Waiting for Murakami’s 1Q84 is torture

commentary If there is one thing I love about Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami‘s books, it is the ease in which they effortless capture the sense of disassociation that pervades modern society.

It is exactly that sense, ironically, which I feel as I learn from The Guardian newspaper in the UK and other sources such as neojaponisme, that many, many readers in the Land of the Rising Sun are currently fervently turning the pages (from right to left) in Murakami’s latest novel, 1Q84.

The cause of that disassociation, of course, is that I can’t read the damn book. It hasn’t been translated yet into English.

In other words, there are people, somewhere, who are feeling passionate about what is no doubt a masterpiece from one of my favourite authors. But like so many of the characters in Murakami’s books, I am emotionally divorced from the object of my affection and must only gradually find my way back to them, wrestling gently with many fantastic and surreal occurrences in my everyday life to do so.

I remember perfectly the first time I read a Murakami novel.

It was about five years ago, I had graduated from university and was revelling in the sense of being financial enough, with a new-found job, that I could finally buy the books I wanted to buy, without being constrained by a tight student budget.

It was in such an indulgent mood that I happened upon Murakami’s 1985 book, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, in Galaxy Bookshop in Sydney’s central business district.

It was the unusual cover — with its striking cover photograph of birds in flight by Pavel Banka (no doubt extensively Photoshopped) that first drew me in. As RobAroundBooks.com notes, the cover, and the associated set of covers from publisher Vintage UK for the other Murakami books, feels quite fresh:

“Most of that freshness undoubtedly comes from the minimalist, uncluttered simplicity of the covers. They possess a zen-like quality that seems to solicit the same feeling of calmness and serenity that one gets from sitting in front of a Japanese rock garden; no doubt a purposeful implementation to mirror the cultural identity of both the content of the novels and their author.”

But it was, of course, the description of the book on the back cover which sealed the deal and led me to buying it. It states:

“Science fiction, detective story and postmodern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami’s international following. Tracking one man’s descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy. The result is a wildly inventive fantasy and a meditation on the many uses of the mind.”

And thus I fell in love with Murakami’s light, everyday, fantasy.

Of course, the pinnacle of his work is his 1995 book The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I’ve read the book cover to cover several times and felt stunned afterwards each time.

You might think that Murakami is an unusual author to be featured on Keeping the Door. Certainly his works would not fit into the stereotypical science fiction (in 2009, read: space opera) or fantasy (swords and magic) visions. He doesn’t even write urban (read: vampire) fantasy.

However there is no doubt that Murakami is a fantasy author.

Most of his works gradually introduce elements of the fantastic into the everyday, even mundane, world of his protagonists. Usually his main character is a late 20′s male, disassociated with the society around him and from his emotions and love interest.

It is the fantastic elements in Murakami’s writing — be it cats who talk, magically seductive ears, or a deep well which helps one sitting in it to blur the boundaries between worlds — that allow his protagonists to bridge the division within themselves, and the reader to, I believe, sometimes perceive similar divisions in their own lives.

It’s this symbiosis of the real and the fantastic, and the way Murakami uses that division as a metaphor for psychological change, which makes his works so stunning and poetic.

I’m a bit scared to read neojaponisme‘s perhaps overly comprehensive review of Murakami’s newest work, 1Q84. I want to be fresh for my next Murakami voyage.

But The Guardian says 1Q84 is ‘classic Murakami’:

It is described as a “complex and surreal narrative” that “shifts back and forth between tales of two characters, a man and a woman, who are searching for each other”. The novel “explores social and emotional issues such as cult religions, violence, family ties and love.”

Let’s hope the translation goes speedily and well.