us about these people, have to put them down on paper, show us why and who and what they were in all their tragedy, why he cared about them before he falls asleep and it's all lost to him.

The book ends with Ryu the novelist breaking the fiction, addressing Lilly directly, begging her to get in touch with him if she's still alive. I don't think I want to know if she ever did.

[Daniel del Real]

I read this book 3 or 4 years ago. Someone had recommended me Murakami and I ended up with the wrong one. Later I found the one they told me and I've been in love with Haruki Murakami's prose since that.
However it was a really nice mistake, since I found this novel a very entertaining fiction with a lot of tones into reality. For me it was a mix between Burguess and Camus. Good novel.
However there were a few moments that the boy's wild attitude was too much, exaggerated too much and for me this rested credibility to the novel at times.
Haven't read anything else by Ryu, but I'd gladly try one more of his books.