Haruki Murakami

the uk edition is translated by rubin in pts one and two, birnbaum in pt three

i have been wondering to what extent murakami is aware of the crepe-ness of it. when i am reading a new sword and sorcery novel and a new literary novel and the literary novel is the creepier, actually never mind that doesn't work i mean fuckin' jonathan franzen right

hahaha

the uk edition is translated by rubin in pts one and two, birnbaum in pt three

― thomp, Thursday, November 10, 2011 8:43 AM (8 minutes ago)

Philip Gabriel in pt 3 you mean. Birnbaum hasn't worked with Murakami since Underground, unfortunately.

oop, my bad. here is an interview with him about the process, though

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/10/how-haruki-murakamis-1q84-was-translated-into-english/247093/#.TqYkHccXFY8.facebook

3.2% of the way into this and it's a bit bad so far I've read nothing by him before

conrad do you like books

so murakami is a big john irving fan, and is the guy who translates all of his novels into japanese. which makes a lot of sense, because, much like murakami, irvings first umpteen novels were all sort of variations on a theme, always with wrestlers, zoos, dysfunctional marriages, and vienna in them, yet are similarly addictive (to me anyway) even though they're all a little bit samey. just as 99% of all murakami novels have the everyman protaganist searching for the missing girlfriend and slowly slipping into some sort of surreal otherworld, yet i will continue to buy each variation of the same book and avidly reading them until murakami stops writing them.

just thought i'd throw that out there.

ps. hard boiled wonderland is his best book. norwegian wood is great if you are tired of everyman protaganists searching for the missing girlfriend and slowly slipping into some sort of surreal otherworld, yet still want to read a murakami novel. underground too, except more so. his short stories are awesome.

pps. somewhere, apparently, written in japanese, is a list of every song/album mentioned in all of his written works. has anyone ever seen that in translated into english? a murakami mixtape would probably be awesome, but going through each novel looking for the music he mentions by name and writing it down is way too much work (i tried)

love em

cool conrad what else do you love

pps. somewhere, apparently, written in japanese, is a list of every song/album mentioned in all of his written works. has anyone ever seen that in translated into english? a murakami mixtape would probably be awesome, but going through each novel looking for the music he mentions by name and writing it down is way too much work (i tried)

― messiahwannabe, Monday, November 14, 2011 7:01 AM (3 minutes ago)

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/printable2.php?file=xml/music/classical.xml
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/printable2.php?file=xml/music/jazz.xml
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/printable2.php?file=xml/music/pop.xml

i finally got a(n unsigned) copy of 1q84 so I can finally start reading this.

humanity the internet dunno

cool contad I love those things as well Im glad we have something in common

this might have already been mentioned in some other thread, or even this one, but for those with spotify, some folks have already made playlists with the songs mentioned in various murakami books:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/spotify-playlists-for-writers-haruki-murakami_b34843

taking a break from 1Q84 at about halfway through to read other stuff for a while, not sure if i'll come back to it or not.

q looks more like a 9 than Q

this book is actually v bad

it's almost as bad as I imagine dan brown or something

One thing that does annoy me is the constant restating of what is currently occuring

yeah that get's annoying. like a weekly serial or something, endless recaps. but no way is it in dan brown territory. i'd put it more with stephen king but w/ aspergers/blank jazz loving protagonists rather than king's hairshirt everymen.
having read all the others but one, i think the translation & editing in this one is pretty flippin shoddy, tho. yesmen proofreaders. still enjoying it 500 pages in.

get's? gets

I finished the first book and a half or so. Really enjoying it - but then, it's the first of his that I have read.

finished the first book last night. it's compelling despite its crepeness, i guess. did he always describe female characters in terms of their breasts? have i only just noticed this?

anyway i started wondering whether he'd read steig larsson; this book and his three seem to have something in common. (and the phrase 'men who hate women' showed up just as i was wondering this, so now i'm convinced of it.) like they're both about resistance to systemic male-on-female violence, but both very much immediately compromised in their form.

(though they weren't available in english until he'd have been well on the way to finishing this. and it seems unlikely he read them in swedish.)

"she scowled immensely" NO NO NO.
intensely maybe. who let this through?
yeh i'm guessing it all hinges on something to do with boobs in the third book.

v well may be the translator's fault but it's pretty relentlessly infuriatingly distracting

5.2%

There seems to be a large Lynch influence on this novel (finished the first 2 books), especially Twin Peaks. *Spoilers?* there's a hint that birds, crows in this case (owls in TP), are agents of someone else. There are doubles, sexual abuse as portals/spiritually charged events, morally ambiguous 'little people' and the idea that the 'forest'/'woods' holds something more primitive and powerful. Okay, actually, looking at that list it isn't that strong, but towards the end of the second book I got a very strong Lynchian vibe.

wow, thanks steve - i've been looking for those lists for ages!

finished the first two books & not really in a major hurry to start the third.
don't think it's a lynch influence ( although i believe hurakami is a fan ) so much as an overlap. there's deeper wellsprings than lynch i don't think he thought of evil or forests or mystery before anyone else. common themes.

this is either getting better or I'm getting used to it still occasionally annoying if not bad like I imagine dan brown then slow and repetitive like a kids' book have been kind of reluctant to pick it up but gonna give it a good go now

8.65%

conrad do you like Japan

Why do hate japan so much?

don't know japan

any good?

Finished! By the way this is fun to read while blasting Janacek in your headphones.

conrad, dunno if you know this but japan is a country

where i am in book two i feel like i enjoy this a lot more. i don't think it's as 'deep' as his best stuff but whatever

idea that came to mind earlier: 'thriller as fugue'

probably not a v good idea

yep knew about the country thing

are you reading this book dayo?

11.36%

conrad, what things do you like about japan

I think that it's a country

conrad, are these kindle percentages or are they like numeric ratings of how you feel about this novel at the moment of posting

conrad, have you ever been to nuneaton?

conrad, do you like percentages

percentages are fine

I've been to derby leicester coventry and birmingham

I don't have a kindle but they represent progress I've only been able to read in odd moments this week

13.19%

current feeling 68.61%

66.7% thro books 1+2. currently feeling it ~ 78%.

my percentage of the whole lot btw

when were you last kicked in the balls?

this managed the neat trick of being overly expository while still leaving you in the dark about a lot of stuff, in the usual style. i liked it a lot tho, firmly in the middle of the pack murakami. i'm looking forward to re-reading it. not any time soon.

what did you think of the ending, if anything

spoilers here of course...

the last part was probably the weakest in general. in terms of where tengo and aomame end up, that was obviously where things were heading and it was drawn out getting there, to no real value. the possible tension just dribbled away: ushikawa was the last wildcard and he left the story so tamely; likewise, the long arm of sakigake proved to be somewhat less long and potent than repeatedly advertized. i don't know about the tiger facing the wrong way thing - if they haven't just gone back to the 'real' world then the idea of her retracing her path to exit loses all meaning.

the real potential twists in the ending of course are the roles of the little people and whatever power the 'voice' represents. it wasn't clear to me what the last appearance of the little people signified. they were making another air chrysalis, but were they anticipating aomame coming to sakigake, or were they planning something with the foreknowledge that she and tengo were going back to 1984? what was the reason for incorporating ushikawa's hair? i prefer to think that i have just missed some nuance than the alternative.

as for the 'voice' and whatever power was directing things, the impression i got was that there was an undercurrent of the old god-beings using humans as chess pieces thing. the taxi driver at the start and the woman in the silver car seem to be significant around this. i like this aspect though, there is a lot to think about, although some more substantial hints would have been appreciated.

part of me thinks that there is a lot more there that i won't really appreciate until i reread, and part of me worries that when i go back through there won't be any layers to peel back.