I'm getting old.
And, yes, I baked it.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Murakami and Me
Reading a novel by Haruki Murakami is like embarking on a serpentine path through a dense forest where unpredictability, uncertainty and vivid imagination conspire to keep your eyes glued right till the end. His novels are largely surreal, to the point of being almost life-like, creating a world where reality and illusion sit comfortably, and it’s hard to tell the difference between the two. Turning the page becomes an involuntary reflex, as you examine each subtlety and nuance of the imperial scuplture he’s carved out.
The trademark Murakami protagonist is the quiet outsider or the Solitary Someone. He is someone who is content with spending time with himself and not too contented with his job, someone who’s intelligent, knows right from wrong, keeps his nose clean, has a real well honed taste in music and literature, someone who silently tries to understand life and yet finds himself in the midst of peculiar circumstances. While reading his books, you begin to see Murakami’s qualities in the protagonist and the protagonist in Murakami himself.
Music plays a vital role in his novels. ‘Norwegian Wood’, the novel that has been attributed to giving him awe-inspiring fame in Japan and all over the world, is named after The Beatles song. ‘Kafka On The Shore’ is a song featured in the novel, written by one of the characters. There’s frequent mention of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Charlie Parker, Radiohead, Talking Heads… Music seems to symbolize his third lung in his novels. Murakami himself is a massive music buff, and has been known to expand his record collection, which is more than 7, 000.
He may write about life in Japan, but his prose is littered with all sorts of pop culture references from Johnnie Walker to Colonel Sanders to Dunkin Donuts to the Dustin Hoffman starrer The Graduate to Humphrey Bogart, mirroring the real world where everything is commercialized and stamped with a brand name.
I just love the way he writes in minimalist, uncluttered prose bringing clear-cut ideas to life through a complex and gripping plot. Very reminiscent of the prose of Franz Kafka and Albert Camus. When it comes to his imagination and story-telling ability, he is not parsimonious by any angle. He doesn’t hesitate in the letting his imagination roam wild around the country side. This is, in fact, what makes his books so enjoyable.
Murakami has the unerring ability to make miniscule observations regarding people and their surroundings, translating the very mundane, very beautifully on paper. In ‘Kafka on the Shore’, when Kafka enters the Komura Library, he describes the books as: ‘When I open them, most of the books have a smell of an earlier time leaking out from between their pages - a special odour of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.’
Probably my favourite Murakami novel is Kafka On The Shore, released in 2005. The title itself alludes to a painting, a song and the titular character.
The two prominent storylines feature Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old who runs away from home under a dark Oedipal curse prophesized by his father, and Nakata, a mentally defective pensioner who can talk to cats. Murakami deftly steers the ship with a steady, euphonious pace, through a vast, deep and luscious sea filled with colourful characters, pop-culture references, Japanese and Greek mythology and folklore, music, talking cats, unusual weather forecasts, a mysterious forest which acts a ripple between life and death and a murder mystery which provides a cacophony of metaphors and symbolism. Once he reaches the shore, you’re left with an emotionally draining experience, where you’re fully aware of what happened and yet you can’t be entirely sure.
What really amazes me is that the people in his novels are always extremely honest , frank and faithful. As a result, lying and dishonesty play truant in his novels. In this particular one, a trans-gendered haemophiliac named Oshima and titular character Kafka exchange a great deal of knowledge as they dissect the technical aspects of Schubert’s sonatas and the philosophy behind Franz Kafka’s stories. A coffee shop owner spouts knowledge regarding Beethoven’s The Archduke Trio. They’re all incredibly experienced and well-informed, knowing so much about so many things. Even Nakata who can’t read or write, has his moments of being profound. He hasn’t any memories and dwells primarily in the present. Talking to cats and predicting the weather has made him extraordinary, though he may not be the brightest.
And no one’s sketched out to be mean and unpleasant. Everyone is neat, tidy, pleasant and good like trim, precise, unadulterated symmetry in geometrical sums. The characters understand each other well too. There’s no confusion faced by the protagonist regarding the kind of people he is faced with. Rather he is puzzled by the odd and outlandish circumstances that he’s found himself in the midst of. The characters are also carried downstream by fate. Nakata befriends Hoshino, the truck driver at precisely the right time. Hoshino bumps into Colonel Sanders through perfectly-timed happenstance. Kafka’s and Nakata’s paths get intertwined and braided through the course of the story but they never fully form a confluence. It was imperative that they cross paths with Miss Saeki since she seemed to be at the heart of everything, in the end. So he’s created a world that could have a chance of existing and yet it doesn’t.
There is a general feeling of timelessness is the book. There doesn’t seem to be a definite and concrete understanding of past, present and future. Probably one of the most ingenious twists of the novel was when I realised that Kafka and Nakata just might be part of the same person. Two completely separate people on two extremely different paths, who just happen to be each other’s alter egos. Miss Saeki seems to have her alter ego too: her 15 year old ghost who visits Kafka at night.
Finishing the novel is a bittersweet experience. Nothing really gets resolved. Questions are persistent in remaining unanswered. I’ve heard that reading it a second time helps, but after finishing it for the first time, I didn’t have the will to stomach another read of the 49 chapters. It can get twisted, winded, obscure and thorny at times but what keeps you going is your own curiosity of what’s going to happen next. And there’s no surefire way predicting what’s going to happen in his novels, let alone the next page. It seems to be the only plausible explanation for me devouring his books like cupcakes.
Really, Haruki Murakami is essentially an anomalous writer, fashioning each book into an enigmatic loure that leaves you confused, spell-bound and amazed. Someone please give the dude a Nobel!
The trademark Murakami protagonist is the quiet outsider or the Solitary Someone. He is someone who is content with spending time with himself and not too contented with his job, someone who’s intelligent, knows right from wrong, keeps his nose clean, has a real well honed taste in music and literature, someone who silently tries to understand life and yet finds himself in the midst of peculiar circumstances. While reading his books, you begin to see Murakami’s qualities in the protagonist and the protagonist in Murakami himself.
Music plays a vital role in his novels. ‘Norwegian Wood’, the novel that has been attributed to giving him awe-inspiring fame in Japan and all over the world, is named after The Beatles song. ‘Kafka On The Shore’ is a song featured in the novel, written by one of the characters. There’s frequent mention of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Charlie Parker, Radiohead, Talking Heads… Music seems to symbolize his third lung in his novels. Murakami himself is a massive music buff, and has been known to expand his record collection, which is more than 7, 000.
He may write about life in Japan, but his prose is littered with all sorts of pop culture references from Johnnie Walker to Colonel Sanders to Dunkin Donuts to the Dustin Hoffman starrer The Graduate to Humphrey Bogart, mirroring the real world where everything is commercialized and stamped with a brand name.
I just love the way he writes in minimalist, uncluttered prose bringing clear-cut ideas to life through a complex and gripping plot. Very reminiscent of the prose of Franz Kafka and Albert Camus. When it comes to his imagination and story-telling ability, he is not parsimonious by any angle. He doesn’t hesitate in the letting his imagination roam wild around the country side. This is, in fact, what makes his books so enjoyable.
Murakami has the unerring ability to make miniscule observations regarding people and their surroundings, translating the very mundane, very beautifully on paper. In ‘Kafka on the Shore’, when Kafka enters the Komura Library, he describes the books as: ‘When I open them, most of the books have a smell of an earlier time leaking out from between their pages - a special odour of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.’
Probably my favourite Murakami novel is Kafka On The Shore, released in 2005. The title itself alludes to a painting, a song and the titular character.
The two prominent storylines feature Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old who runs away from home under a dark Oedipal curse prophesized by his father, and Nakata, a mentally defective pensioner who can talk to cats. Murakami deftly steers the ship with a steady, euphonious pace, through a vast, deep and luscious sea filled with colourful characters, pop-culture references, Japanese and Greek mythology and folklore, music, talking cats, unusual weather forecasts, a mysterious forest which acts a ripple between life and death and a murder mystery which provides a cacophony of metaphors and symbolism. Once he reaches the shore, you’re left with an emotionally draining experience, where you’re fully aware of what happened and yet you can’t be entirely sure.
What really amazes me is that the people in his novels are always extremely honest , frank and faithful. As a result, lying and dishonesty play truant in his novels. In this particular one, a trans-gendered haemophiliac named Oshima and titular character Kafka exchange a great deal of knowledge as they dissect the technical aspects of Schubert’s sonatas and the philosophy behind Franz Kafka’s stories. A coffee shop owner spouts knowledge regarding Beethoven’s The Archduke Trio. They’re all incredibly experienced and well-informed, knowing so much about so many things. Even Nakata who can’t read or write, has his moments of being profound. He hasn’t any memories and dwells primarily in the present. Talking to cats and predicting the weather has made him extraordinary, though he may not be the brightest.
And no one’s sketched out to be mean and unpleasant. Everyone is neat, tidy, pleasant and good like trim, precise, unadulterated symmetry in geometrical sums. The characters understand each other well too. There’s no confusion faced by the protagonist regarding the kind of people he is faced with. Rather he is puzzled by the odd and outlandish circumstances that he’s found himself in the midst of. The characters are also carried downstream by fate. Nakata befriends Hoshino, the truck driver at precisely the right time. Hoshino bumps into Colonel Sanders through perfectly-timed happenstance. Kafka’s and Nakata’s paths get intertwined and braided through the course of the story but they never fully form a confluence. It was imperative that they cross paths with Miss Saeki since she seemed to be at the heart of everything, in the end. So he’s created a world that could have a chance of existing and yet it doesn’t.
There is a general feeling of timelessness is the book. There doesn’t seem to be a definite and concrete understanding of past, present and future. Probably one of the most ingenious twists of the novel was when I realised that Kafka and Nakata just might be part of the same person. Two completely separate people on two extremely different paths, who just happen to be each other’s alter egos. Miss Saeki seems to have her alter ego too: her 15 year old ghost who visits Kafka at night.
Finishing the novel is a bittersweet experience. Nothing really gets resolved. Questions are persistent in remaining unanswered. I’ve heard that reading it a second time helps, but after finishing it for the first time, I didn’t have the will to stomach another read of the 49 chapters. It can get twisted, winded, obscure and thorny at times but what keeps you going is your own curiosity of what’s going to happen next. And there’s no surefire way predicting what’s going to happen in his novels, let alone the next page. It seems to be the only plausible explanation for me devouring his books like cupcakes.
Really, Haruki Murakami is essentially an anomalous writer, fashioning each book into an enigmatic loure that leaves you confused, spell-bound and amazed. Someone please give the dude a Nobel!
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