What He Talks About When He Talks About Running

Although I always enjoy reading Haruki Murakami’s writing, I have to admit that I haven’t been too pleased with two of my recent picks: short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and nonfiction essay collection-turned book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. By the end of the latter I couldn’t help but feel that Murakami’s editor should have rapped him sharply on the head and told him that his work was meandering, poorly organized, and – most regrettably – inconsistent in style and quality.

Have you ever procrastinated until the last minute, finished an essay just before the deadline, but felt that the work was passable or even not too shabby? And then read it a few days later only to be horrified by how poor it was in quality? That kind of “first draft turned final draft” is how I feel about What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami, on the other hand, says “it took quite some time [...] to polish and rework it”. (175)

So, want to know what he talks about when he talks about running? It’s pretty much pseudo-science about health and philosophy-lite about what it means to be a novelist. I hate to deliver such blunt criticism about a man whose Art I really respect, but there is really no other way to describe how – at least just working with this document – Murakami thinks about running and writing.

Once in a while, when I mark a page to return to in Murakami’s books, I can’t remember what passage I felt was compelling. Let me just say that this happened most often with this work of nonfiction. Here’s a brief selection of quotes:

“When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place.” (96)

I view this sentiment as the interpretation of the artist’s creative impulse as one of introspection that is inherently self-destructive, like the classic reading of “The Lady of Shallot”. Were narratives related verbally (i.e. socially, from person to person) the author would interact directly with the audience, tailor the story to their needs, be in some kind of dialog. Instead, writers barricade themselves inside their own mind, plumbing what Murakami describes in an apt metaphor – although he had been talking about talent, not the fundamental stuff of the human condition – as deeply buried veins of water.

“[...] but even so, like an unfortunate destiny, like the dark-hearted queen of the night, thirst kept pursuing me.” (107)

“To exaggerate a bit, it was as if by completing the over-sixty-mile race I’d stepped into a different place.” (117)

Emphasis is Murakami’s. I have to admit that I got so nerd-excited by this passage, because the passing from one plane of reality to another is a recurring supernatural theme in most of Murakami’s novels. Not a dream world or alternate reality, but a sort of empty, symbolist place (often a labyrinth, but in After Dark I think it was only one room) where his protagonists experience an externalization or dramatization of their emotional conflicts: fear, isolation, rejection, longing, sadness. It is, to my mind, one of the most compelling motifs in Murakami’s corpus.

“Has the dark shadow really disappeared? Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear? Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness[...]“. (133)

More nerd goodness. The idea of a malevolent thing, crouched and invisible, breathing in the darkness also recurs all over the place in his writing.

“Once when I was around sixteen and nobody else was home, I stripped naked, stood in front of a large mirror in our house, and checked out my body from top to bottom.” (152)

A bridge between/physical parallel to the introspection of the writer.

My other meditations on Haruki Murakami’s writings:

• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
• Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
• Sputnik Sweetheart
• Dance Dance Dance
• After Dark and Kafka on the Shore

:: Bibliography ::

• Murakami, Haruki, and Philip Gabriel. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. ISBN: 9780307269195.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Impressions & Quotes

Impressions:

I don’t know why I stopped reading this collection after the third story, but I can think of several likely reasons. They all center around the book being a public library book, and it not being convenient for me to keep or get a hold of. Now, at least a year after I read the first three stories, I’ve finished it.

Let me just say that this is my least favorite of Haruki Murakami’s works after Norwegian Wood. Great way to start a review, I know! Despite that fact, I still recommend it. Most of the short stories were mediocre and some, just plain bad. However, the mediocre and bad ones helped me appreciate the polish and mastery of Murakami’s best short stories and novels. In the preface, the “Introduction to the English Edition”, on page iix he says “[...] when I write novels I try very hard to learn from the successes and failures I experience in writing short stories. In that sense, the short story is a kind of experimental laboratory for me as a novelist.”

Let’s begin with the poor stories, which aren’t bad because they’re not engaging or interesting, but rather for formal reasons like structure. They have potential, in other words. The story the collection is named for, for example, is well structured. It has a feeling of resolution, despite there being no narrative event that ties up loose ends. It’s hard to describe exactly why, but it reads the way a short story should. The majority of the stories in this collection don’t. They seem unfinished, almost draft-like, with abrupt endings or uneven pacing. Often I felt that stories were pulled out of a larger novel, resulting in an unsatisfactory reading experience.

There were a few really outstanding stories in this collection: “A Shinagawa Monkey”, “The Seventh Man”, “Hanalei Bay”, “Birthday Girl”. They were all very compelling. Pure Murakami, their power lies in the fact that they nail his personal style and are self-contained. The reader feels as if it would be a shame if he tried to expand one into a novel and thus ruin the perfection of the story as it stands.

There was a period when narratives I’d written as short stories, after I published them, kept expanding in my mind, developing into novels. A short story I’d written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake, and shout “Hey, this is no time to be sleeping! You can’t forget about me, there’s still more to write!”" [Introduction to the English Edition, x]

I don’t have to learn more about the darkness that consumed Yuko in “A Shinagawa Monkey” or what happened when Sachi returned to Tokyo in “Hanalei Bay”. It would be superfluous. These stories don’t need to be layered with any more meaning.

If you were to analyze what I’ve chosen as my favorites you’d notice that there is an element of the supernatural or fantastic in each. And while I often find such things appealing, I think these stories do not succeed because of it (and in some cases, such as the ghost story contained in “Hanalei Bay”, despite it). The supernatural is an element that permeates most of Murakami’s work, so it’s actually hard to avoid.

The other things that typifies my “best of” list is that the protagonist of each story is decidedly unlike the typical, male protagonist of Murkakami’s best novels. The exception is “The Seventh Man”, which reads like Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in miniature. I found the atypical female protagonists of “A Shinagawa Monkey”, “Hanalei Bay”, and “Birthday Girl” perfectly constructed. These women felt real, like Murakami had some special insight into the psyche of a living person that in no way resembled himself. (Unlike the gay protagonist of “Chance Traveler”, who seems highly contrived.) Such psychological realism in contemporary fiction is, in my opinion, rare. I guess there’s an element of egoism in what I’m about to say, but the rapport I felt with Mizuki from “A Shinagawa Monkey” is one of the strongest I’ve felt for a character in fiction. It’s always an unsettling thing when you unexpectedly identify with a fictional character (or in this case, one aspect of them). It is, in my opinion, one of the pleasures of reading, and, on a larger scale, of Art.

Two of these stories were precursors to his novels. In the quote above, Muakami acknowledges as much. Having skipped over the preface, reading it only after the rest of the book, I was kind of pleased to have picked up on it on my own. A highly-modified version of “Man-Eating Cats” become part of Sputnik Sweetheart and “Firefly” became the core of Norwegian Wood. I’d have to say that both stories are outshone by their novel counterparts, especially “Man-Eating Cats”/Sputnik Sweetheart.

Quotes:

Passages I found compelling , humorous, well-constructed, or that did their best to sum up something I feel is true:

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. [Introduction to the English Edition, vii]

[...] even the tiniest of screws had that proud, expectant feeling that only brand-new machinery possesses. [Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, 5]

The whole while we’d let that box of chocolates lie out in the hot August sun. Our carelessness, our self-centeredness, had wrecked those chocolates, made one fine mess of them all. We should have sensed what was happening. One of us – it didn’t matter who – should have said something. [Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, 16]

For a few seconds I stood there in a strange, dim place. Where the things I could see didn’t exist. Where the invisible did. [Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, 17]

There was something cold and hard about her: if you set her afloat on the nighttime sea, she would probably sink any boat that happened to ram her. [Birthday Girl, 20]

The wrinkles on his forehead deepened: they might have been the wrinkles of his brain itself as it concentrated on his thoughts. [Birthday Girl, 28]

“It was a strange experience. I can’t explain it, but I felt as if the ground has silently split open and something was crawling up out of it. And then there was this invisible thing on a rampage in the dark. It was like the cold night had coagulated. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it, and the animals felt it too. [...] [New York Mining Disaster, 38]

“In a nice world there is no nice music,” she said, as if revealing some deep secret. “In a nice world the air doesn’t vibrate.” [New York Mining Disaster, 41]

“It’s like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I’ll finish it.” [New York Mining Disaster, 41]

She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, “I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.” [Airplane, 50]

In the kitchen, the afterimage of some great thing was holding its breath. He often felt the presence of this afterimage when he was with her: the afterimage of a thing that had been lost. Something of which he had no memory. [Airplane, 50]

The one thing I did understand was that this other figure loathed me. Inside it was a hatred like an iceberg floating in a dark sea. The kind of hatred that no one could ever diminish. [The Mirror, 59]

“Our way of thinking and goals are very different,” he said [...] [A Folklore for My Generation, 66/7]

A girl’s virginity just isn’t that big a deal. [A Folklore for My Generation, 68]

“I’m scared,” she said. She covered her face with her hands and began to cry. “I’m so very scared. Life is frightening [...] You don’t understand. I’m not like you. I’m a woman. You don’t get it at all.” [A Folklore for My Generation, 73]

“Next you’re gonna ask me to tell you the whole damned thing.” [Dabchick, 104]

“Newspapers are all the same, no matter where you go,” she finally announced. ‘They never tell you what you really want to know.” [Man-Eating Cats, 110]

Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally–the way that driver beat his old horse until it died on the road. But the thrashing we receive is one of frightful gentleness. Few of us even realize we are being beaten. [A "Poor Aunt" Story, 137]

The girl stared at her brother in  silence, but you could see that she had a plan. Then, all of a sudden, she got to her feet and slapped him hard on the cheek. In the stunned moment that followed, she grabbed the hat and returned to her seat. The little girl did this with such speed and dispatch, it took the interval of one deep breath before the mother and brother could realize what happened. [A "Poor Aunt" Story, 139]

Yes, I would, I would suck your fingers clean. [A "Poor Aunt" Story, 141]

“But as you know, there are two kinds of crimes the police won’t bother with: crank calls and stolen bicycles. [...] [Nausea 1979, 149]

Ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away. [The Ice Man, 201]

She became known as the Japanese mom whose son was killed by a shark nearby. [Hanalei Bay, 258]

All she could do was produce accurate imitations, not music of her own. [Hanalei Bay, 263]

“Nah, I’m like a chicken: three steps, and my mind’s a blank. [...] [Hanalei Bay, 270]

The woman glanced down at her shoes, perhaps contemplating how – if things got really weird – she might have to use the stiletto heels against me. [Where I'm Likely to Find It, 279]

“I’m looking for something.”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I imagine it’s like a door.”
“A door?” the little girl repeated. “What kind of door? There are all shapes and colors of doors.”
[...]
“Hmm,” the little girl said. “Have you been looking for a long time?”
“For a long time. Since before you were born.”
“Is that right?” the little girl said, staring at her palm for a while. “How ’bout I help you find it?” [Where I'm Likely to Find It, 288]

Junpei’s first thought on seeing her was, Here is a woman with excellent posture. [The Kidney-Shaped Stone, 293]

“No,” she said. “I just tend to be attracted to highly practical topics. That’s all.” [The Kidney-Shaped Stone, 297]

What would I do if I read your work and didn’t like it? What could I say? [The Kidney-Shaped Stone, 297]

“If I had succeeded in stealing her name, I might have taken away some of the darkness that was hidden inside her,” the monkey said. “Take her darkness, along with her name, back to the world underground.” [A Shinagawa Monkey, 331]

Your mother doesn’t love you. She’s never loved you, even once, since you were little. I don’t know why, but it’s true. Your older sister’s the same. She doesn’t like you. Your mother sent you away to school in Yokohama because she wanted to get rid of you. Your mother and sister wanted to drive you as far away as possible. Your father isn’t a bad person, but he isn’t what you’d call a forceful personality, and he couldn’t stand up for you. For these reasons, then, ever since you were small you’ve never gotten enough love. I think you’ve had an inkling of this, but you’ve intentionally turned your eyes away from it, shut this painful reality up in a small dark place deep in your heart and closed the lid, trying not to think about it. Trying to suppress any negative feelings. This defensive stance has become a part of who you are. Because of all this, you’ve never been able to deeply, unconditionally love anybody else.” [A Shinagawa Monkey, 332]

Pages I marked but c0uldn’t remember the passage I liked: 70, 219.

:: Bibliography ::

• Murakami, Haruki, Philip Gabriel, and Jay Rubin. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-Four Stories. New York: Knopf, 2006. ISBN: 1400044618.

Easter, Laundromat, Snowstorm

Waiting for the drying cycle to end she began to feel a vague dread, but it wasn’t until she was at the warm, lint-speckled folding table that she figured it out: she didn’t want to go home. And it wasn’t the drive through snow and ice she dreaded, it was going home to Jack.

It’s always a source of wonderment when I read fiction and come across a sentiment so akin to one I’ve felt, keenly, that I have to sit and think about it for a few minutes, or maybe even put the book down.  Was it three Easters ago that I was in a laundromat in snowy Regent Square feeling precisely the same way?

I can’t remember why I decided to reread The Easter Parade, but it’s been in my house for weeks, collecting dust. I zipped through it again and was amazed at how poorly I remembered not only the narrative, but the themes. I totally glossed over the entire religious discourse, which springs out so plainly now.

Now I remember why I had it checked out. I’d read Yates’ collected short stories a short time ago. The thing that stays with me from both books is the way he writes about writing–the anxiety associated with the creative act and the inevitable feeling that the resultant written work is ‘passable’, but never ‘right’. He must have fretted terribly over his own manuscripts, given all the fretting over manuscripts that his characters do.

:: Bibliography ::

• Yates, Richard. The Easter Parade: A Novel. New York: Delacorte Press, 1976. Page 104.

“a long and bitter weeping”

I’ve fallen in love with Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. It is my new favorite novel. Here are some passages that, admittedly, when taken out of context, might not retain their humor or poetry. I’ve ordered them in a manner that is logical to me. The last one is infinitely beautiful.

Humor:

“‘Have you ever happened, citizen, to be in a hospital for the mentally ill?’ [...]
But the foreigner was not a bit offended and burst into the merriest laughter.
‘I have, I have, and more than once!’ he cried, out, laughing, but without taking his unlaughing eye off the poet.” (16)

“Totally at a loss, Ivan obeyed the trickster and shouted ‘Help!’ but the choirmaster bluffed him and did not shout anything.
Ivan’s solitary, hoarse cry did not produce any good results. Two girls shied away from him, and he heard the word ‘drunk’.” (49)

“The obnoxious little sparrow dipped on its left leg, obviously clowning, dragging it, working it in syncopation – in short, it was dancing the foxtrot to the sounds of the gramophone, like a drunkard in a bar, saucy as could be, casting impudent glances at the professor.” (213)

Horror:

“The professor screamed as he looked at her mouth: it was a man’s mouth, crooked, stretching from ear to ear, with a single fang. The nurse’s eyes were dead.” (214)

Concord:

“I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, or other things like that. Especially hateful to me are people’s cries, whether cries of rage, suffering, or anything else. Set me at ease, tell me, you’re not violent?” (133)

“She had a passion for anyone who did something top-notch.” (280)

Suffering:

“a long and bitter weeping.” (218)

“Why am I sitting under the wall like an owl? Why am I excluded from life?” (223)

“Under Margarita sang a chorus of frogs, and from somewhere far away, stirring her heart deeply for some reason, came the noise of a train.” (242)

Love:

“Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once.” (140)

“Enough. You’ve shamed me. Never again will I yield to faintheartedness, or come back to this question, be reassured. I know that we’re both the victims of our mental illness, which you perhaps got from me … Well, so we’ll bear it together.” (367)

* The question is on page 366, ten lines from the bottom.

:: Bibliography ::

• Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanas’evich, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky. The Master and Margarita. London: Penguin, 1997. ISBN: 0141180145.

Laika, the Sputnik Sweetheart

I read Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart over Thanksgiving, because all the library’s copies of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman were checked out. I found Philip Gabriel’s translation rather hamfisted. (He also translated Kafka by the Shore.) Honestly, the novel itself wasn’t very good compared to After Dark or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

I was amazed by how dog-eared my library copy was! I’d say about half the pages were creased, some on the top, some even on the bottom. Maybe it’s a public library thing? Or maybe the reader(s) before me dog-eared to save their place (rather than using a bookmark)? I started dog-earing as well. It was an interesting exercise, trying to discover what passages people may have wanted to come back to. In one instance I felt that I could assert with confidence that a page was marked because of the following passage:

And it came to me then. That we were traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happen to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing. (117)

I really enjoyed all the talk of satellites, an extended metaphor – whose meaning is made plain in the above passage -  that permeates Sputnik Sweetheart. I found Murakami’s description of Laika, the first mammal launched successfully into orbit on Sputnik 2, very transfixing. Namely, because I wondered the same thing about her space voyage:

Ever since that day Sumire’s private name for Miu was Sputnik Sweetheart. Sumire loved the sound of it. It made her think of Laika, the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across the blackness of outer space. The dark, lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could the dog possibly be looking at? (8)

Laika’s story is so disturbing, so awe-inspiring. I think I find it compelling because it’s a dramatized look at what life is for human beings. The sense of wonder coupled with the cognizance of how limited you are in your understanding. Yet possessing the self-awareness that leads to the knowledge that your journey will end in nothingness, in death.

S: What are you thinking?
M: Of all the people who have been born, and have died, while the trees went on living.
S: Their true name is Sequoia Sempervirens. ‘Always green’, ‘ever-living’.
M: I don’t like them.
S: Why?
M: Knowing I have to die. (Taylor & Coppel)

It took me a long time to learn that Laika died shortly after going into orbit, either a few hours (BBC News) or four days (Zak). (When Arcade Fire’s Funeral was released in late 2004 I was surprised to find one of the album’s better songs bears her name: “Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)“.)

Page 110 contained a passage that was very similar to one I enjoyed from Dance, Dance, Dance:

But soon she woke up, as if shaken by the beating of her own heart. She glanced over at the travel alarm clock next to her; it was past twelve-thirty. The room was pitch-black, enveloped in total silence. She sensed someone nearby, hiding with bated breath.” &tc.

Finally, I thought it was rather funny that, upon rereading one of my dog-eared pages (178), I could no longer discern what passage I thought worthy of revisiting.

:: Bibliography ::

• BBC News. “SCIENCE/NATURE | Timeline: Space fight.” BBC News, 29 July 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/6996121.stm (29 November 2008).
• Hitchcock, Alfred. Vertigo. Screenplay by Samuel A. Taylor and Alec Coppel. Performed by Kim Novak and James Stewart. Paramount Pictures, 1958.
• Millsapps, Jan. Screwed Pooch. http://laikaspace.com/press/photos.html (29 November 2008).
• Murakami, Haruki. Sputnik Sweetheart. Gabriel, Philip trans. New York: Alfred A. Knopff, 2001. ISBN: 0375411690.
• Zak, Anatoly. The True Story of Laika the Dog. Space.com. http://www.space.com/news/laika_anniversary_991103.html (29 November 2008).

Ouvroir de littérature potentielle

My little sister Kate is so cute. Ages ago I told her about the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle), a French writing set that sought to squeeze out their best work by imposing constraints on their writing. The most famous example may be Georges Perec’s lipogrammatic novel La Disparition (A Void), in which Perec never uses the letter e.

I’m not sure exactly where we were, but I insisted my mother be seated after my father by commanding, rather histrionically: “Let his bride go next.” Kate was in stitches, and suggested we use the phrase, which she remembered later in the evening as “Let his bride be next”, as the title of a horror-themed short story à la Oulipo. Her enthusiasm was contagious and I agreed. I didn’t think she would actually follow through, but she really is. Which means that I have to start writing, posthaste! (And stop brushing my hair and drinking coffee. It stimulates the brain, right?)

Right now my story is straight up Poe, Gothic, Cask of Amontillado. I’m not pleased, although I think Kate will like it. I’ve been thinking about ways to make it seem more contemporary and less antiquated… Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have set it in a freakin’ convent! (Yes, it’s “His Bride” not “his bride”. Haha!)

Under Mint Wood

She lies deep, waiting for the worst to happen; the goats champ and sneer.

:: Bibliography ::

• Thomas, Dylan. Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices. Project Gutenberg Australia, 2006. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608221.txt (18 October 2008).