Haruki Murakami

I love reading Dance Dance Dance after A Wild Sheep Chase because the same awful stuff keeps happening to the guy that happened in A Wild Sheep Chase, but he has a much different reaction in Dance Dance Dance. Even though for the most part it doesn't seem like it will do much good. His reaction in both books is still basically "fuck it" but he engages instead of disconnecting and the contrast is really uplifting.

Kafka on the Shore is out in paperback, by the way. If not now, soon. When I finish this vampire novel I'm going to reread it.

What I really enjoyed wasn't the moments of revelation or the magic realism but the long stretches inbetween where nothing happens except eating, drinking, sleeping, listening to music, etc.. No one (who I've read) really writes that stuff as well as he does.

OTM. Some amazing writing during those stretches.

i thought those bits were even more tedious - they didn't actively make me cringe and throw the book across the room like some of the more, er, contrived sections, but i am not convinced that boring writing is the best way to evoke boring quotidian life. and the narrator is pretty obnoxious to be around - whiny, perpetually self-justifying, completely self-obsessed.

i just finished kafka on the shore. while it was pretty enjoyable all the way through (except for THAT scene, you can probably guess which if you've read it), i couldn't help feeling like it didn't exactly...add up.

I completely agree. I finished this literally two days ago, and while I enjoyed it, I also thought there were a couple things that didn't quite add up. I think he's great though, and I would give my left arm to meet a girl like Midori from Norwegian Wood.

does anyone know what song's playing on his website?

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/site_flashforce.php?id=

http://www.jeffersonrabb.com/

thanks

Opening an animation studio in LA.

different murakami

if only Haruki Murakami would dabble in animation!

What I Talk About When I Talk About Cartoons

Hahaha, I like my mistake! Let's fuse the two!

you may be interested in Phil Collins' video installation at the Dallas Museum of Art. wouldn't have pegged the guy for a Smiths fan myself.

Haruki Murakami used to live in Santa Ana, CA about 15 years ago when he was a relative unknown in America.

I wish the song from Kafka on the Shore was real.

I've only read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (read this 1st, many people have told me it's a good place to start), Hard-Boiled Wonderland... (favorite so far...love that he bought a 6 of Miller High Life for his last moment of consciousness), and Kafka on the Shore (seemed most scattershot of the 3 but also the most emotionally involved). My sister is reading Sputnik Sweetheart right now so I guess that one's next.

No one has really noted this on this thread...scenes of violence in his books are among the most graphic and disturbing in anything I've ever read.

I met Haruki Murakami once and he was an absolute gentleman imho.

i met him not long after and talked about hard-bop and the tampa bay devil rays. very nice guy.

im reading his memoir about running, i love it -- helps that im really getting into distance running at the moment

When I read it, am I gonna want to run?

Please say no because seriously I hate running so hard.

Dude in Japan liveblogs reading new novel 1Q84
http://howtojaponese.com/2009/05/29/1q84-liveblog/

viral marketing?

reading UNDERGROUND made me hella paranoid on the train for weeks afterward.

^ Me too and I was already plenty paranoid on the train to begin with.

http://twitter.com/haruki_murakami

Good night, Mr. Pain.

I´m still alive, i feel the wind.

Some words, something, some thing.
11:40 PM Aug 24th from web

Is Haruki Murakami secretly an 8th grade dork?

Um...

secretly?

so i finally read windup bird chronicle. i dont know why i had been avoiding it--my gf read it back in high school and has been pressing me to read it for years but i resisted b/c hes been popular and i am a snob.

but.. i really dug. i didnt know it would be so romantic! or so melancholy! the segment w/ cinnamon and nutmeg was kind of irritating since i was impatient to find out what had happened to kumiko. i love that he catalogs every beer toru drinks.

I'd take a bullet for that book.

he really gets the heart of a certain kind of relationship, doesnt he? scary how much i was able to identify w/ toru.

love WBC. I'm quite wary of magic realist stuff but that book feels very true to its own logic and closer in spirit to Breton than Marquez. Romantic big and small r is spot on.

Man, Murakami's work is one of those things I want to talk about a lot, but I love it so unequivocally, I can't think of much to say other than "Oh my god yes it's fucking awesome"

ha yeah i feel that way about most of the things I love - like I'm not gonna debate anybody about it.

my gf read it back in high school and has been pressing me to read it for years but i resisted b/c hes been popular and i am a snob

friends love him and have read everything but i resist because they sound like some culty motherfuckers when they talk about him. v similar to reaction of somebody in the movie poll thread (to Pixar movies, i think)

must try to find hatchet job on him which a fan told me was hilarious no matter how unfair

I met this guy once. Very polite.

ha yeah i feel that way about most of the things I love - like I'm not gonna debate anybody about it.

― Oi'll show you da loife of da moind (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 6 February 2010 20:02 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Should be a thread? Is a thread?

I've found reading his books has been really helpful during difficult emotional stages of my life. His delicate narrative structure and gentle, relaxed writing style seem to help me calm down and organise my thoughts.

― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, April 12, 2006 9:26 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

There might be something to this. I always feel there's criticism to be made for somewhat dry prose but I can never completely bring myself to fault him for it. Maybe "dry" is the wrong word. Maybe it's just thoughtful, and untangled? And if I think it's so dry, why do I plow through his books in just a few days? I can never unpack it all, I just love it.

Just picked up the "running" book. Looking forward to it.

so i have a colleague i need to buy a present for. hes into "fantasy" books and once told me he was a big fan of murakami and lent me 'hard-boiled wonderland'. can anyone recommend another author a murakami fan might enjoy?

Have any runners read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running? I want to give this as a present for a colleague.

tpp, philip k. dick - ubik would be nice.

xyzzzz, I've read that but I'm not a runner. can't really remember what he says in it - just remember that it was a pleasant, quick read.