. Spinning .

But it doesn’t make sense…

The dog’s eyes were as glazed and lifeless as glass beads congealed from swamp water. (p. 122)

Now I like Murakami for his simple writing style and great story, but I love metaphor and simile and when I come across a good one, I melt like chocolate on a sunny dashboard. I get the picture Murakami is drawing here, swamp water would be murky yet translucent.  But lifeless?  Swamps are notorious for being chockfull of life.  Why there are more living things in one drop of swampwater than there is likely to be in a square inch of fresh air.

I’m perhaps a bit overwrought lately and thus not as forgiving and generally all-around nice as I normally can (and hope I can remember to) be.

Ah, my world is riddled with mystery lately.  Here’s some from Murakami:

Okawa glanced at the photo and made a gloomy face.  Frown lines appeared between his eyebrows and he blinked in consternation several times.  "I’m grateful for the sardine [Okawa is a cat] don’t get me wrong.  But I can’t talk about that. I’ll be in hot water if I do."  (p. 121)

The dual story lines parallel each other as to mood it seems.  Just as Kafka is hiding away since he woke from unconsciousness with blood stains on his shirt, here Nakata in his search for the missing cat Goma is running into what looks like something deeper than just a runaway cat.

Murakami does a great job of storytelling.  Either story could likely stand on its own but in alternating chapters between them, with the different style of each, one enhances the other as we catch certain points of relativity.  The unconsciousness, the sense of aloneness each character feels, their backgrounds, their reaching out in communication to something other than another human being (Kafka’s mental Crow, Nakata’s speaking with cats) are similar and we are eagerly expecting perhaps a meeting of these two. 

If this text were hyperlinked, all these connections would perhaps be shown up for what they are.  Therefore, the question is raised of whether hypertext in fact does make life easier for the reader–showing rather than allowing the reader to make this connections himself.

There has really been no language style that Murakami uses that has had me race to the computer in admiration; his style is pretty straightforward writing without metaphor, simile or particular beauty of words.

I think where he excells perhaps is with story first, and then with drawing his characters:

I try putting into words my impressions of the novel, but I need Crow’s help–need him to show up from wherever he is, spread his wings wide, and search out the right words for me. (p. 106)

This is the boy Kafka talking with a young man who works at the library who has befriended him.  Murakami is now more clearly showing us that the boy called Crow is a part of Kafka, perhaps an alter ego that allows him to overcome his shyness in speaking with other people.  Crow is the one in the opening scene who Kafka was telling of his plans to run away.  Crow is the one who told him that he’d have to be the toughest teenager on the planet to carry them through.  With the implied isolation of Kafka’s childhood, it seems reasonable that he would form this friend, this helper to allow him to cope with the abandonment by his mother and sister, the disassociation of his father, and the reticence in forming relationships with others his age.

Each minor character is given a description of sorts that allows the reader to picture them and get a feel of how they are reacting to Kafka.

Perhaps this blunt not prosaic language is a way of helping the reader get into the story just by its very common reality.  And from there, Murakami brings us talking cats.

As I’ve said, every other chapter alternates between the two stories, that of Kafka and of Nakata.  Nakata’s story is told by a series of difference techniques and timelines that defy linear sequencing in that while they start out as an investigative report on the incident of the children collapsing (including Nakata) on the hill during the war, it then appears to come up to Nakata’s present, then back to the report, and the latest chapter (12) midway between.  This is also told in the form of the teacher’s letter to a psychologist who investigated the incident back in 1946. 

Murakami is also one to answer the questions he raises by a form of telling using this technique.  I’m not sure whether some of these answers are to the purpose of dispelling or relieving the tension of the mysteries presented, or whether it is indeed to bring us to the realization of the approaching tie-in with the two main characters.  In this chapter, the teacher’s explanation of events includes her assessment of Nakata and his rather wealthy background and repressed sense of violence.  What I don’t comprehend–though I need not, but rather accept what’s being given to me–is the teacher’s own violence towards Nakata on the day, just prior to the collapse of the children.

Interesting characters, presented in an interesting way.

About a quarter of the way into the book, some thoughts on Murakami and his novel:

No pretty prose, stark imagery of detailed description rather than any use of simile or metaphor (although I reserve that for the cats that crop up), a bit wordy and plainly written.  It is interesting, well planned and easily read, but nothing so far has caught my attention as a wow factor.

The chapters alternate between the two stories of the boy Kafka who has run away from home and of the investigative report and subsequent tale of one boy who was indeed affected by the unconscious state that affected the sixteen children on that mushroom hunt in Japan during the war.  Nakata, now grown, is on state subsidy and is considered dumb, his job is finding lost cats because he can understand what cats say. 

There is a theme of the cats and the unconsciousness and loss of memory that has begun to tie in the stories; the boy Kafka has found himself waking in a strange place with blood on his shirt and not knowing what happened.  He seeks the help of a girl he met on the bus trip, and one chapter ends with his petting a cat.  We also find that "the boy called Crow" is a pretend friend, or a voice in his head. Both the boy and the man are alone in the world, and I do see them coming together eventually since Murakami seems to lead us onward towards that end.  One thing that struck me about Kafka is that even as he strikes out on his own, he is a creature of habit, meticulous in his personal care, seeking the routine of the gym or the library and the same diner for dinner in his freedom.  I’m not particularly sympathetic to him since he stole quite a sum of money from his wealthy father to make this break and he is rather free-spending as one would think a son of a money would be.

The intrigue of what happened to Nakata is the main interest in that story line, and of the other, the whereabouts and reasons for Kafka’s mother leaving and taking his sister but not him when he was a toddler.  Kafka is clearly seeking an answer to this question and not merely escaping from his father, so I am expecting that more will come of this that more fully develops his character.

The surrealism of Nakata’s conversations with cats is a welcome delight, though I’m wondering if there’s not something I’m missing in a metaphor here.

With some more active conflicts arising in Kafka’s tale, I should be back shortly with more insight. 

Easy reading so far; good thing, as the pages number 401. 

We open with a first person narrator, a 15 year-old boy who runs away from home.  His mother long dead, his older sister–where?, but it is his father whom he doesn’t get along with well.  He’s on a bus with money and supplies to start a new life someplace else.  A friend named Crow has advised him to be tough.  Is Crow real?

Chapter 2 switches to an earlier time, a teacher during the war.  Out on a field trip with sixteen children who see a silver something–a B-29?–and reach the peak of a rounded hill, go off into the woods for mushrooms and fall unconscious to the ground.  The teacher is alone.

Interesting.  How will the stories tie together? 

Well for one thing, in putting McCarthy back and in interfiling the recently purchased books one in the "M’s" wouldn’t fit.  That’s part of the reason that this is my next selection.

The main reason though is that I’ve been curious about Murakami since I first heard of him some time ago, and with one on the shelf and one on the To Buy List, I figured it’s a good choice. 

Also added Saramago and Kundera to my list of wanna reads from suggestions in the comments.  After doing a little research to see what they’d written and what were the themes, I selected one of each author and will hopefully have them on the shelves soon.

Need to get back into some of the learning books; the philosophy, history, foundational texts that I have here.  After Barthes, nothing should be too difficult.