Haruki Murakami

When you guys read it do/did you see it through the eyes of a japanese dude or through your own eyes? I was wondering about this earlier this week.

note: i never really wanted to read him before because every indie boy ever in brooklyn was over the moon about him so I wanted to stay away. Now that I just hit 40, I figure it's time.

Hah now I'm wondering how re-reading it in my early 40s would compare to when I was a LA indie dork in my early 20s

You should do it and let us know. I mean it's fine to read on the subway but Terrace House is 100xs better.

When I talked to him he told me he wrote Wind-Up Bird when he was living in Orange County (CA), which kinda blew my mind.

What? No way

did you ask him if he likes Murakame Udon?

1991 – January, Went to the US as a associate researcher of Princeton University.

1992 – In January, nominated an associate professor at Princeton University (till August 1993). South of the Border, West of the Sun

1993 – In July, transferred and taught at William Howard Taft University (till May 1995).

1994 – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle volume 1 and 2

1995 – Returned to Japan. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle volume 3 For The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award (Best Novel).

1997 – The first nonfiction by Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche received the Takeo Kuwabara Prize (1999).

http://www.philosophical-investigations.com/2016/09/16/study-note/timeline-of-haruki-murakami/

Haha, no but he spends half the year in Hawaii.

Hard Boiled Wonderland is better than Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. And shorter!

Carne, he taught Comparative World Literature at WHTU in Santa Ana pretty much while he was rising to international fame.

I've read and loved some of his books but really don't know much about him I really had no idea he was in southern California when I was.

I really liked A Wild Sheep Chase, remember hearing that there was a sequel Dance Dance Dance but haven't read it

ok it was already mentioned many times I guess I should read this thread

When you guys read it do/did you see it through the eyes of a japanese dude or through your own eyes?

Oh god, definitely not through my own eyes. I like Toru, but he's definitely in that mold of "passive everyman protagonist" where viewers/readers project themselves onto the character and get emotionally invested as a result, despite the character's immature moments. Fortunately he exists in a fascinating world, so it works out

The blurb of Norwegian Wood seemed like it doubles down on at character archetype, and with a far less interesting setting/plot line (a college dorm love triangle?) to boot. But it has a number of fans so maybe I should check it out

This dude is such a boring writer that it makes sense japanese high schools would have you struggle through (one of) his books just to study his prose

While it’s true that there’s something very japanese about his writing style and characters’ personalities (a kind of victimized male), there are so many varied and great japanese writers who have done/are doing something totally different and remain unpopular/unknown in the west

...but are highly praised in japan i should add

Name names!

Recently met a Japanese Murakami fan who told me the variable quality in the translations is due to him having two translators who have different styles. I haven't read him for a decade, and haven't checked this up.

Some of the English translations, like 1Q84, show signs of having been rushed -- he sells well and his publishers want to get those books out in a hurry.

I've never been less than entertained by any of his books, and I'm impressed by his ability to alternate between sprawling fantasies and low-key realism.

Recently met a Japanese Murakami fan who told me the variable quality in the translations is due to him having two translators who have different styles. I haven't read him for a decade, and haven't checked this up.

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, August 29, 2018 5:55 AM (two hours ago)

There's a thread on ILB where a poster discussed this very issue quite some time ago!

Surely there have been more than two at this point

recommend a translation

jay rubin

oh god i think i've read all of that stuff before which is why my brain gets stuck on "this has to be his translator, right????" anyway jay rubin sucks

i should give hard boiled wonderland a shot before completely giving up on this dude anyway

I liked Hard Boiled Wonderland a lot more than Wind Up, Brad - both are interesting trips, but HBW more focused and concise. In fact, haven't read anything else of his I liked nearly as much as HBW

I agree, Hardboiled Wonderland is tighter and more memorable than Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

i actually studied japanese for years—not to the degree where i can speak it and write it well at all but i got pretty close to that point in college— and what i like about alfred birnbaum’s sentences in that post is that they feel like actual japanese sentences and phrases to me, just in english

I find it quite hard to believe that 1Q84 has as much to do with the quality of the translation as much as just being a bad book.

Yeah, I don’t think a translator could make the last third significantly less painfully boring.

I loved *Wind-Up Bird* 10 years ago when I read it, it spoke v deeply to me, I have nothing of import to add to that observation at the moment. I've got a whole set of sub-thoughts brewing about that, Persona 5 and my own private semiconscious, but I don't know if I can or want to articulate them yet. Can't articulate it to myself comfortably yet.

I find it quite hard to believe that 1Q84 has as much to do with the quality of the translation as much as just being a bad book.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, August 29, 2018 10:35 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is also good to know

Alfred Birnbaum's translations make HM read naturally in English. Jay Rubin's make HM read like an idiot.

satoshi kon's "paprika" (2006) is a neat little anime movie that pretty much has the same story as Iq84 (2009) excepting the boobcentric nonsense, cats etc. check it out if you haven't already

tried twice to read wind-up bird but twice stalled in rage over the prose style-- somehow both fastidious and flabby-- had never seen the birnbaum translation but that excerpt rly is better. huh.

i feel so vindicated, i thought i was alone!!!!!!!!

murakami writes about what people wear a lot.
rubin will always write "he had on his blue shirt with the button down collar"
several times in the same paragraph.
birnbaum will write "he wore... / he was wearing..."

I saw Lee Chang-Dong's film Burning, which is an adaptation of a Murakami story called Barn Burning. It's very good but my slight reservations are also reservations I generally have with Murakami although in a much less frustrating way in the film than in his books.

Murakami feels like a side-step away from High Fidelity to me. I’ve tried several books and usually come up empty (that said, Wild Sheep Chase was ok). I read his book about running last year and it was deeply arrogant and boring. Blah blah I opened a bar and got famous writing but I didn’t even want it and then I was great at running.

i think of this guy as the guy who begins every book with the same idea as Calvino in If on a winter’s night a traveler... but then actually finishes the story, thus missing the joke.

Fun fact, 1Q84 was translated by two people to meet the publisher's deadline - Jay Rubin‎ pts 1 and 2, and ‎Philip Gabriel pt 3. Agreed that Birnbaum is the best Murakami "voice" but he works pretty closely with his English translators I'm told.
The best Murakami is deadpan Murakami, the flat neutrality of style when describing things people typically get excited about is the hook for me.

I also got about a third into WIBC and couldnt finish it, and couldnt put my finger on why. Something about it felt so male and listless. Maybe coming right off the back of a pile of Le Guin had me in a more demanding frame of mind. I dont know what turned me off.

(wether this is his or the translators fault, who can say)

"the flat neutrality of style when describing things people typically get excited about" yes agree

it was the 'strange casualness' of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki that first got me interested in his writing

I listened to the audiobook of A Wild Sheep Chase while on a long journey. I had the player set to shuffle, though, and I didn't notice for hours.

legendary

once when i was 8 or 9 i actually got my dad to read me a bedtime story, and he read for ~10mins before announcing he'd been reading all the sentences out of order "and you didn't notice because the prose doesn't go anywhere", then turned out the light

the plain bedtime be damned

just dad things

Name names!

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, August 29, 2018 2:29 AM (seventeen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

obviously this depends on the type of books you like, but to name a few random contemporary ones:

shinichi hoshi
toh enjoe
yoriko shono
kenji nakagami
ryu murakami
yoko ogawa
yoshikichi furui (probably good to put him on the list, he was at the forefront of a turning point in japanaese lit)
genpei akasegawa
yoko tawada
hiroko oyamada
kenta nishimura
hiromo kawakami

okay so not all are highly praised, but most of them are

i stuck to 1970s and onward because that's when haruki murakami first started publishing

modern writers would be its own list (pre-1960s ish), and though they are what i prefer, it wouldn't be fair to compare him nor any contemporary writer to them. but suffice it to say, in my opinion, most contemporary literature in japan leaves a lot to be desired. i've included some very recent names on that list, but not because i particularly like them

i will break from this for one instance to say as much as murakami gets compared to kafka every so often, kobo abe is the real japanese kafka, a pretty amazing writer, though, again, a modern one

some of those authors i read in japanese and others in translation, so i don't know if everything is available in english