NP: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

[richard baillie]

Interesting point.

I guess the main similarity between Pynchon and Marukami is that the
quality of the writing is extremely variable.

In Pynchon's case from the outstanding (GR) to the merely very good.

Marukami is much more middle brow and accessible but his better novels
(South of the Border West of the Sun and Norwegian Wood) are worth
reading. The rest are fairly silly and predictable.


On Sun, 19 Feb 2006 16:07:26 -0500, "Joe Allonby" <joeallonby at gmail.com>
said:
> I loved the minimalist language and the oddly magical story itself. I
> liked
> Mr Wind-up Bird and especially May Kasuhara.
> 
> On 2/18/06, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> >
> > Just finished reading "the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," by Haruki
> > Murakami.  When I was asking for reading suggestions a while back, a number
> > of people on this list recommended it.  Also, the blurb on the back of the
> > book compared it to Pynchon.  I have to say, I was really
> > disappointed.  Aside from some historical flashbacks (which were the best
> > part of the book) and a vague atmosphere of conspiracy, there was nothing
> > Pynchonesque about it.  The writing was minimalist and the characters and
> > conspiracy elements got way too close to being merely cute (ick).  The most
> > telling difference:  it's easy to imagine this as a flick; extremely
> > difficult for Pynchon's work.
> >
> > Just curious to hear why people like this book so much.
> >
> > Laura
> >
-- 
  richard baillie
  richbaillie at fastmail.fm

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