Haruki Murakami

Just finished Hard Boiled Wonderland. It was a little slicker than I liked and the ending didn't come together that well in my opinion, felt like when you know how an RPG is going to end and you're just leveling up enough for that last boss fight. I think I liked Kafka On the Shore better.

Edited November 26, 2017 by sweepstakes

I remember Kafka on the Shore being fantastic, but I can't recall what it was about.  I'm practically illiterate, but Murakami is one author I've delved pretty deeply into.  I've read almost all his books.  Wind Up Bird and Norwegian Wood are maybe my two favourite.  

my favorite book of his is 'dance dance dance'. i also really enjoyed 'a wild sheep chase', but that didn't leave as much of a lasting impression as the former.

I didn't realize how prolific he was. I'm thinking Norwegian Wood next since it seems well-known enough to make decent conversation fodder. Those two sound interesting too.

Wild sheep chase

Dance dance dance

Norwegian Wood

Wind-up Bird Chronicles

Hard boiled wonderland

Underground

Hear the wind sing/Pinball, 1973

 

That’s all I’ve read of his, I enjoy his style although it can be a bit samey after a while.

 

Also recommend Ryu Murakami. Way grittier, but superb depth of character is his novels. It’s a bit cliched to say it, but Coin Locker Babies is fantastic and easily his best work (at least available in English, unfortunately my Japanese is not good enough to read full novels yet).

Murakami doesn't really do it for me but Kobo Abe is blowing my mind these days, and is far more IDM.

 

Edit: also, Haruki Murakami's female characters are such one dimensional and props o advance the male characters' narrative that even Tom Robbins would think twice about writing them.

Edited November 26, 2017 by RSP

murakami is quite boring after a while. i read everything he wrote up until after dark, then i lost interest. wind up bird is good for some long passages (sequence with the man being skinned alive, the well, some stuff near the end) but is also uneven and ultimately too vague to really mean anything. when i was in high school i read everything available from him. elephant vanishes was the first and one of the stories in there, i think about a couple robbing a mcdonalds, really stuck with me. after the quake is also good. i think he's better at short stories than novels as his style is more suited to that length. a wild sheep chase is probably my favorite of his books, it's like the most purely surreal/noir of any of them. 

i think wong kar wai does what murakami does in film form. chungking express, fallen angels...those films have the same doomed romance and melancholy with a fascination for american pop culture that murakami traffics in. but ultimately i think he's an overrated writer, certainly not the best japanese surrealist (kobo abe) or the best japanese writer (kenzaburo oe). but it's easy to see his appeal.

  On 11/26/2017 at 6:07 AM, zaphod said:

wong kar wai does what murakami does in film form

 

That is a pretty apt comparison.

 

Wild Sheep Chase was another book that stood out for sure... but my memory for books and movies is so shit.  All I remember half the time is the impression a work left on me.  Wild Sheep Chase was definitely up there with Wind Up Bird and Norwegian Wood.  I agree about his books being kind of samey after a while.  It's weird to me how so many great artists get stuck within a very specific framework time after time.  I notice it more in music because that's my field, but it applies to film, art and literature as well.  

A few years ago I read almost everything by him that was translated to English in a pretty short time and then needed to stop for a while. I started to feel they are basically stories about middle-class people who really don't have any big problems in their lives but are still somehow lost or feel emptiness. Not all of the characters of course, but that seemed to be a running theme.. Anyway, I needed to read something else for a while before going back  to reading Murakami. Sort of overdosed myself.

 

I also like the more surreal works better like A Wild Sheep Chase, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, Hard Boiled Wonderland, etc.

  On 11/26/2017 at 6:07 AM, zaphod said:

murakami is quite boring after a while. i read everything he wrote up until after dark, then i lost interest. wind up bird is good for some long passages (sequence with the man being skinned alive, the well, some stuff near the end) but is also uneven and ultimately too vague to really mean anything. when i was in high school i read everything available from him. elephant vanishes was the first and one of the stories in there, i think about a couple robbing a mcdonalds, really stuck with me. after the quake is also good. i think he's better at short stories than novels as his style is more suited to that length. a wild sheep chase is probably my favorite of his books, it's like the most purely surreal/noir of any of them. 

i think wong kar wai does what murakami does in film form. chungking express, fallen angels...those films have the same doomed romance and melancholy with a fascination for american pop culture that murakami traffics in. but ultimately i think he's an overrated writer, certainly not the best japanese surrealist (kobo abe) or the best japanese writer (kenzaburo oe). but it's easy to see his appeal.

 

I wouldn't say he's overrated, but perhaps there is a lack of recognition of other Japanese authors. Also I don't believe Murakami ever did anything like Ashes of Time (Wong Kar Wai's best film - if you understand any asian languages try and get the original cut - still available in Asian markets), but i get the comparison. But Abe also wears his western influences pretty heavily in his works.

 

 

 

  On 11/26/2017 at 10:20 AM, mokz said:

A few years ago I read almost everything by him that was translated to English in a pretty short time and then needed to stop for a while. I started to feel they are basically stories about middle-class people who really don't have any big problems in their lives but are still somehow lost or feel emptiness. Not all of the characters of course, but that seemed to be a running theme.. Anyway, I needed to read something else for a while before going back  to reading Murakami. Sort of overdosed myself.

 

I also like the more surreal works better like A Wild Sheep Chase, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, Hard Boiled Wonderland, etc.

 

That's an essential quality of average Japanese life though.

i like takashi murakami better

  On 11/26/2017 at 11:01 AM, chenGOD said:

 

  On 11/26/2017 at 10:20 AM, mokz said:

A few years ago I read almost everything by him that was translated to English in a pretty short time and then needed to stop for a while. I started to feel they are basically stories about middle-class people who really don't have any big problems in their lives but are still somehow lost or feel emptiness. Not all of the characters of course, but that seemed to be a running theme.. Anyway, I needed to read something else for a while before going back  to reading Murakami. Sort of overdosed myself.

 

I also like the more surreal works better like A Wild Sheep Chase, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, Hard Boiled Wonderland, etc.

 

That's an essential quality of average Japanese life though.

 

 

I guess that's generally in the first world and that probably makes it very first world literature. Would be interesting to hear people not born or not living in the first world comment on his works. I know some Chinese who have read lots Murakami but they are invariably very urban and middle-class. Well, the other one is an architect and other one is an MD.

I probably need to try Kafka on the Shore again, I really didn't like it the first time 'round. But Wind-Up Bird is one of my all-time favorites.

Murakami's shtick kind of gets old after a few books. For other transgressive Japanese authors I would also recommend Ryu Murakami

 

as well as:

Confessions by Kanae Minato

anything by Yukio Mishima

anything by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

Lala Pipo by Hideo Okuda

and the anthology called Monkey Brain Sushi

i am a cat by soseki natsume is good

Kobo Abe is that dude, like man said earlier.

  On 11/26/2017 at 2:04 AM, chenGOD said:

Also recommend Ryu Murakami. Way grittier, but superb depth of character is his novels. It’s a bit cliched to say it, but Coin Locker Babies is fantastic and easily his best work (at least available in English, unfortunately my Japanese is not good enough to read full novels yet).

  On 11/26/2017 at 8:22 PM, Auditor said:

For other transgressive Japanese authors I would also recommend Ryu Murakami

 

as well as:

Confessions by Kanae Minato

anything by Yukio Mishima

anything by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

Lala Pipo by Hideo Okuda

and the anthology called Monkey Brain Sushi

  On 11/26/2017 at 2:31 AM, RSP said:

Murakami doesn't really do it for me but Kobo Abe is blowing my mind these days, and is far more IDM.

I was in the bookstore last weekend trying to remember these names but couldn't so I ended up getting Elephant Vanishes. Didn't even realize it was just short stories but a lot of them are good.

  On 11/26/2017 at 6:07 AM, zaphod said:

murakami is quite boring after a while ... elephant vanishes was the first and one of the stories in there, i think about a couple robbing a mcdonalds, really stuck with me. after the quake is also good. i think he's better at short stories than novels as his style is more suited to that length.

I liked that one too. But I'm getting to that point w/ his stuff. Not weird enough and not enough pathos. It's starting to feel like diet Lynch to me.

  On 11/26/2017 at 8:22 PM, Auditor said:

Murakami's shtick kind of gets old after a few books. For other transgressive Japanese authors I would also recommend Ryu Murakami

 

as well as:

anything by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

 

Dazai was my favourite I-Novel writer, the short story collection Self Portraits: Tales from the Life of Japan's Great Decadent Romantic being my favourite book of his. Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows was my favourite non-fiction Japanese 20thC lit.

I only read books with dinosaurs or oprah stickers on their covers

 

  On 11/26/2017 at 9:10 PM, doublename said:

Kobo Abe is that dude, like man said earlier.

x2