My year of Murakami continues with Sputnik Sweetheart, a brooding and disturbing book about connection and isolation, what kind of pants people are wearing, and writing. While it’s not my favorite Murakami work, it’s still more gripping and provocative than most of the fifty-something books I’ve read this year. All of his books either change my worldview or spur me towards my own creative pursuits. That’s good art. Sputnik‘s protagonist is the typical Murakamian narrator. Male. Enjoys alcohol and thinking, does ok with the ladies, interested […]
“The heart apparently doesn’t stop that easily.”
If you want to know how cool author Haruki Murakami is, just know that Patti Smith decided to write a review of this book in the New York Times. That is how cool he is. The novel centers on Tsukuru Tazaki. He’s a train station designer in his mid-30s. Tsukuru lives alone in Tokyo, although he was raised in Nagoya. He has a quiet life that, by objective standards, is going quite well. He got into a difficult engineering program (mission accomplished). He is fulfilling […]
The Book That Got Me Shook, or, My Heart in Novel Form
I don’t understand everything that happens in Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland (1985), but I love this novel. I love it because it puts into a tangible art form the way I feel in my guts about our confusing and beautiful existence on earth. A sample, about a guy chilling in the park, watching a family feed birds, and getting hit with the profundity of living: Wide shot: Pigeons, fountain, mother and child. I didn’t want to leave this scene…I closed my eyes, I felt a ripple run through my […]
We need to talk about Haruki
My other possible title for this review was “Now I know how to quit you”. You see, I have a long, complicated relationship with Murakami. I read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle something like thirteen years ago. I devoured that book. It was weird and fun and compelling. And deeply unsatisfying. Much like his other books, the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. And yet, I keep reading more. I’m honestly not sure why, when there are so many books to read in this way-too-short […]