talk about a wild sheep chase by murikami

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read this recently,i'm not quite sure what to make of it...
some of it is beautifully written,and its interesting and easy to read and so on,but i can't quite get my head around it
some of it was really enjoyable,some of it a bit silly,and the transitions between the various parts were fairly abrupt...
i don't really have a lot to say about it,but i get the impression there is more to it than i realize,or something...

so what did other people think of it?

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)

i mean i really enjoyed it,i'm just not quite sure why

― robin (robin), Wednesday, 24 December 2003 00:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought Wild Sheep Chase was strictly a case of the emperor's new prose, that is badly in need of someone to say, "Hey, this book sucks." I got to within about 20 pages of the end and realized I simply did not care enough to finish it. There is some Murakami that's pretty good, but this is an extended exercise in vacuousness.

― David Westendorp, Tuesday, 6 January 2004 15:41 (twenty-two years ago)

ilikedthesheepman

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I have a few pages left in Dance Dance Dance and I love it. I don't know if I'll read AWSC though because I'm afraid I won't like it as much. Would it be an anticlimax?

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 16:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm surprised by how much I like the stretches in DDD where he basically talks about nothing, just living through the daily routine, and it almost comes as a shock when the quasi-supernatural scenes or anything that happens to advance the plot occurs.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 16:19 (twenty-two years ago)

the lady in wild sheep chase was interesting... i had a nagging feeling throughout the book that i wasnt quite getting it.. it being something deep and heavy and meaningful

― cheesoo (cheeesoo), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 21:18 (twenty-two years ago)

He makes these things up as he goes along and doesn't revise. Vacuous is the word, I agree.

― R the V (Jake Proudlock), Thursday, 8 January 2004 15:35 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not sure vacuous is the word. Or rather, 'vacuous' it itself a rather vacuous thing to say about AWSC. It seemed to me that the point of the book was that the narrator more or less refused to (or was incapable of) taking any kind of initiative on his own, and that the understandings of the world which led to the plot developments were never his own.

For such a lot to happen in a novel about passivity seems terrific to me.

― Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 20 January 2004 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I tend, in my mind, to mix up A Wild Sheep Chase, Dance, Dance, Dance, and Sputnik Sweetheart and one other by Murakami. As a whole, looking at the body of his work, it strikes me that he's intent on exploring certain thematic ideas and is acutely redundant in some of his ways of conveying those ideas (I do like his thing for womens' necks and ears, of course). Primarily, I am thinking about his obsession with holes/wells and the parallel universe/dream world.

Then again, I read six of his books over a long weekend and I think that my mind has done a fine job of muddling them altogether and it's entirely possible that they all are original and don't have much in common with his other works. I think I may have done his body of work a disservice (or a disservice to myself, possibly). (And I don't mean to convey that I don't like his books - they're high on my list of all-time favorites.)

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 23 January 2004 12:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I like the way Murakami moves the plot along by physically moving the characters to a new location.

It works to great effect in Norweigan Wood with all the walking.

I also think people read too much into Murakami, but I'm sure those with vast imaginations will disagree.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 23 January 2004 12:49 (twenty-two years ago)

In my mind, I tend to set Norwegian Wood away from the rest of Murakami's fiction stories. (Underground is in a category of its own, of course.) I do think that NW is easily the most approachable of his works, and it tends to be the one that I recommend to people who want to try a new author, and, in many ways, I think it's the most solid of his books, in terms of plot and story flow and dialogue and everything holding together.

But I still like his more, hmmm, "magical realism"?-like works for when I want a chance to let my brain go free and play around with more far-fetched ideas.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 23 January 2004 12:57 (twenty-two years ago)

well Dance, Dance, Dance is the seqeual to WSC, so it's understandable. Haven't got round to finishing it yet, as I read DDD first. Looking forward to Kafka on the Beach, it's 800 pages or someting like that.

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 25 January 2004 15:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I read them in the "wrong" order, too. Don't know how much that affected my reaction to those two books or to the rest of his works. I see that he has several collections of short stories in print in English - any thoughts on how readable and enjoyable those are?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 26 January 2004 03:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm about 40 pages into it and thinking "been here before". I get the feeling that after Wonderland, Wood and Wind-up I've pretty much heard all he has to say.

― fcussen (Burger), Monday, 26 January 2004 23:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought his "after the quake" short story book was good, nice and neat 20 page stories, and a bit different to his usual stuff (until the last story). I haven't bothered with the Vintage Murakami as it seems to be bits of his novels and short stories from elsewhere, and don't really see the point in reading it unless you haven't read anything by him before.

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 31 January 2004 18:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I saw that Vintage one in the bookstore. I'm not interested for the same reason, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea, like a greatest hits comp or 'The Rough Guide to...' for authors.

― Jordan (Jordan), Saturday, 31 January 2004 18:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember seeing that his translator has a book out on Murakami - don't know if it's a scholarly work or a biography or just what - but I've not been able to track down a copy of it, nevertheless. Anyone read it? Recommendations?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Saturday, 31 January 2004 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I have Jay Rubin's book on loan at the moment but haven't started reading it. The sleeve says that it "reveals the autobiographical elements in Murakami's fiction [and] explains how he developed a distinctive new style in Japanese". Looks mostly like a biography with bits of interviews in there.

Does anyone know if Rubin has translated Wild Sheep Chase? Because Birnbaum seems to have done a terrible job on it.

― fcussen (Burger), Saturday, 31 January 2004 21:27 (twenty-two years ago)

"sleeve"? jacket of course

― fcussen (Burger), Saturday, 31 January 2004 21:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I kinda like the idea of a "sleeve" rather than a book "jacket" - the latter has always struck me as being a futzy term. I'd be very interested in hearing your assessment on Rubin's book, fcussen.

Do y'all see Norwegian Wood as being more approachable than Murakami's other fictions? Or is it just the one that fits into a more familiar genre?

And what are people's feelings about Underground? I was quite taken with it, particularly the exploration of cultural norms that held people back from publically reacting to the events in the way a westernized group might. Is there this strong of a difference between the cultures?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 2 February 2004 21:06 (twenty-two years ago)

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