癲狂院 Vixen Owl Cigar..。o○

Tranquility within chaos...


Beautifully Written & Provocative..
I confess I had not previously heard of Murakami, but when I saw his book, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ", I noted to myself that this version was translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin , and that Murakami had himself translated English writers such as Raymond Carver, into the Japanese.
I also discovered that in Japan this novel came out as a trilogy over a period of time, rather than the single-bound hardback unity I held in my hands.

Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle " is a good combination of the weirdness that turned me off his "A Wild Sheep Chase", and the transcendent beauty that had me gushing over his "Norwegian Wood".
Thankfully, he's taken what didn't work in the former and made it work, and what did work in the latter and amplified it.

My favorite character was May Kashara, a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring, called him "Mr. Wind-Up Bird"....

My favorite scenes were the war scenes (although they are very brutal and violent, my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control, instead of a film) and the water well scenes, which were cleverly executed and described.
There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time, and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal....

Mirroring this idea, that we can't ever know another human being, Murakami's book presents itself as a confusing mixture of styles and time periods and points of view.
While writing in a prose style that's comfortable for a reader to flow through, Murakami does a lot of work not letting the audience (nor Okada for that matter ) see the machinations that are powering the story.
To a passive reader, this can be quite disconcerting.
The book is filled with tools to keep the reader off-balance: characters often tell long-winded stories, and abruptly cut themselves off in the middle for seemingly no reason ; Okada asks countless questions of the people he believes to have the answers but never seems to get any; in fact, his questions are often ignored.

【Haruki Murakami】The Wind-up Bird Chronicle【Jay Rubin】
Drags just a Little at the End..

The novel is based around Toru Okada losing his cat.
From this seemingly innocuous event, he goes on to find his wife has left him without saying goodbye, staying with her psychotic genius brother who Toru hates.
Toru has recently quit his job and so spends his days doing very little and occasionally looking for the cat.
From his searches, he meets a plethora of ever more bizarre characters such as his teenage girl neighbour who doesn't go to school because of a motorbike accident and is obsessed with death.
He meets an old Army colonel who is inextricably linked to him through an old man they both knew.
He learns about their time together in the Manchurian war.
It is part of Murukami's skill that he can switch so effortlessly through time and place in his novels.
Toru goes on to meet a fashion designer and her mute son who are not all that they seem.
Throughout it all he is constantly steered by the sound of the Wind Up bird outside his house a mysterious creature that no one ever sees.

The characters are real, though unique, drawn as those who people a world where it may be possible for one to put pudding in a microwave oven, and every once in a while get macaroni when it comes out.
There are "some kinds of somethings " underlying all things; the world is inscrutible in its deeper, perhaps more mystical levels, but there are also routes of spiritual and physical healing, perhaps themselves inexplicable but effective.

The reader comes, through identifying with the pain and experience of each character, to feel something for them, and therefore for themselves and others.
This is one of the functions of all great literature: it lifts us above ourselves so that we see ourselves and others more clearly, and in this volume Murakami achieves this with stylistic ease and grace.

If you are ready, then you'll encounter 600+ pages (it's long, but not *too* long ) of simply but effectively written narrative (Jay Rubin's translation once again captures the tranquility-within-chaos that is a hallmark of Murakami's prose ).
One that's set in Japan but bears the cultural marks of American influence.
One that jumps back and forth between the recent past and "prewar Manchuria, continental East Asia, and the short war of 1939 in Nomonhan ."
You'll encounter an interesting use of parallel motifs, where items or events that occur in the past or in a dream or on TV reveal themselves again in Okada's waking life.
Here's a helpful hint: follow the bat, the dry well, and, of course, the wind-up bird, which "comes over by my place every day and goes 'Creeeak ' in the neighbor's tree. But nobody's ever seen it."

Many critics have castigated the book for its ending.
Admittedly, the book does sort of stumble and gasp to its last few pages; again, the point is the journey and not the destination.
Furthermore, I hate to sound presumptuous, because my experience with Japanese literature is very limited, but as I understand it, Japanese narratives are very different from Western ones, with the contrast between leisurely storytelling and opening-climax-conclusion narrative structure.
I haven't read that much of Murakami's other work, but it could be that he's just continuing in that tradition here.
In any case, even if one finds the ending unsatisfying, so much of the book is fascinating mystery that one can still enjoy it on its own terms.


This novel is an experience, deftly written and conveyed.
I would recommend it to anyone, and plan to read more by the author.