NP: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

[Clement Levy]

Hi all,
everything I like is not Pynchonesque, and I like Murakami's novel, and 
especially the Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, The Wild Sheep Chase, Dance, 
Dance, Dance, and The End of Time and Hard-Boiled Wonderland (his short 
stories and love stories like Sputnik Sweetheart or parts of Norwegian 
Wood are not so good in my opinion).
He builds fantasy universes that interfere with a reality he describes 
in simple words. But the context in which live his characters is built 
so well (you hear the music they remember, you taste the sandwich they 
make, or the fish they grill), I'm just taken inside, and fantasy 
appears very smoothly when I begin to feel like "I know the hero quite 
well now, what could happen?", and I find it very well designed.
Pynchon is much stronger. His fantasy universe and the reality that his 
characters experience are a single object, coherent and described in 
such a way that I sometimes think: "I've felt once like Œdipa, but it 
wasn't so hard, etc." In Murakami, there is no "but:" he has got the 
magician kind of technique, and no deception after that (whereas 
Pynchon makes a statement on what we're living in, and it's quite sad 
sometimes). Murakami in his novel doesn't feel the need to convey a 
vision du monde (nor some versions of it). He wrote essays too, and 
there you'll find a few statements on reality but it could be serious ! 
(Underground, about Aum and the Tokyo subway gas-attack – I didn't read 
it yet).
So like Will, I'd say, don't try to find anything Pynchonick in 
Murakami (well, you have the fantasy universe, but you have it anywhere 
else), and Murakami's novel have a light and delicate sadness you 
wouldn't find in Pynchon's novel (though they are sad too, in a 
different way). But you may find it good anyway (hope you will).
Clément Lévy
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