Mirabell
Former Member
well now that's not very encouraging?! You should do a bookbabble about Murakami!
Haruki Murakami: 1Q84
- Thread starter DB Cooper
- Start date
well now that's not very encouraging?! You should do a bookbabble about Murakami!
miobrien
Reader
I think Murakami is much better than Auster. But I don't regard him as highly as I used to. I think it's just a simple case of growing up. Murakami seems godly when you're younger (teenager to 20's). All the musical allusions, hip characters, casual sex, talking cats, etc. Unfortunately I don't think he has anything important to say. His prose is pedestrian and full of cliches. He's entertaining, but repetitive. He only has a few stock characters. I think I'll always read what he publishes but I doubt I'll ever regard him as highly as I used to. It would be strange if he won the Nobel prize; he isn't in the company of Vargas Llosa.Yeah, I am so tempted by fat novels that I am sitting down to read or reread some older Murakami novels. I'm not telling you which ones I've already read, but which ones should I read (or reread) to improve my opinion of Mr. M's works (who I currently rate marginally higher than Auster)? I'd hate to read a 1000 page book while feeling somewhat hostile to the book/writer. Did that already with the Tellkamp p.o.s., so, you know.
Anyway, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is my favorite. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is also fun. Well, they're all fun. But, again, there's just not enough substance.
Conversely, this is why I'm excited for 1Q84 -- I'm hoping for something different this time.
Bjorn
Reader
We should do a bookbabble, period. But my point was that 1Q84 starts off by being so very Murakamiesque that it's... it's a bit like having a Ramones album start with "ONETWOTHREEFOUR!" It remains to be seen if this is Rocket To Russia or Mondo Bizarro. Or, which is what I'm hoping for, a new step that actually works.
DB - people have been a bit busy, unfortunately. It's not dead, it's just resting.
miobrien - took the reluctant and still not entirely convinced words out of my mouth.
Daniel del Real
Moderator
Oh yeah, Janacek's Sinfonietta. You'll be hearing about it many times through the novel. Actually the whole novel's structure is based on Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier BWV 846–893. Yeah, it's Murakami in his pure style mixing literature and music.
I have read the first volume of two, that's over 700 pages in my edition and I can tell it's fantastic novel. Murakami is a gifted writer regarding creating huge structures of characters and situations which are never tiresome or boring to the reader. Besides he analyses the nowadays very common situation of Sects, how they form, how they recruit their leaders and connects it with political movements in Japan in the XX century. So far, an amazing novel, but I can't tell if it's hist best nor make a whole review because I need to evaluate the work as a whole.
Browsing the novel at a bookstore I noticed they've changed the translator for the Spanish edition. No more Lourdes Porta. How did you find the style this time, Daniel, did it flow smoothly?
Daniel del Real
Moderator
The story flows very good, probably as well as with Lourdes Porta's translations. I don't know if Murakami's prose has that characteristic even for translations or they have good translators from Japanese at Tusquets. Also, the translations is not a very Spanish translation as it happens with many of the ones made by Spanish translators, the ones from Anagrama for example.
Mirabell
Former Member
thank you & björn. This weird Murakami lovefest in the wlf these past two years was worrying me.
EveningBird
New member
I am currently at book 2 out of 3 and I really like the way it is going. Untill there was a change in Fukaeri that was 'neccessary', sigh. I love her character, as I also like Aomame and the flow of the story. Of course, there is the mystery of the Little People that always keeps me interested. I think this is better than the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, as Tengo isn't as depressing as Toru and the way how two stories become one is very lovely.
Daniel del Real
Moderator
I was fascinated with the caracther of the leader of the Sect. Starting with the physical description of this huge man with white hair and then the description of his phsychology in his conversation with Aomame. Truly fascinating.
And yeah, he always leaves you with the question of the Little People.
And yeah, he always leaves you with the question of the Little People.
Elder Roxas
New member
Daniel, are you familiar then with Murakami's works in Spanish? Can you speak to their quality? A couple of places here and there online mention the Tusquets translations are full of typos and bad grammar. I'm currently learning to read more literature in Spanish and so I'm trying to decide if I want to invest in "1Q84" and a couple of other Murakami's works ("Hard-boiled Wonderland," for example) in Spanish.
Add to that the occasional wrong translation, as in Kafka on the Shore, when they confuse the "American South" with "South America", therefore straying completely out of context.
Bjorn
Reader
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 vols 1&2, 2011
Few 20th century books are used as a reference for how society works (or doesn't) as often as George Orwell's 1984. But it's also, according to a recent poll, the book that the most people lie about having read, so let's just establish this: 1984 isn't (merely) a book about how the state keeps tabs on us, and the key phrase isn't "Big Brother Is Watching." The key phrase is "We have always been at war with Eurasia." Whoever controls language and information controls history, controls the present, controls people's entire concept of who and where and when they are. The purpose of newspeak is to make dissent impossible. And the scariest concept of all is that we let it happen. We might be happy with two minutes' hate per day and fear of an unknown enemy, seeking safety in paranoia. And when the world changes, when we find ourselves through the looking glass, we can't even use words to explain what used to be different.
(Of course, the real 1984 didn't turn out like that. Phew.)
So it's no coincidence that that 1Q84 starts with a subtle nod to another English classic. One spring day in 1984, Aomame is late for a very important date, so she takes a shortcut through a metaphorical rabbit hole and winds up in another Japan where history went ever so slightly different. Nothing much has changed, really, it's the little things that she barely notices at first. She's still herself, she's still in Tokyo, she's still an assassin who sends abusive men to "the other side"... but suddenly the cops have always been armed with heavier weapons, the US and the Soviet Union have always been friendly, a mysterious religious movement have always hidden up in the mountains, and when she looks up at the night sky there's two moons hanging there.
In what first looks like an unrelated story, something similar happens to Tengo, a math teacher and unpublished novelist who's hired to ghost write a flawed but fascinating novel by a high school girl who grew up in a weird abusive religious sect. His job is to rewrite the story, polish it and make it more palatable, but leave in that bit about the two moons.
Here's what 1Q84 is not: it's not a rewrite of Orwell, at least not to the extent that the likes of Burgess (or The Daily Mail) have tried it. Apart from a few references to 1984 by the characters themselves it's all rather subtle; the ideas, rather than the slogans, sneak into the narrative, changing the past almost seamlessly. And Murakami fans won't need to be disappointed, he does a lot of things right; he's got two fascinating, well-drawn main characters, and there are lots of little rabbit holes hidden within the two storylines linking them together both plotwise and thematically. Some people have noted with interest – personally I think it's little more than a curiosity – that the novel is based on Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier; two books, 24 chapters each, one for each musical key, alternating between the major and the minor. The storylines twist around each other, constantly teasing that one of them might be a fiction within the other or that they both might be within something greater, building to a climax that leaves me going "...WHAT? MORE! NOW!"
But at the same time, every time I go through one of those rabbit holes, I keep wondering if it's really as clever as it thinks it is. For one thing, there's still something about it that makes me wonder if it's supposed to seem as obviously constructed as it does; maybe it's just that I was never much of a Bach fan, and would have preferred the jazz fan Murakami to improvise more – as it is, the novel seems organized by mathematical precision, with the characters even remarking themselves on the obviousness of some of the dramatic ploys he uses. What's (possibly) worse is the way Murakami presents a novel this rich in themes, asking a lot of rather sinister questions about identity, paranoia, reality and power on a personal, sexual, societal level that would make a Pynchon, a Dick, a Cronenberg or even a Ryu Murakami rub their hands and cancel all their vacation plans, whereas Haruki almost seems to chicken out and say "Well, that's just the way it is, whatchagonnado." I'm not saying a novelist is required to always tackle the Big Questions, but when you let the wasps out you better know you've let them out. Don't just dazzle me with big-screen entertainment, have it mean something.
Of course, the irony of that is that the whole thing is told from the POV of characters who are themselves caught up in a story controlled, not by Big Brother (unless you mean Murakami himself), but by what takes Big Brother's place when everyone's too busy congratulating themselves on not living in 1984. There's one volume to go, and if Murakami wants it to, it could blow 1Q84 wide open. Maybe that's his plan. Maybe there is no plan and the novel, like Orwell's state, only exists to perpetuate itself. I can't tell right now.
***00
Few 20th century books are used as a reference for how society works (or doesn't) as often as George Orwell's 1984. But it's also, according to a recent poll, the book that the most people lie about having read, so let's just establish this: 1984 isn't (merely) a book about how the state keeps tabs on us, and the key phrase isn't "Big Brother Is Watching." The key phrase is "We have always been at war with Eurasia." Whoever controls language and information controls history, controls the present, controls people's entire concept of who and where and when they are. The purpose of newspeak is to make dissent impossible. And the scariest concept of all is that we let it happen. We might be happy with two minutes' hate per day and fear of an unknown enemy, seeking safety in paranoia. And when the world changes, when we find ourselves through the looking glass, we can't even use words to explain what used to be different.
(Of course, the real 1984 didn't turn out like that. Phew.)
So it's no coincidence that that 1Q84 starts with a subtle nod to another English classic. One spring day in 1984, Aomame is late for a very important date, so she takes a shortcut through a metaphorical rabbit hole and winds up in another Japan where history went ever so slightly different. Nothing much has changed, really, it's the little things that she barely notices at first. She's still herself, she's still in Tokyo, she's still an assassin who sends abusive men to "the other side"... but suddenly the cops have always been armed with heavier weapons, the US and the Soviet Union have always been friendly, a mysterious religious movement have always hidden up in the mountains, and when she looks up at the night sky there's two moons hanging there.
In what first looks like an unrelated story, something similar happens to Tengo, a math teacher and unpublished novelist who's hired to ghost write a flawed but fascinating novel by a high school girl who grew up in a weird abusive religious sect. His job is to rewrite the story, polish it and make it more palatable, but leave in that bit about the two moons.
Here's what 1Q84 is not: it's not a rewrite of Orwell, at least not to the extent that the likes of Burgess (or The Daily Mail) have tried it. Apart from a few references to 1984 by the characters themselves it's all rather subtle; the ideas, rather than the slogans, sneak into the narrative, changing the past almost seamlessly. And Murakami fans won't need to be disappointed, he does a lot of things right; he's got two fascinating, well-drawn main characters, and there are lots of little rabbit holes hidden within the two storylines linking them together both plotwise and thematically. Some people have noted with interest – personally I think it's little more than a curiosity – that the novel is based on Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier; two books, 24 chapters each, one for each musical key, alternating between the major and the minor. The storylines twist around each other, constantly teasing that one of them might be a fiction within the other or that they both might be within something greater, building to a climax that leaves me going "...WHAT? MORE! NOW!"
But at the same time, every time I go through one of those rabbit holes, I keep wondering if it's really as clever as it thinks it is. For one thing, there's still something about it that makes me wonder if it's supposed to seem as obviously constructed as it does; maybe it's just that I was never much of a Bach fan, and would have preferred the jazz fan Murakami to improvise more – as it is, the novel seems organized by mathematical precision, with the characters even remarking themselves on the obviousness of some of the dramatic ploys he uses. What's (possibly) worse is the way Murakami presents a novel this rich in themes, asking a lot of rather sinister questions about identity, paranoia, reality and power on a personal, sexual, societal level that would make a Pynchon, a Dick, a Cronenberg or even a Ryu Murakami rub their hands and cancel all their vacation plans, whereas Haruki almost seems to chicken out and say "Well, that's just the way it is, whatchagonnado." I'm not saying a novelist is required to always tackle the Big Questions, but when you let the wasps out you better know you've let them out. Don't just dazzle me with big-screen entertainment, have it mean something.
Of course, the irony of that is that the whole thing is told from the POV of characters who are themselves caught up in a story controlled, not by Big Brother (unless you mean Murakami himself), but by what takes Big Brother's place when everyone's too busy congratulating themselves on not living in 1984. There's one volume to go, and if Murakami wants it to, it could blow 1Q84 wide open. Maybe that's his plan. Maybe there is no plan and the novel, like Orwell's state, only exists to perpetuate itself. I can't tell right now.
***00
DB Cooper
Reader
Great review. Despite the seemingly pedestrian three star rating, what youve written actually seems quite enticing. Makes me even more impatient to get my hands on the thing. Im not Murakami fanboy, Ive read four of his books, and I wouldnt give any of them a five star rating, but he is always entertaining. I just hope he broadens his scope a bit in this book. I mean he uses basically the same protagonist in every one Ive read. I think one thing he is successful in doing is creating that almost tangible atmosphere of dread, where something menacing always seems underfoot, but may actually never happen. Not on the level of Kafka of course, but that is something to compare it to.
Bjorn
Reader
Thanks! It's both a frustrating and an intriguing novel, especially with that last piece of the puzzle missing so far - there's so much in it that could be setup for some real bombs to go off in volume 3, but at the same time Murakami plays it so straight that I'm not sure if it's supposed to be.
Yes. And he uses that to good effect here; with 1984 being a work of fiction within 1Q84 (just as it is to us), everyone assumes that as long as we watch out for Big Brother, we'll be in the clear. Except while everyone's walking around looking up, Murakami introduces Little People instead, and someone is still controlling things behind the scenes in the microperspective rather than the macro.
Daniel del Real
Moderator
I agree with Cooper, that after reading a very exciting review and plagued with good comments after all, you get to a rating of 3 stars. I don't know if it's 3 stars out of 5, or because a book is missing, it would really be a 3 out of 3.333333333.
That was the main point I decided not to give a rating to the book til I can read the whole novel complete.
You're so right and it's funny how Murakami contrasts the omnipresent and imposing role of the Big Brother, with something opposesed by many reasons, starting with the name, the Little People, that shares characteristics; you know it's always present but you don't know where and when.
That was the main point I decided not to give a rating to the book til I can read the whole novel complete.
You're so right and it's funny how Murakami contrasts the omnipresent and imposing role of the Big Brother, with something opposesed by many reasons, starting with the name, the Little People, that shares characteristics; you know it's always present but you don't know where and when.
Daniel del Real
Moderator
Well, a week and a half ago, Book 3 was published in Spanish. I bought it almost immediately but I haven't had chance to read it yet. I probably will start it this coming weekend.