Haruki Murakami

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.

feel like for the book to be interesting tengo and aomame's happy ending has to be beside the point, and what happens to ushikawa important

feel like we're meant to try and work out to what extent tengo's writing is productive of iq84 as they experience it / we read it

possibly trying to make an 'interesting reading' on a text that doesn't support it, i don't know; i think it might also be possible that we're meant to believe in the power of eyes-meeting-across-a-crowded-room romantic love &/or reincarnation to bridge the most difficult material to a happy ending

finding that ushikawa was the new focus was my favourite aspect of pt iii; anticipating and enjoying the moment he was going to look up and see the two moons

enjoyed that five minutes where everyone was in the same park but everyone failed to notice who they were actually looking for was something it came back to three times

i couldn't make anything much of what logic actually operates w/r/t the little people, the voice, the dohtas & mazas. re the last i think it's interesting that we're given so strongly suggestive names against the background of a plot where every single parent/child bond is broken or ineffective.

i figured the idea was that tengo was writing 1q84 (i.e. the murakami book, in a cute spin on the ghostwriting/authorship theme) but then why was he surprised by everything at the end, in particular the pregnancy? again, i am torn between i didn't get it vs HM didn't really doing anything with it

for ushikawa's entire presence in the book to be anything more than a wanky paul auster tribute, i wanted what happened to him to be important. i can't even begin to come up with even a vague idea of the significance of him and the little people tho.

i got the idea that the dohta/maza thing was representative of a person who is lost or somehow damaged, e.g. before and after trauma. like, fuka-eri as met by tengo was clearly supposed to be a dohta, but she seems to have become that (after being fucked by her dad, reasonably enough), rather than to actually have been split in 2, as there is no suggestion that another eriko was actaully left behind when she fled. and tengo gets the premonition of aomame becoming a dohta but she fights the transition. it is not the tidiest symbolism, and the whole little people business confuses shit even further.

the whole 1q84/cat town world is the state of depression or 'impotence' and dohta is an anthropomorphization of that

ppl in the book actually talk about the idea of another eriko being around somewhere, i think?

mad love for ushikawa

xp yeah that's how it is explained, but i got the impression that the events didn't actually bear it out. there was nothing else in the story to support that part of the explanation. i wouldn't swear i'm right but that was how it seemed to me.

but i got the impression that the events didn't actually bear it out

its definitely stated explicitly that there is another eriko but i thought they have meant in the 'other world', rather than in the one they were in? like many parts of the book he suggested at a lot of interesting things that he never delivered on, i guess

for ushikawa's entire presence in the book to be anything more than a wanky paul auster tribute, i wanted what happened to him to be important.

i think his death was important for the little people? the details are getting foggy but i think that he was an acceptable substitute in some way and they could use his dead body as a gate?

when i was reading this and shortly after i had a whole thing about how this book was just about the 'creative process' that seemed to reconcile all the inconsistencies and difficulties i had w/it but ive kinda lost the thread on that

why do they particularly need ushikawa for a gate, when a dead goat and a dead dog worked in the past? it would make sense if they need a person in a particular state of emotional damage to make a air chrysalis and so a dhota/perceiver, and ushikawa fit the bill. that would explain the abuse of the girls. but why them not just abuse another kid? what is the particular reason ushikawa should be involved? and if they don't have a receiver after the leader's death, absent the only 2 hinted possibilities (tengo and the unborn child), what value is another dhota? i can't turn it around and find a way that ushikawa is really important at all to the meat of the story (as opposed to its telling).

http://i.imgur.com/3e6vc.jpg

dissociative females ftw

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

IQ84 is probably the worst 900-page novel I have ever read in its entirety. He could fairly easily have got it down to 500 pages or so if he hadn't treated his audience like idiots who can't remember what happened five pages ago, or need endless pedestrian internal monologues because they're incapable of making the slightest cognitive leap without having their hand held.

the worst 900-page novel I have ever read in its entirety

i like the specificity of this claim

Matt makes me sad in my heart but i will still read this eventually

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