Two Moons, Two Worlds: 1Q84

I occasionally use a Kindle for reading, but my first choice is always to hold a real, old fashioned book in my hands, turn the pages manually and sometimes catch a whiff of printer’s ink. Same with newspapers and magazines. The Kindle has it's one or two advantages, but most of the time the more comfortable choice for me is the paper version. Early on Tuesday I finished reading Haruki Murakami’s new book, 1Q84. Dazzling in its content and achievement, physically it was one of the most difficult books to read of my life. 2.9 pounds with 944 pages and measuring 9.4 x 6.3 x 2 inches, for all its elegant design, Knopf’s English version is nowhere near a comfortable handful. The original Japanese version is in three separate volumes comfortable to hold and read without distracting thoughts of heaviness and strained wrists. Underneath a fascination with the story I kept wishing I could read the book on my Kindle.

In a word, 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s masterpiece. Halfway through the book it occurred to me that it might well be the work that one day brings the number of Japanese Nobel laureates to three. 1Q84 is the crown jewel in an already impressive body of work from Murakami, a huge and multilayered work showing off his talents like never before. The book has everything that makes a reader turn pages, unable to pull away from the characters, the story or its complex parallel worlds.

Don’t look for sushi, the Ginza, Mt Fuji and sake in 1Q84. Instead it is a story filled with a mosaic of references to Sonny & Cher, Isak Dinesen, Faye Dunaway, Marcel Proust and a dozen others played against a soundtrack by Leoš Janáček and Duke Ellington. Characters are as likely to raise the question of a line from Chekhov as they are the psychology of Carl Jung. The variety and color of Murakami’s comparisons and allusions are one of the joys of 1Q84, and ultimately the breadth of sophistication and complexity is breathtaking. Yet beneath all that is a clear and simple prose style that is never for a moment obscure or pretentious.

A young woman named Aomame—a trainer at a sports club who moonlights as a skilled assassin—sets the story in motion on an April afternoon in 1984 when she exits a taxi on a congested elevated highway in central Tokyo and climbs to street level down an emergency staircase. In the time it takes her to reach the street, the reality of her world makes a subtle shift. She suddenly is able to name unfamiliar music, policemen wear different uniforms and carry a different type of gun and news reports speak of events never heard of. Most ominous of all are the two moons hanging over Tokyo. Aomame calls this new world 1Q84, the Q standing for ‘question.’ Gradually we begin to see that Aomame’s defining problem is not her dubious profession, but a loneliness that began in childhood, an emptiness broken only once momentarily by fleeting contact with a boy named Tengo Kawana, a fifth grade classmate. That time is deeply etched in memory and Aomame is certain they are destined to meet again.

The novel’s chapters alternate between Tengo and Aomame and as the plot progresses, events draw the two together. Tengo is a math teacher-aspiring novelist and through an editor he knows, is encouraged to rewrite a first novel by a high school girl, a story called Air Chrysalis that appears on the surface to be a fantasy. It turns out that the story is not fantasy at all but the true experiences of the girl in a secret religious cult. Her own father is the Leader and with her escape from the cult brings powerful forces into play that make doubtful a reunion of Aomame and Tengo. Aomame too has a connection with Leader that puts her on a perilous road.

Throughout this long novel the reader never for a moment loses sight of Aomame and Tengo as flesh and blood characters whose fears and dreams fuel our drive to keep turning pages. Our connection to these two is only enhanced by the appearance of a third horribly effective character named Ushikawa. To these rich characterizations add Murakami’s skill in imbuing his story with suspense worthy of John le Carré.

In an earlier book titled Underground, Murakami left readers with the promise of a future fictional story on the subject of cults. 1Q84 is that story. Two cults play a part, one a Christian sect known as the Society of Witnesses, whose proselytizing members lead lives of somber tunnel vision devoted to God. The second cult is remindful of the dangerous Aum Shinrikyo group of the early 80s. Murakami calls his cult Sakigake, translating as “forerunner” or “precursor.” His main character in 1Q84 rejected the Christian sect of her family and as an adult is sought after by henchmen of the Sakigake cult. Much of Aomame’s sojourn in the world of two moons is a tense dodge down dangerous highways.

If Haruki Murakami is a stranger to your bookshelves, now is definitely the time to reach out and sample the magic of his fiction. It is abundantly clear only two weeks after an English language release of 1Q84 that this is one that will be talked about right on through a long list of nominations and awards, continuing for a long time to come.

Heavyweights

Saturday brought to hand two big books that have been on the horizon for a while. Wasn’t sure that both would arrive on the same day, but that’s the way it happened, adding a little weightlifting exercise to my day, with the combined pages of the two coming to 1,581 pages. Not possible to have already read very many of those pages, so the purpose this time is to briefly introduce the two books in advance of saying more about one or the other in a longer and future post. The author of the first is hugely popular, the subject of the second a name on everyone’s lips recently.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

The title of this novel is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of the year 1984, a reference to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Japanese reading of the title is Ichi-kew-hachi-yon and the letter Q and the Japanese number 9 are homophones, a type of wordplay not uncommon in Japanese literature. Prior to the publication of 1Q84, Murakami announced that he would not reveal anything about the book, feeling that pre-release talk had diminished the novelty of his previous books. Despite the secrecy 1Q84 received an unprecedented number of advance orders.

The book was first published in Japan in 2009 and 2010 where the first printing sold out on the day of the book’s release. An English translation was published on October 25 of this year by Knopf, the translation by Jay Rubin (volumes 1 and 2) and Philip Gabriel (volume 3). The English translation is three volumes in one binding designed by Chip Kidd and Maggie Hinders.

Before reading even the first lines of Murakami’s novel, the book’s size and design are impressive. There is a look to the whole package that impresses. First off is the almost three-pound weight of its 925 pages, but heavy or not, immediately clear is that this Knopf edition was beautifully put together to accent the author’s story. There is none of the expected in opening the book and turning over the first few pages. Chip Kidd and Maggie Hinders have given 1Q84 a look all its own from front cover to back. Facing pages are interesting for the way title and page numbers appear on left and right margins, straightforward on the left but flipped on the right, as if reading through a mirror.

The first two chapters have me eager to continue on.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

It’s a good guess that Simon & Schuster will have a hard time keeping up with demand for the recently released biography of a man whose influence reached into personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, digital publishing and retail marketing. In August of 2011 Apple become the most valuable company in the world. There was something Olympian about Steve Jobs and the impact he had on many of the things that occupy a majority of people in the twenty-first century. Forget the fact that Jobs has long been something of an enigma. Apple developments of the past year leading up to, and including his death on October 5, played out like a storybook of greatness, the timing of everything happening in such a way that by October 6 the man and his company stood at a pinnacle of greatness. And nineteen days later a biography of Steve Jobs by the highly respected Walter Isaacson hits bookstores. The presses must be working night and day.

The biography is based on more than forty interviews with Jobs, and more than a hundred others with family, friends, adversaries, colleagues and competitors. Jobs asked for no pre-publication agreements, or opportunities to read any of the chapters prior to publishing. He gave Isaacson total control over the content, asking only that he write the story honestly, including the recollection and opinions of anyone interviewed. There is no gilding of the lily in this biography.

As a longtime Apple fan and buyer of at least one of everything the company has ever made, it's no mystery that Isaacson’s book has been on my wish list. Published on October 24 by Simon & Schuster, the Steve Jobs biography, like the Murakami book is also a hefty read of 656 pages weighing almost two and a half pounds. So far, there’s been time to read only the introduction, but that was enough to assure that I will have to steal some time from the reading of Murakami’s book.

Another one I am itching to get back to.