Blog Post 1 - Anna-Maria Marinescu

    In all honesty, it had been years before this class that I had read my first and only Murakami book. Even worse was when we all introduced ourselves no one had read the same one I did (Men without Women). Together, these thoughts left me questioning if I really did like Murakami. If I in actuality, read a novel of his that was not "classic Murakami" or that years in between reading warped my perception/understanding of his works. Luckily, I can say that after reading A Wild Sheep Chase neither was the case at all. 

    The novel and its plot was enjoyable enough for me, including the daily struggles of Boku developing into a sort of hero's journey to find the truth of the star sheep. However, what reminded me of my love for Murakami many years ago were the details in a Wild Sheep Chase that would bring back memories of Men Without Women. When we discussed the prevalence of the ocean and its animals in Murakami, my mind wandered to Drive my Car, where Kafuku's wife brings up her past or future life as a lamprey, being one with the flow of water. Or when we were introduced to J's bar, I could not help but picture it similarly to Kino's bar where men who lost women, like Boku, would go to drink and talk. Even the odd circumstances of Boku's girlfriend and her ears led me back to thinking about Men Without Women, where the short story "Samsa in Love" can be argued to be just as odd. What made it all the more better though was that these small similarities I casually remembered were purposeful and speak to Murakami's writing as a whole. Connecting the themes of magic, his influences, and mystery shrouding different details, allowed me to remember the book I read so long ago and enjoy it even more knowing that it is connected in specific ways/themes to A Wild Sheep Chase regardless of the books being more than 30 years apart in publishing.

    In a more general sense as well it was nice to read A Wild Sheep Chase because it was solely one story, saturated in various Murakamisms successfully while still keeping to its own theme. But, when looking at Men Without Women, an idea or two is integrated into each story allowing for a somewhat unified, but also incomplete picture to what elements Murakami writing usually has. Thanking about it all makes me very excited to start Norwegian Wood and compare it even further with the previous two read novels.

-Anna

first impressions + intertextuality

 Prior to this class, I had never read any Murakami before, and I really enjoyed A Wild Sheep Chase. Murakami filters these absurd, sometimes almost supernatural experiences through a detached narrator, and I think this way of framing the narrative makes everything stand out just a bit more. By making Boku’s narration feel emotionally distant, it forces the readers to try and figure out their own feelings on what is occurring, rather than just reading how Boku feels and running with it. Some parts of the book, like when the Sheep Man appears, would have made a different kind of protagonist try to rationalize what was happening, but Boku just went with it, adding to the uncanny feeling of the story.
I was also interested in the idea of intertextuality in both Murakami and Chandler, and how some of the references in the books hinged on other cultural contexts, thus creating a web of prior knowledge needed to truly grasp what was being said. The thing that stood out to me the most, however, is how the characters themselves interacted with these references. On page 356 of The Long Goodbye, Amos mentions the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to Marlowe, and the two have a short conversation referencing it before dropping the subject. Personally, I really enjoy this poem, so hearing how they didn’t understand it was sort of funny, especially given how the aimlessness of the actual poem, to me, reflected the general aimlessness of The Long Goodbye itself—I wasn’t a huge fan of the book and found the plot very meandering. A lot happened, but in the end the inciting incident of Lennox’s death turns out to be fake, and it just left me wondering what the point of any of it was. Either way, this scene in The Long Goodbye left me thinking about how the opinions characters within a book can have about another book or piece of media then puts the two works into a comparison of sorts, leading to associations that may not previously have appeared before. 

- Laura Hurley 

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     A Wild Sheep Chase is quintessential Murakami. Having encountered his writing- and the voice of his nameless protagonists, Boku- in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, returning to Murakami's literary world felt like visiting an old pal. That familiarity is what initially drew me into Sheep Chase, and kept me helplessly engaged as each knot came undone in this tangled rope of a novel. Without even realizing it, I had become oddly attached to Boku and his girlfriend as they trekked the Japanese archipelago. Each mention of The Rat had me feeling as if I, too, had known this elusive character for years. So much so that upon the climax of the novel, when Boku and The Rat gave each other a final farewell, I found myself strangely emotional. The same feelings came about upon Boku's girlfriend's disappearance.

    Murakami has a way of writing Boku where certain things mentioned seem superfluous. It seems almost as if we, the readers, are watching a man ramble on a tangent, thoughtlessly. Yet, in that same vein, it also connects us to Boku in a way I have yet to be by any other literary protagonist. Despite being set in a world in which the bizarre is abound, the internal monologue of Boku provides a sense of groundedness. And in A Wild Sheep Chase, the groundedness of Boku coupled with the recurring motif of time serves to suck the reader into the novel's world effortlessly. The passage of time is palpable and the reader, too, can feel Boku's world progressing around him like set pieces being hurried on and off the stage.

I really enjoyed it!!!!!!!!! :)

-Evan Laufman

Blog Post 1 Brittany Olson

 Hey y’all!

I was never really into “detective” novels in the past. However, I think reading both “The Long Goodbye” and “The Wild Sheep Chase” may have changed that for me. I loved the characterizations of both Boku and Marlow, as they are by no means perfect people, but have their own principles when it matters. “The Wild Sheep Chase” was also the first first-person novel that I have enjoyed in years. I normally avoid anything besides third-person fiction like the plague. I think it has something to do with Boku’s personality; he treats most things with indifference, which should be sad but is better than the alternative of a narrator obnoxious at every turn. I had a lot of fun searching for connections between Chandler and Murakami as well as motifs that pop up in a lot of Murakami’s work. It felt like I was playing my own game of detective.

I am more familiar with Murakami’s short stories than any of his long form content. I enjoy the humor and absurdity that seems to manifest in most of them. I think my favorite out of the ones we have read in class is definitely “Sydney Green Street”. The familiar characters in a new setting was definitely a welcomed surprise. Quick shout out to Prof’s past students for their translations by the way. I have translated a short story by Murakami for the Japanese Fiction class and it is definitely not an easy feat.

- Brittany Olson 

Blog Post #1 - Thoughts on Political Connections in Murakami

 Hello all, I wanted to expand on some thoughts I had regarding parts of Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase that I read as political allusions, and discuss interpretations in the context of Japan's history. These sections were of note to me particularly as I researched Mishima and American occupation, so I felt that they stood out as potential political commentary. 

For some context in time, A Wild Sheep Chase was written in 1982, the same year that Yasuhiro Nakasone assumed presidency of Japan under the Liberal Democratic Party, a conservative party that supports neoliberal economics and close relations with the U.S. Murakami seems to comment on the U.S. influences on Japanese politics, which arose distinctly after American occupation and continued onward to affect governmental policy, when he puts contrasting ideas directly next to one another. This can be seen when the chauffeur drives Boku to meet the secretary and Boku notes that "it seems to have been a Meiji-era Western-style manor... then some joker of an architect came along to attach another wing of the same style and color scheme onto the right side of the original structure. The intention wasn't bad, but the effect was unpalatable." Immediately, this quote drew up ideas of right vs. left-wing ideologies to me. The house, as a representation of Japanese politics, was "fine" until another "wing" or party was attached to it that had the same bearing and composition as the rest. In this reading, Murakami suggests that the division between right and left wing politics is unnecessary, as the two parties are the "same", just on opposing sides. Furthermore as an observer, or in the political metaphor a member of society, the architecture or opposition between the two parties is difficult to look upon. 

Furthermore, the secretary works for the Boss, a prominent right-wing figure once possessed by the Sheep and another inclusion of political elements in the story. Later on, the secretary comments that the sheep "have no historical connection with the daily life of the Japanese", were briefly imported and raised, and then forgotten about. He goes on to say that the sheep are the "very image of modern Japan". Interestingly, the sheep are brought over from America, another possible comment on the effects of American occupation in "raising the sheep" to Westernize and then leaving Japan behind to reconcile the consequences of overturning the government. Boku's girlfriend, after examining the chronology of the history of Japan, comments that the "Japanese seem to live from war to war". Again, she makes this comment only after two ideas are put next to each other, the history of Junitaki-cho and the history of Japan.

The last quote that I wanted to draw attention to was a description of the sheep house, during which "the evening sun cast red over the sheep on the right side, plunging the sheep on the left side into a murky blue shadow". Similarly, this recalls up imagery of right vs. left-wing parties, but of a distinctly American styling, with the red commonly associated with Republicans and the left with Democrats. Notably, the two sides are made of the same composition, sheep. However, the sun, which could be alluding to Japan's Rising Sun Flag that represents Japanese imperialism, is what differentiates the two halves. Synthesizing these sections together, American influence on Japan comes off as an excessive area of conflict that has led to negative consequences of perpetual war and increased separation. Overall, I had a good impression of A Wild Sheep Chase, I felt that the addition of surreal plot elements against a realistic detective background was an interesting mix that made the story fun to read, and I wanted to bring these quotes up to provide additional analyses that could enhance one's reading of a story that otherwise does not talk about politics directly.

- Alice Liao

Blog Post 1 - Max Dahlstrom

Hello!

I’d like to preface my blog post by saying that this is the first (and only) English class I’ve taken in my four years at BU, and it’s been a nice change of pace from constantly reading political theory as a philosophy and political science major. I’ve appreciated the close readings we’ve done in class of The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase and our practice of calling attention to the eerie similarities between the two has reshaped the way I think about intertextuality. I’ve always bought into the argument that debates over the originality of pieces of art and literature are a bit pointless because it seems obvious that every work is influenced by existing conventions, patterns, and stories in some way. Analyzing the influence that Chandler had on Murakami, not just in story structure and tone but also regarding similarities in minute details has really cemented this belief in me. I was also quite interested in the Daniel Chandler article on Intertextuality because it explored these ideas more explicitly. It was fascinating to find out that notions of ‘authorship’ and ‘plagiarism’ as we understand them today did not exist before the 1500s. I think that these concepts ought to be questioned given the complexity (and perhaps the arbitrariness) of what constitutes originality, and I wonder if artistic and linguistic expression may become more interesting and innovative if we loosened the legal definitions of these concepts, or even did away with them entirely.

Regarding the two main texts that we’ve read, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both of them. I have to say that I think I enjoyed reading The Long Goodbye a bit more because of Chandler’s vivid and scathing descriptions of characters and places. Marlowe’s observations of the world around him and his cynicism towards American institutions provided a much more interesting perspective to me than Boku’s narration, which felt painfully dull in comparison at times. Nevertheless, Boku’s perspective as an ‘ordinary guy’ certainly had its charm in its own right. The most interesting part about The Wild Sheep Chase for me was not Boku, however, but rather the setting and description of places. As I was reading along, particularly during the part where they travel to Hokkaido, I constantly found myself looking up the regions that they traveled through, whether it be Sapporo or the fictional town of Junitaki further north.  In addition to learning more about the geography of Japan, my enjoyment of The Wild Sheep Chase largely came from the way Murakami framed the Japanese attitudes and understandings of their own history post-WWII. I thought that the little nod to Mishima’s coup attempt was quite genius and funny, and I thought the history of ‘the Boss’ and even the section about the Ainu youth were some of the most intriguing parts of the story.

- Max Dahlstrom

Blog Post #1: Thoughts so far

Hey! 

For this first blog post, I thought I would just look at what we've done so far and my thoughts around those. First off, reading, and wow am I rusty. This course is my first course english course in years and honestly I forgot how slow at reading I have become over time. But on the other-end it was good to hear what Ted Goosen had to say about his first translation, at least with all the time the reading takes, my comprehension has been pretty solid down to the details (the moth on Marlowe's desk wasn't getting past me). Overall I am glad we will be shifting down to one book at a time...but that may just be me.

In the past I have read a decent amount of Murakami's novels, and while I enjoyed A Wild Sheep Chase, I have preferred his other works more. To me, while it still had his usual cast of strange characters, the blurring of lines of what we know to be normal and strange, and even a cat; I never felt as strong of a connection to Boku or the other characters. I find that through all of his books the weird often never gets explained, but with all the talk of sheep it never felt like there was as much of a point. Also the romantic in me wanted him and the woman to work out... so honestly that was a bit disappointing. While overall enjoyable it just didn't leave as much of a lasting impression where Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and Kafka did. 

I did enjoy reading it with The Long Goodbye. It was cool to see connection between two book that I probably would have never found. Next I need to sit down and watch the movie, because I know it is a bit different from the book, but it is actually one of my dad's and sister's favorite movies, so they were excited for me reading it. 

Looking forward to continuing reading and lucky for me Norwegian Wood will be a reread so hopefully I'll pick up on some new details!

- Emmett Glazer