This blog post was inspired by my rereading of Pinball, 1973 last year. I noticed my feelings toward the book had shifted slightly from when I first encountered it in middle school, prompting the following reflections.
I've long pondered why I'm so captivated by Murakami's writing. I've turned it over and over in my mind, yet never quite grasped the reason. Much like the elusive perfect anime or film I seek within myself, I couldn't pinpoint exactly which element in Murakami's books satisfied me. I only know that I loved his writing.
Amidst this confusion, I found a clue in his Chinese translator Lin Shaohua's preface. He noted that in Murakami's early works, influenced by the spiritual void following Japan’s period of rapid economic growth and the disillusionment of the post-student movement era., protagonists tended toward “nihilism”—or what we might broadly call “lying flat” in modern terms.
This “lying flat” isn't the socially condemned version we see today: living off parents, complacency, lack of ambition, and so on (though I personally don't think that's necessarily a wrong way to live, but let's set that aside for now).
Murakami's protagonists are often single or divorced. They may have steady sexual partners or girlfriends, but never someone—especially of the opposite sex—to whom they can truly commit their hearts and souls. Most hold well-paying jobs: translators, portrait painters, or Calcutec. In short, they are people with stable careers and substantial incomes. Whence this sense of nihilism, then?
Murakami's protagonists generally enjoy beer, whiskey, jazz, and classical music. Outwardly cold, they seem detached from the world. After their homes are destroyed and someone slashes their stomach, they can still calmly sit on a surviving sofa drinking lukewarm beer. Yet inside, they carry a lock—only the right person or event holds the key to unlock it, prompting them to risk everything.
Yet what exactly is this nihilism, and what causes it in these protagonists? It still remain mystery for me. What I do know is that after navigating the adventures of an entire book, the protagonist always gains something. It is precisely this something that pulls them out of the void. This seems to be the spirit Murakami wishes to convey to his readers.
Returning to the original question, I recall my high shcool literature teacher once telling me that reading is the process by which the human mind constructs images through words. I believe the reason why reading evokes different feelings over time is that in the intervening years, people experience many different things. These experiences cause us to construct different scenes from the same passage of text.
Boran Xiang
Hello Class,
ReplyDeleteI could not find the button to post my own blog, so I am posting it through a reply (sorry Boran!).
I find Murakami's writing to be particularly interesting because of the characteristics of his characters. Having read The Brothers Karamazov, there are a few parallels between Dostoevsky and Murakami I want to talk about. Dostoevsky is known for his existential view. In The Brothers Karamazov, there was a discussion on the cruelty and flaw of God, because otherwise this world would not have any suffering. Thus, the argument was that there is no God, and if there is, it is an evil one. This rejection of a divine being and meaning in life reflects Dostoevsky's nihilistic perspective.
The characteristic of Boku shows a nihilistic view from a different angle. He finds the world almost meaningless through an objective view and lives a mundane life. It is almost as if Boku is a student of nihilism! However, there is a key difference to distinguish between Dostoevsky's and Murakami's views. Dostoevsky promotes active nihilism, where one is tormented by the lack of meaning and rebels. On the other hand, Murakami's characters portray passive nihilism, where they kind of just coexist and accept the meaningless world (almost as if they don't care). It could also be argued that Murakami's characters are existentialists, where they try to find meaning through a quest like in A Wild Sheep Chase. In the last chapter, Boku breaks down and finally feels emotion, which could symbolize his growth out of a detached life, thus actually challenging Dostoevsky's view.
Hello! It’s Juliet. I could not figure out how to make my own post either...oops. Anyways,
ReplyDeleteI am convinced that Cervantes’ Don Quixote substantially influenced both Chandler and Murakami’s fictional works. Firstly, Don Quixote is centered around a protagonist out of step with his social world. His mission is to “do justice” according to a code that is no longer accepted as law. Marlowe and Boku, too, embark on explorations searching for something outside of the law, outside of convention—yet this object is ambiguous and doesn’t surely seem to exist. Interestingly, Don Quixote, Marlowe, and Boku each try to opt out of their respective societies’ money systems. Don Quixote goes from adventure to adventure without money, realizing a lifestyle which transcends the material world—even if this means frequent beatings and imprisonment. Similarly, Marlowe and Boku seem to see themselves as somehow above money—with Marlowe, in the case of rejecting Eileen’s money, and with Boku, the case of giving his money from the Boss’ people to J at the end. Also—Cervantes is known for parodying the literature of his contemporary society, particularly chivalric romances. He employs tropes from these romances and flips them on their head, exposing the absurdity of those stories which always tie up so neatly at the end. As Suter notes, Chandler is parodying rationalist detective stories, while Murakami parodies the Hard Boiled genre. Each of the three authors recombines different components of a conventional genre in a novel and subversive way. The parallels between A Wild Sheep Chase, Don Quixote, and The Long Goodbye are best brought to life by reading their endings. None of them are quite satisfying—or at least, none of them restore their world’s order as happy, fulfilling endings tend to do. We can’t make sense of Don Quixote’s regret at the end of the story, or Marlowe’s dispassionate reunion with Terry, or Boku’s relationship to rat, or what the sheep means in the end of it all. These unsatisfying endings are intentional—they challenge conventional narratives by showing that human journeys are cyclical by nature, never resolved.
These ideas led me to think more about whether the parallels between Cervantes and Murakami/Chandler are just results of the intertextual nature of literature. After all, Don Quixote being (arguably) the first novel ever, I would be surprised if there were a novel entirely untouched by Cervantes’ influence. So, I sought out more explicit links. In The Long Goodbye, I found a line that I think must be a direct reference.
Here are two lines, the first from Chandler and the second from Cervantes:
“A difficult thing, being a cop. You never know whose stomach it’s safe to jump up and down on” (The Long Goodbye, 241).
“He climbed on top of his ribs and started to trop up and down from one end of them to the other” (Don Quixote, XVI).
The idea of someone jumping up and down another’s stomach is very specific and unusual, which is why I think Chandler’s line must be a reference to the Quixote. In terms of Murakami, I did not find such an explicit link, but aside from the thematic parallels covered, it’s worth noting that Dostoevsky was one of his biggest influences. Dostoevsky writes that the Quixote is “the final and greatest utterance of the human mind.” As such an admirer of Dostoevsky, it would be shocking if he’d never thought to read his favorite book.
Thanks!
Juliet