Haruki Murakami

For example, he's definitely much easier to read than the typical postmodern writer and his lyricism has an awkwardness to it that makes it more digestible than poetry, maybe like Kurt Vonnegut. And he seems to combine pulp forms (sex! what happened to the girl!) to give the reader something to be interested in, so the novel goes by much faster than if it were just quirky surrealism.

any defenders?

lex if I were you
I would try norwegian wood,
hard-boiled wonderland

murakami reminds me a little of nick hornby urgh!

when i was a kid it used to bug me when people mocked the bands or movies i liked or whatever, now it's really only haruki murakami i'm precious about.

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.

I'm excited this thread popped up again as it inspired me to check and see his new short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman has finally got a release date on August 29th

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.