(3/1 Blog Early because this reading has been wow)!! - Alanis

 So I know the blog isn’t due until next week but I needed to make this blog now because I just had so much to say about the 2 assigned readings for today (2/22). I really was struck (funny) by the theme of a wife… dying… and a man being left alone and trying to cope with life afterwards. And women leaving/dying is a theme that I saw begin in the Wild Sheep Chase (the pretty ears lady made her departure at the end without her consent. Still disappointed about that), and in “South Bay Strut,” the so-called “detective” tries to defend a woman… and fails miserably… but shows he is just bad at his job, which is comical. And in the kangaroo story, the girlfriend’s feelings are sort of dismissed. But here, in “Drive My Car” and “Tony Takitani,” the men have wives. And they die. One died of cancer, and the other one was struck by a car (in that order).

I  needed to comment on this because the pattern of women is interesting. In both “Drive My Car” and “Tony Takitani,” the man loves the woman dearly and can’t live exactly the same after the death of their wives. In the first story, I think there is something to be said about the child the wife would have had with Kafuku being as old as his new personal driver, and how Kafuku is essentially unphased by this fact except when he first realizes it, and in a way, almost plays a father-like role for her despite the fact she is working for him, and I thought this dynamic was heartfelt: her parents are dead, and it just so happens that the child he would have had was born the same year Misaki was born. However, I will say that the fact he stayed with his wife even though he knew she was cheating on him says something about tolerance of abuse, even if he really loved her. I also want to talk about the appearance of a new woman after Tony’s wife died, but I found it interesting that he denied her the job after he initially gave it to her but let her keep the dresses. Must have taken a lot.

My thoughts have evolved throughout writing this post. But all in all, a lot of thoughts about women came out of me. I don’t know if it’s ultimately good or bad. I know the women are loved and in their time alive are treated nicely, but they still die. Why would Murakami have these women die? One died a painful death (I’d imagine Urine Cancer is painful) and the other one died painfully, but quickly (literally said she didn’t feel anything). Weird. Those are my two cents though. Also.. last thought.. Characters have names How odd. A lot of third person narration.

Blog comments from Yennie

 A Wild Sheep Chase was my first Murakami novel. I’m not normally one to choose to read books from this genre, so really getting into the story was a bit difficult. I found the beginning of the book to be quite slow, and it was easy to put it down and forget about it for a few days. I didn’t feel drawn to continue reading. The slow beginning began to ramp up a bit, but I still had some trouble forcing myself to be engaged with the story.
Perhaps if I had found the introduction to the story more interesting, it would have been easier for me to immerse myself in the novel. I also felt that while the beginning was slow, the ending was packed into the last bit of the book and felt quite overwhelming. However, I did really enjoy the ending of the book, and it caused me to pause every few pages to digest and try to understand what Murakami was trying to impart.
I found this novel to be jam packed with different themes and hard-to-talk-about topics. I felt as though Murakami had so much he wanted to impart to his readers in this novel that he blurted them all out without allowing the reader to fully digest and process what was going on before moving onto the next theme.
Amidst the vast assortment of other themes, I think that what Murakami has to say about independence was eerily peaceful and insightful. The Rat kills himself in an attempt to free himself from the control of the Sheep. The Rat would rather be no longer and choose loneliness than allow himself to be part of a system where he has no freedom. I felt as though the Rat had no sense of individuality, and in this action he was overcompensating.

Blog Post 1 - Getting to know Murakami's inspirations

I had read Murakami’s “A Wild Sheep Chase” in high school and much like all readings required at that time, the assignments were mostly “what does the main character think about this” or “why do you think the main character reacted like that”, very surface level questions like that. During LJ460, we were asked to read both Murakami and Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” with the understanding that Murakami was heeeaaaaavily influenced by Chandler’s writing and style. When I was reading “A Wild Sheep Chase” in tandem “The Long Goodbye”,  while obviously not the mirror image of the same story, but there were a vast amount of similarities between the two: the very specific descriptions of both settings and characters, the type of dialogue that the main characters, Philip Marlowe and “Boku”, engage in during narration or passing conversations, and even the fact that both stories are detective mysteries with a twist ending. I probably should have expected a twist having read Murakami’s novel before hand, but Chandler’s twist was very much a surprise I had to reread the chapter to make sure I was reading correctly! These similarities aren’t just between Chandler and Murakami – throughout the other short stories we’ve read in class by other authors, we can see how Murakami’s sources have a profound influence on his writings, such that when you read the works side by side, you would swear they were written by the same person under two different names.

This class so far has allowed me to have a greater appreciation for Murakami’s novels and his source’s works as well. I am looking forward to continue reading and discovering even more similarities between the texts and reignite an old passion for reading.

Alexander Wen

Blog Post 1 - Initial Impressions

Back when I’d read Kafka on the Shore and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, I’d found myself intrigued yet frustrated by an aspect of the work I couldn’t quite pin down. I now think it was a combination of Murakami’s minimalistic and anticlimactic style. The more we’ve learned about Murakami’s personality, writing techniques, and influences, the better I can retroactively apply that understanding to those texts which seemed anomalous on their own. For example, at times I found myself really baffled by story direction choices, especially in the relatively grounded Kafka on the Shore. Though absurdity itself isn’t too unusual to employ in writing, when the method of integrating those absurdities was seemingly randomly and without explanation it was difficult to come to terms with. But after reading A Wild Sheep Chase and the various assigned short stories, I've been able to get a sense of how Murakami operates. It’s not that A Wild Sheep Chase doesn’t have its share of unanswered questions, but I don’t find myself as troubled over them as I might have been. Loose-thread elements now feel characteristic of Murakami’s work to me, and I can accept them as part of his method of story-telling.

-Kate

Comments on Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words - Audree

When asked about his detached writing style, Murakami himself said that it "comes from my having a strong desire to write, but having nothing to say." This struck me because it is very much opposed to the way I have conceived of creative writing, specifically through that one popular Fitzgerald quote "don't write because you want to say something, write because you have something to say." Of course, I do believe that Murakami has something to say in his works, and his works do indeed convey, if anything, an insight into Boku's view of the world. But just in considering how Murakami views his own process, about stripping back everything he didn't want to write about and realizing there was nothing left, conveys the idea that Murakami thinks of his process, at least early on, almost as arbitrary. Rubin, however, adds an extra layer to this by speaking to Murakami's discipline, to the fact that he was determined to write something, even if he didn't feel like he had anything to say. The result of this is Boku, a laid back character who doesn't seem to have very set in stone convictions or views on the world, a lost man who half the time doesn't even feel real to himself, and yet his perspective and commentary on relationships, media, and historical events/figures are very much present. Finally, I found it interesting how Rubin makes the distinction between the Murakami who writes, the creative Murakami, and the other Murakami who just lives his life, who is laid back. In the few stories we've read by Murakami, there is always this motif of Boku feeling like there is another him, it is present even in the spaghetti story, and perhaps this speaks to how Murakami himself feels— how there is the normal him, and the writer him. 

Murakami and the mundane

Diving back into a Murakami novel many years after reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was an entirely exciting experience reintroducing myself to his writing style and the ridiculousness of his storylines. When I read my first Murakami novel I was taken aback by the magic realism because that was my introduction to the style– I thought maybe I just wasn't smart or cultured enough to "get" it. However, my experience reading The Wild Sheep Chase was much more enjoyable because I began to see the humor in Murakami's writing– that sometimes things don't make sense on purpose. While reading that first novel, I also wasn't paying attention at all to the references, but discussing them in class challenged me to find more easter eggs. Interacting with the text in this way made me feel even more connected to the story and Murakami's thought process. 

In the reading for today, I was fascinated by the point Rubin was making about the mundanity and almost boring qualities in the novels and their protagonists. I do agree that Boku leads a rather boring life and almost always stumbles into interesting situations, never seeking them out. In a way, it almost feels as though he is trying to lead a boring, quiet, life but the "other world" that Murakami uses so often, keeps pulling him back. Rubin argues that Boku is boring so that he can collect or highlight the interesting stories or quirks of the people around him, but never allows those around him to be perceived as full individuals. We see this in the way he describes people, based usually on their clothing and an unusual characteristic, or often with women, their body parts. I quite like the "boringness" of Boku, I find it humourous how someone so devoid of character reacts to these ridiculous situations that he finds himself in. Murakami argues his character is "boring" because "mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me." While yes, the settings and activities that the characters in Murakami find themselves in are usually rather ordinary, Murakami is able to dive deep into the psyche to explore interesting themes within those boring activities– like cooking spaghetti– and somehow makes it so captivating to read. 

Having understood the reference to hard-boiled fiction, I enjoyed being taken along The Wild Sheep Chase and could almost picture the novel as one of the film noirs we watched in class. 

-Sarah 

Reading and Thoughts as of Now - Alanis

 Hi all,

Thanks to me working full-time and being stressed out, this post is late. Great. Just great.

But anyway, going back to commenting on everything we have done in class so far. I wanted to begin with my impressions of the readings. For today we had to read 2 stories about spaghetti, and first off, they made me a little hungry thinking about it. These stories both talk about spaghetti, but in different ways. I find it interesting how Murakami is not a big fan of lists even when it is convenient to use them. In The Year of Spaghetti, when talking about where he got his ingredients, he uses the paragraph form to talk about where he got his spices, the cookbook, tomatoes, and his other ingredients, whereas the other story of spaghetti outright lists all of the ingredients that will be used to make spaghetti - a very big difference between the two works.  Also, I like seeing how Murakami takes the style of other authors and makes it something of his own. Thinking about that in the context of intertextuality, I still think originality is possible, and as someone mentioned in our discussion, one can have “inspiration” from other sources and end up making a product of their own. I don’t see any harm in inspiration from others.

I also wanted to take a moment to state my opinions on Chandler and comment a little bit on Murakami’s relationship with Chandler’s work as a way to influence his own. My takeaway from Chandler (jokingly) is that sometimes faking your death and starting a new life could be as cool as it sounds in the movies, but doing that in real life is near impossible. Cool thought, though, and that definitely was not an ending I was expecting. As I said in class, I finished the book and said “What did I just read?” out loud. I can see why Murakami and many other authors took inspiration from Chandler. I mean, Philip Marlowe is full of himself, but not really, but it’s shown to us that he’s prone to failure and distractions even if he never really admits to it. It really makes him seem human in some ways and a stranger in others, but still a cool character nonetheless. The narrator in A Wild Sheep Chase seems to mirror the qualities of Philip Marlowe, but I think that Boku is even more nonchalant about many things than Marlowe is. 

All in all, I’m having fun reading everything so far and it’s a lot of information. I hope I retain it.