Okay, just finished Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and it really knocked me for a loop. I’m still trying to wrap my head around some of the ideas he puts forth about the self and the mind, and I know this book will be with me for a while. Any other fans here? If so, recommendations on which book to read next?
Hard Boiled Wonderland is, in my recollection, the least of his books, so as far as I’m concerned you can only go up from there.
Dance Dance Dance and The Wild Sheep Chase are the most obvious places to hit next, as they’ve got a lot of the same mix of fantasy and fantastic reality of HBW. Read Dance first, then the semi-sequel Sheep Chase. Then cap it off with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which takes all the ideas from those three books and creates something expansive and tremendously satisfying.
I’ve just noticed that his latest is now out in paperback; think I’ll grab that this afternoon.
Perfect. Thanks, Russ.
I’ve only read two of his books, Dance dance dance and Kafka on the shore, loved both of them. I heard that Norwegian Wood was one of his best novels, haven’t read it yet.
Norwegian Wood is great. While the books mentioned so far go to the more fantastic end of the spectrum, NW is among his more realistic novels. IT reminds me of early Paul Auster stuff, only with that wonderfully pale, suggestive language Murakami uses so well.
There’s even a special edition package I picked up the UK – a gold box that opens to reveal the book divided into two small volumes, red and green. I wish more books got nifty SE sets here.
I have a weird problem with his stuff, which is that I become obsessed with the translation. The language is so evocative that I wonder what it was like in the original Japanese, what little changes have been made, etc. I ruin my enjoyment of the books with this nonsense.
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| Originally Posted by Russ Fischer There’s even a special edition package I picked up the UK – a gold box that opens to reveal the book divided into two small volumes, red and green. I wish more books got nifty SE sets here. |
Whereabouts in the UK did you find that?
Hard Boiled Wonderland’s my favorite, but I love everything I’ve read of his. Dance Dance Dance is great. His short stories, especially the ones in After the Quake, are fantastic. Wind Up Bird Chronicle is trumpeted as his best, and has received the most academic attention. It’s pretty fucking good. His latest, Kafka on the Shore, is okay, but I’d put it off for a while.
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| Originally Posted by The Kraken Whereabouts in the UK did you find that? |
Just some bookstore in London. Seemed like it was pretty widely available, but this was in…2002 maybe?
Dev, I sometimes feel the same way. I’d really love to read his stuff in Japanese. One of the two major translators actually wrote a book about Murakami, but I’ve heard it’s not so good. COuld never find it, so haven’t had the chance to check it out myself.
Edited to add a link to pics of the box set.
Oh, and Will, I’m an idiot. A Wild Sheep Chase is followed by Dance Dance Dance, not the other way around.
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| Originally Posted by Russ Fischer I’d really love to read his stuff in Japanese. . |
I have the Japanese edition of Norwegian Wood, but I’ve only read maybe half of it. It’s not the easiest thing to digest. Some day I’ll have to go back and finish it.
And since we’re talking about Murakami, has anyone else seen Tony Takitani? I thought it was an interesting if slight film. Superb score by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
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| Originally Posted by devincf I have a weird problem with his stuff, which is that I become obsessed with the translation. The language is so evocative that I wonder what it was like in the original Japanese, what little changes have been made, etc. I ruin my enjoyment of the books with this nonsense. |
Both Rubin and Birnbaum’s translations of Murakami capture the feel of his work nicely–maybe Rubin’s are the best. There’s a kind of dislocated sense to Murakami’s Japanese that lends itself to English translation better than some Japanese authors that have a more conventional or a more literary style–at least that’s my off the cuff opinion. At the same time, I think that his novels are not only translated but also abridged, sometimes pretty dramatically–so the story is getting manipulated even if the detailed translation is well done. It seems to me that you get a better feel for his writing in the collections of his short stories.
I really like the stories in “The Elephant Vanishes,” and the little collection “After the Quake” is good too. His non-fiction (whatever that means) “Underground” is also a moving series of interviews that try to understand the aftermath of the Tokyo subway attacks. A week or so after 9/11, I was driving along in Chicago listening to the radio when a performance of “Underground” came on “This American Life.” It was stunning–at first, I didn’t understand what I was listening to, that it was about Tokyo not New York. I had to pull my car over and listen to the whole thing. Here’s a link for it:
http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/01/194.html
There’s a new collection out in Japanese called something like “Tokyo Mystery Stories.” I imagine that it will be translated here pretty soon. My wife is reading it now and likes it a lot, but she won’t let me get near it until she’s finished.
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| Originally Posted by The Kraken Whereabouts in the UK did you find that? |
The two volume, Red and Green edition of NW was published in Japan to mimic the organization and colors of the Japanese original. I heard that the target audience was Japanese readers so that they could practice their English reading skills and check it easily against the Japanese version. I picked it up at Kinokuniya Bookstore in Tokyo a long time ago–there are some used copies of it available at amazon’s Japanese site (amazon.co.jp).
I didn’t care all that much for Kafka on the Shore, but I’ve had his stuff recommended so much by people I trust that I’m anxious to read some of his other books. I’ll probably give Wind-Up Bird Chronicle one of these days.
One guy I’ve heard compared to Murakami quite a bit (and one of the reasons I have to try more Murakami) is the English author, David Mitchell, whose Cloud Atlas I can’t recommend enough. It’s ingeniously structured and is absolutely one of my favorite books of the last few years. I’ve been recommending him to Murakami fans since I heard Mitchell claims him as a major influence, but I don’t think I’ve had any takers yet. Seriously, read this book.
I’ve only read Cloud Atlas but I would say, based on that book, Murakami combines his more surreal aspects with characters that are grounded in reality, be it emotionally or from a narrative standpoint. I enjoyed Cloud Atlas but felt that, perhaps given the structure of the book, there was a disjointed quality to it. The various narrative strands don’t really weave together as seamlessly. Having said that, it was much better than that year’s Booker prize winner.
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| Originally Posted by Russ Fischer Hard Boiled Wonderland is, in my recollection, the least of his books, so as far as I’m concerned you can only go up from there. Dance Dance Dance and The Wild Sheep Chase are the most obvious places to hit next, as they’ve got a lot of the same mix of fantasy and fantastic reality of HBW. Read Dance first, then the semi-sequel Sheep Chase. Then cap it off with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which takes all the ideas from those three books and creates something expansive and tremendously satisfying. I’ve just noticed that his latest is now out in paperback; think I’ll grab that this afternoon. |
Hey Russ, seeing as you answered first, I’ll aim this at you… but anyway can help me.
My main question is… if you haven’t read anything from him, where you start (and then where would you go from there)… would you still recommend Dance, Sheep, and Hard Boiled followed by Wind-up? What order for the first 3?
My sub-question (also dealing with order) has to do with you saying Sheep Chase is a semi sequel to Dance… but looking around it seems that Dance was published about 6 years after Sheep… did you mispeak? Or is it more of a spiritual, but not literal sequel? Or did he write Dance first, but it didn’t get published until much later? Or is my information wrong?
In a later post I mentioned that I was wrong about the order of Sheep and Dance – Sheep is first, Dance the sequel. Was writing quickly when I posted the first time.
I also read Hard Boiled Wonderland first, and it’s a fine place to start, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s truly indicative of what you’ll find in the rest of his books. Sheep and Dance are much more along the lines of what he does most of the time, so if you want to start with something that’s representative, start there.
From there just get whatever sounds good. While I like HBW the least, I wouldn’t call it bad by any stretch, and it’s got some really tremendous moments. There isn’t anything of his I haven’t liked to some degree (not having read Sputnik Sweetheart or Kafka) so there’s nothing I’d steer anyone away from in the long run.
I tend to think Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is magnificent, not least because it reminds me of a literary David Lynch, or a Chuck Palanhiuk book that was actually good. (There are things that bring Murakami’s book and Palanhiuk’s Survivor close together in my mind, but it may very well be a connection that only means anything to me. I suppose it’s that both authors work with alienation, but Murakami doesn’t use it as a gimmick.)
As an aside, I’ve just been re-reading Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy after mentioning it earlier, and it really is striking how much alike the two authors are, on a certain level. Technically Murakami is easily the better writer, but there’s almost a quality to the air in Auster’s books that is so much like Murakami. Some of it is also a willingness to explore the role chance – or what looks like chance – plays in our lives.
Hey Russ, thanks for the quick reply.
Sorry for missing your post correcting your earlier post. I was skimming the thread before bed and missed it.
I picked up Wild Sheep Chase today as a gift for my wife. I’ll get to it eventually, but maybe not for a couple of months as I have a pile of books I’m still working through. Hopefully she likes it!
Thanks again for bringing Murakami to my attention.
I have Wind-Up Bird Chronicle but have yet to get around to reading it…would I be better off to build up to it with a couple of lesser works that will ground it for me, or just dive right in?