In his Kafkaesque novels, Murakami explores the themes of loss, reminiscence of the past, defilement, void (seeking to be filled), social alienation, self-discovery, sexual perversion, lost connection to the inner-self. His characters attempt come to terms with their past, in narratives where crisp realism and fantastic elements mix up to explore a concept of double-consciousness, or connection between the real world and another dimension (is it what we call the subconscious? Is it Death? Or altogether another world?).
In Norwegian Wood, Naoko lives in the past, and so does, through her, Toru Watanabe. An absence (Kizuki’s - her boyfriend, and his best-friend) both links and separates them; meanwhile, he is drawn to Midori, whose own deficiencies are explained by parental abandonment. Throughout the novel, the characters endeavour to fill each other’s void.
Similarly, in Dance, Dance, Dance, in his quest to discover what happened to the woman he loved, the protagonist is drawn to a thirteen-years-old fan of the Talking Heads (Yuki), who tries to evolve between a careless mother and an inept father. What will be unveiled is a sordid story of sexual perversion and murder.
Toru Watanabe’s wife disappears without explanation (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle); in his quest to find her – and their cat –, he meets the teenager May Kasahara, but also unveils a difficult truth (‘defilement’ and incest), which outcomes he can only fight (literally) through the powers of his mind.
Sputnik Sweetheart (perhaps my favourite) deals again with the theme of defilement (Miu’s chilling story) while K. desperately tries to find out what happened to Sumire. Loss again is at the centre of this short but deep novel, which explores in a very poetic way the complexity of emotions.
Perhaps the most original of the lot, because so different, is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – isn’t it a wonderful title? this is what first attracted me to Murakami: find out what story hid itself behind such a title. The main character, a ‘Calcutec’ (or ‘human data processor’) is charged to encrypt a message, while he is also, in another dimension, a ‘dream-reader’. In the process, he is not only saving a scientist and his (sexy) granddaughter, but also himself. Interestingly, none of the characters in this novel are named : ‘chubby girl’, ‘librarian’, ‘the old man’, ‘Junior’ and ‘Big Boy’… is all the author offers of their identity.
Finally, young Kafka Tamura (Kafka on the Shore) runs away from home to go in search of his disappeared mother, and finds himself connected to an eccentric old man who converses with cats and predicts (accurately) fish and leeches falling from the sky.
All his main characters, are, without exception, idle, male, and share, as Joseph Kugelmass says, this ‘vacant state of ordinariness’; teenagers are effortlessly cool; women beautiful, sexy (often unwillingly) and dressed with tasteful simplicity. There is nearly always a (gruesome) murder; if not, a rape (or both).
Dimensions (otherworld? underworld? death?) are connected through a ‘door’, either place or object, enabling the protagonist to communicate with: the Sheep Man through the Dolphin Hotel (Dance, Dance, Dance), his wife through a well (the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), his inner-self through the skull of a unicorn (Hard-Boiled Wonderland), people from the past through a forest (Kafka on the Shore), etc.
Finally, each of the novels breathe through a liberating element, who brings relief as much as the key to find the truth, in the form of clairvoyants: Yuki (Dance, Dance, Dance), Malta and Creta Kano (Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), Nakata (Kafka on the Shore) etc…
What one could explain as ‘consistency’ is finally the repetition of a successful formula, which dramatically tones down the eccentricity and sheer originality of his work; or is it precisely this continuity that brings stability to the metaphysical universes he creates, a familiarity which protects the reader from the protagonists increasing insanity?
[originally posted as a comment on The Kugelmass Episodes]
1 comment:
Hey there! You're now on the blogroll, of course, of course. My best attempt at a response is up too.
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