Norwegian Wood

Last week in the bookstore I came across a new release of Haruki Murakami’s 1987 groundbreaking novel Norwegian Wood. The book was first translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum in 1989, but in a style intended for Japanese students of English. A second translation in 2000 by Jay Rubin, is now the authorized version for publication outside Japan, Vintage International in the US and Harvill Press in the UK. The new Vintage edition I found last week was released in conjunction with a film adaptation of the book directed by Tran Anh Hung and released in Japan in 2010. The film stars Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi and Kiko Mizuhara and was nominated for a Golden Lion award at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.

Haruki Murakami, the book’s 63 year-old author is Japan’s superstar of postmodern literature whose publishing numbers continue to shatter records. Since it was first published, Norwegian Wood has sold more than ten million copies in Japan alone, and has further been read by millions of people around the world in more than thirty languages. The book’s success affected the author in unexpected ways. “It became a phenomenon. It wasn’t a book any more. I didn’t want to be famous. I felt betrayed. I lost some of my friends. I don't know why but they left. I was not happy at all.” He reacted by leaving Japan, spending time in Europe and later taking a teaching position at Princeton. He was in his late forties when in 1995 he finally returned to live in Japan.

Norwegian Wood is a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of Tokyo in the 1960s. Murakami’s focus is mainly on the bohemian and alienated, those who rejected the conformity and self-sacrifice that contributed to the country’s increased standard of living. To a great extent Norwegian Wood defines the 1960s generation of Japanese—first to enjoy the country’s newly found affluence. The protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his rather melancholy days as a university student living in Tokyo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when he formed relationships with two very different young women. For readers around the world who’ve never been to Japan, the book offers a detailed view of Tokyo as it was in those days.

During high school, Toru, his friend Kizuki, and Kizuki’s girlfriend Naoko are good friends. Their friendship is interrupted by the suicide of Kizuki on his 17th birthday. Their friend’s death touches both Toru and Naoko deeply and the two spend more and more time together. Eventually their relationship verges on something like love and on the night of Naoko’s 20th birthday, they sleep together for the first time. Shortly after their night together Naoko leaves Toru a letter explaining that she needs some time apart, that she is quitting college to enter a sanatorium near their hometown. After some time has passed and Toru has yet to hear from Naoko, he befriends a girl named Midori, a fellow classmate. Despite the love for Naoko, Toru finds himself attracted to Midori as well. The feeling is mutual and the friendship with Midori grows during Naoko’s absence. In time, Toru visits Naoko in the sanatorium and is moved by his talk with her and knowing her as never before. Something happens that changes Toru and…

Further details of the story I will leave open-ended, unwilling to spoil the story for those interested in reading the book.

For readers unfamiliar with Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood is the perfect choice for sampling Japan’s most popular writer. In this novel Murakami hadn’t yet begun his experiments with magic realism and there are no odd characters or talking cats to figure out and put meaning to. That isn’t to say that the later work incorporating magic realism is anything to steer away from. However Haruki Murakami chooses to tell a story the result is masterful.

Random Book Babble

Despite the wide open spaces surrounding my four walls here on the edge of America, a familiar closing in kind of mood crept up yesterday, signaling that a few hours escape to Daytona was in order, a drive to help blow away the metaphoric cobwebs. Daily views around home are unfailingly those of distant vistas, panoramic swaths of deep blue and sandy white and people at either at rest or play. Infrequently it’s good to get away from a day of losing oneself in cloud formations and sandy sculptures, to jump into the liveliness of people hustling about their daily work or on errands in crowded shops and streets.

All that is probably just an excuse for me to spend some time in the big Barnes & Noble store in Daytona. I tried a temporary fix the other day by visiting the local Bookland store (a small bookstore owned by Books A Million), but it’s the mini-stop of bookstores and more often than not a waste of time, a useless placebo for book junkies. So it was off to Daytona and the big B&N.

The past two weeks have been a designated re-read period for me, and while keeping up with what’s new on bookstore shelves and in related newsletters, focus has been more on a second look at three books read over the last few years. Not an unusual plan, being one who enjoys returning to a book after a passage of years, this time it was a Julia Glass book from 2002, Three Junes, Haruki Murakami’s novel, Kafka on the Shore (2002) and Edward Rutherfurd’s 2009 historical novel, New York. As it happened, a pre-ordered new release arrived in my mailbox and I squeezed it in between the Murakami and Rutherfurd books; that was Michael Connelly’s latest, The Drop.

Three Junes is a book I would recommend to anyone unreservedly—a fine, fine book. The wonder and skill of Murakami’s latest book 1Q84 is precisely what sent me back to his earlier Kafka on the Shore. Another one to recommend without hesitation. Before the third book on my reread list, I took a couple of days to work my way through the latest Michael Connelly featuring his long established Los Angeles detective, Harry Bosch. Such economic writing from Connelly, not a wasted word or phrase that doesn’t propel his story. Stories about New York, be they old, fictional, historical, contemporary or non-fictional are right down my line. I have always liked the epic books of Edward Rutherfurd and his 2009 book, New York is another historical novel, surpassingly picturesque and studded with fascinating facts concerning the city’s development.

Tuesday in Barnes & Noble was rewarding as usual. There was really only one book on my mind as I entered the store, but you know how that goes. Read the other day on NPR an excerpt of the new Alan Bennett book Smut, and was hoping to lay my hands on that. Took some digging but it was there between two distracting stacks on an out-of-the-way table. On a nearby shelf I came across a book unheard of, unmentioned, or at least in my world; a small 2011 hardback release by Lou Beach titled 420 Characters: Stories. The first thing that caught my eye was a quote from Jonathan Lethem: “Holy sh*t! These are great!” Each of the stories is limited to 420 characters, including letters, spaces and punctuation. Sound familiar? They we're each written as a status update on the author’s Facebook page. One example…

‘The storm came over the ridge, a rocket dropped rain like bees, filled the corral with water and noise. I watched lightning hit the apple trees and thought: “Fritters!” as we packed sandbags against the flood. There was nowhere to go that wasn’t wet, the squall had punched a hole in the cabin roof and the barn was knee-high in mud. We’ll bury Jess later, when the river recedes, before the ground turns hard again.’

That’s it; the end. A haiku-like story that leaves the reader to fill in the blanks.

The last was a totally unexpected find, a new release of Haruki Murakami’s popular 1987 novel, Norwegian Wood. I read this book at the time of it’s first release when I was living in Japan, a time when Murakami was still undiscovered outside of Japan. Since reading 1Q84 I have been thinking again of this and other Murakami books. The new release is in conjunction with the release of a new movie version of the novel. It is a Japanese production, but has been released outside of Japan recently.

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.