Haruki Murakami

sad in my heart because i can conceive the possibility that you're right, i shd've added

I didn't hate it, I just don't feel that I was able to connect the dots... Or HM wasn't, and left the burden on the reader. Agreed that the book could have been 500 pages, though.

I finished my first Murakami early last week: Norwegian Wood. Not impressive.

Norwegian Wood didn't do much for me, either. One of my favorite Murakami novels is No. 9 Dream by David Mitchell.

yeah that's the only one i've read. even when i had nothing left to read on holiday i found it a real chore to finish.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was my first and still my favorite. I haven't read the new one yet, but I keep hearing pretty similar complaints.

I can't remember anything about Norwegian Wood or South of the Border, West of the Sun. I read them both closely together so maybe that's why, but I think I enjoyed them. I'm still reading IQ84 and enjoying the story, but it's taking me forever to finished, unlike his other books, which I read in a few days.

The earlier novels are a lot leaner and more mysterious. A Wild Sheep Chase is my favorite thing he's done -the banal, everyday stuff and the uncanny stuff coexist there in much less clunky ways than they do in the later books.

Yeah I recommend Wild Sheep Chase to everyone.

Wild Sheep Chase and IQ84 are the only 2 I don't like.
Wind Up Bird Chronicle is my favourite.

I like every one I've read except IQ84, by the way. Which is most of them.

I've read Wind-Up Bird, Kafka On the Shore, and Hard Boiled Wonderland so far. I've got Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart on my Nook waiting to be read.

Norwegian Wood seemed like the most 'normal' or 'ordinary' of his novels from memory. I liked After Dark a lot, but wished it was longer (which is a good thing)

norwegian wood seemed like it lost a lot in the translation since it was so explicitly about quotidian japanese life, it's like one of PKD's 'normal' novels

that person has definitely read a murakami novel and summaries of some other murakami novels

― bosomy English rose (thomp), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 9:22 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I've read a fair # of murakami novels and you can't front that the same themes don't ever recur

its not wrong, really, but I think its missing a slice for "early rock and roll music"

i'm not claiming the themes don't recur, i'm claiming that it fails as gag and as insight bcz i. it doesn't evince any real considered familiarity w/ hm ii. it isn't funny

maybe it was just what it looks like: an INFOGRAPHIC. to give u INFO.

I guess this guy could have made sure to actually determine word counts for every specific reference in his entire collected works, but tbh I feel like thats a lot of work for a lame "gag" and he gets the point across just as well. But, y'know, I tend not to get all pedantic about these sorts of things.

i'm not claiming the themes don't recur, i'm claiming that it fails as gag and as insight bcz i. it doesn't evince any real considered familiarity w/ hm ii. it isn't funny

― ↖MODERNIST↗ hangups (thomp), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 12:01 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

your second claim is much stronger than your first

1q84 has got to be his clunkiest writing ever.

his or his translator's?

definitely reached a point of diminishing returns with HM

just finished this finally what a bag of shite

i feel like if they couldn't figure out a way to translate the title then don't trust them so much with the rest

that said i don't know that i'd go out of my way to call it a 'good' novel. it seems to be going out of its way to not work on a lot of levels, but i don't know if that's any better than trying to work and failing, really. i got more out of it than i did kafka.

Read most of the books up until Kafka, where I stopped at the beginning and never went back. Every once in a while think about dipping in a toe and reading some short stories.

Which of course I said upthread. Carry on.

The short stories are my favorite stuff he's written.

I started IQ84 months ago and read a few hundred pages in, but I haven't picked it up since. I liked what I read, and I still want to finish it, but I never think to read it. It's weird with his other books I never took a break or put them down. I wasn't bored with it or anything, I liked the two stories running parallel. I dunno.

it is essential that people stop calling this rubbish book "IQ84"

reading it right now, I did think it was called IQ84 before I began it :(

his or his translator's?

― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer)

the translation seems the same as ever i guess, but the scene-setting, the characterization, the dialogue, the plot construction - ugh. i think 'thought processes' is a good term upthread. the characters speak, and are narrated as thinking, really repetitively through stuff that's not more effective or informative for being gone through again. in past books it might have generated some effect of disaffected perplexity, aimlessness (like when the 'wind-up bird' narrator is sitting around cooking spaghetti, doing chores, wondering about the weird phone calls he's received), but here it just fills up the space without generating an effect or substantively driving the story forward.

the talk about rape and abuse and retribution for them in part 1 seems weird and stilted to me, too. as if someone sat murakami down after the abuse plot of 'bird' and the caricatures of 'feminist' characters in 'kafka' and tried to school him and now he's trying to show that he understands. 'rape, really? you mean with penetration and everything? that would certainly be wrong.'

i think throughout we're meant to have the impression that everything's being consciously filtered through a male-centric ... consciousness; i really want to read it as us being in tengo's novel throughout. i don't know if that's quite supportable in the text though.

i haven't been able to go back to this to try to finish it / give it some benefit of the doubt.

not sure i care to.

I'm maybe 50 pages in, taking 10 pages or so at a sitting. Don't hate it but it isn't a page turner.

After Dark is my favorite HM, with Elephant and Kafka right behind.

I've read four books by Murakami and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is far and away my favorite. I thought Norwegian Wood was actually bad, not just disappointing.

find iq84 hard to dislike that much in retrospect

I'm sort of like that despite spending most of the time reading it hating it

still reads like it was translated into english by a twelve year old

I'm reading Norwegian Wood at the moment. Or, I started it months ago and stalled halfway through, to be more accurate, because I wasn't really enjoying it. The main character just seems like a dick.

Which is the old one about a dude who was cheating on his wife? That felt pointless

pointlessness and dickish characters are two of my favourite things about murakami !

I like the pointlessness and the dickishness too. My issue with Norwegian Wood was with the female characters, who are just fantasy objects or plot devices for the main character. Naoki's (sp?) death was like a right of passage for the narrator, allowing him to bury his childhood, and that seemed like a poor (not beautiful) destiny for a human being.

This is an issue with his work in general but it was more glaring and off putting in NW for me.

Ah, so that was NW. I guess I should read it again, but despite some nice moments it felt like a...waste of time.

at moments i could almost see how people would think it is a classic bildungsroman, but it is just such a vulgar example of that genre -- pulling out all the stops -- that i just couldn't like it.

I finally finished 1Q84 and it was a fun read, no where near the greatness of the wind up bird, but I'm happy to have finished it. It was more apparent and sort of tidy while still being weird. Better than Kafka on the Shore, which really bothered me for reasons I can't remember.

that's heartening. i think he works better in large doses than small ones. hardboiled wonderland or whatever it's called was too short... you didn't really *feel* the protagonist's ordeal the way you do in wind up bird. both are cool though because they are journeys to the heart of the psyche in which not much is discovered but something is learned.

What I enjoyed the most about 1Q84 was the length, I love long forays into minute detail, and Murakami does it very well. I can get lost in his stories. I think I keep hoping to find the enjoyment I found in reading Moby Dick.