Friday, July 15, 2011

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Murakami Haruki (Part 3)

There's a couple of things I want to say about Murakami Haruki.

First, Murakami has a thing for ears, and so I have a thing for Murakami's thing for ears. I only really noticed it while reading A Wild Sheep Chase, in which the narrator turns his girlfriend's ears into something erotic and mysterious. I thought it was weird at the time, and I still sort of do. But, people become attracted to all sorts of things, so why can't perfectly shaped earlobes be one of these things? And who am I to balk against author appeal?

Second, I often find myself wondering if Murakami's works are just varying degrees of semi-autobiographical stories. "Folklore" from part 2, for example, felt very much like the author really was the narrator.Yes, I know that he probably did not work at an elephant factory, or that he really isn't a walking computer, but there is a lot of himself in his writing, which is true for every writer. 'Write what you know' and all that jazz. (Also, you can't tell me that he doesn't have an acting friend whose real name is the same as a Yamonote Line stop, because I won't believe you.)




- "Hunting Knife"

This one, like "Folklore", has a narrator that listens to others' stories, this time while on vacation in Okinawa. (I say Okinawa because he's on a tropical beach with a nearby American military base, but it probably could be anywhere in the Pacific. Guam? Hawaii? Beats me.) He's there with his wife, enjoying the last sumer of their twenties, getting tanned and swimming a lot. There's also a bit more lyrical structure in this than in "New York Mining Disaster". The two stories told here have more a connection between them than the stories in "Disaster".

Also, there's more going on here than in "Folklore" or "Disaster". The narrator is more than just a reporter here. The story is much more about his sense of ennui than it is about the man and his mother or about the Michelin woman in the tiny bikini. Their stories add to the narrator's own sense of disconnect.

Plus, there's a brief line that reminded me of the volleyball-playing scene from Top Gun, so enjoy getting "Playing with the Boys" stuck in your head. I sure didn't.





Favorite line: 'Most things look beautiful when you're way up high.'
Geek-Out Moment: Name-checking Gone with the Wind, which is the book the wife reads when they're on the beach. "She claimed that she'd learned a lot about life from that book." I know what she means.
Ear Check: The narrator's ears are mentioned a bit during his chat with the fat woman. He mostly comments about the water in/on them.



- "A Perfect Day for Kangaroos"

The narrator's girlfriend wanted to see the baby kangaroo that was born at the local zoo. They end up going a month after the announcement, after weather delays and the miscellaneous obstacles life just throws at people every day.

The story is a cute, short one. The girl's disappointment in not seeing what she expected is annoying, but I can't say I haven't felt that way some times. She does get a bit of what she wanted at the end, and the day was a hot, gorgeous one.

Favorite line: I'd never once won an argument with a girl.
Ear Check: Nothing sensual again. (At least, I don't think so,) The baby kangaroo's ears poking out of his mother's pouch.



- "Dabchick"

The narrator finally found a job and walks down a long, complicated corridor to his new workplace. At the door to his new workplace, there's a guard, who won't let him in without a password.

The narrator is desperate, which is shown not just with his determination in finding the door in the first place, but also in his argument with the guard. He wholeheartedly insists that the word he guesses to be the password, based on the clues the guard (begrudgingly) gave him, IS the password, even as the guard moans and insists that isn't the password at all. The story is this conversation.

Also, what's a dabchick?

Oh. Well... that's adorable.

Favorite line: The conversation with the guard.
Ear Check: None. (I'm really getting disappointed, man.)



- "Man-Eating Cats"

If I keep calling the protagonist 'the narrator', it's because they don't have names. Sometimes, I'm sure they're called 'Marumaki Hakiru' or something of that sort, but sometimes that's not true. And I'm pretty sure this isn't one of those times.

The narrator falls in love with a married woman and starts an affair with her. After both her husband and his wife find out, they decide to leave Japan and exile themselves in a tiny Greek island just off the coast of Turkey. He is not coping well with the fact that he purposely obliterated the life he led, and is starting to feel like he's a puppet, a plaster stand-in, something hollow and dead inside.

And it's not because he's parted from his wife and son. He cares for his son, but what really triggered it were things like his extensive collection of jazz records. And when Izumi, the woman, disappears in the middle of the night, that feeling returns.

Have I felt this way before? Who hasn't accidentally stepped outside of themselves, and wondered just who they are, and if they were even real. Also, I'm sure the woman will show up afterwards, but, at the same time, there's the parallel between the missing cat in the narrator's youth and the woman's disappearance, which makes you think she's gone, never to return...

Favorite line: The paragraph that includes this gem: "Once you start tossing things out, you find yourself wanting to get rid of everything."
Ear Check: Again, nothing sensual. As they fly of Egypt, he has a panic attack and even thinks about putting 'the barrel of a revolver in my ear and pull[ing] the trigger'.

CATS: Not only the man-eating cats of the title, but also the cat that disappeared on the narrator when he was a boy. CATS!!!



Next time, I'll talk a bit about "A 'Poor Aunt' Story", "Nausea 1979", and "The Seventh Man", plus a few more if I can manage it.

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