New Murakami

[Sean Mannion]

I can see the similarities and discontinuities in those points about 
Murakami, but I think would probably err against using the term surrealist 
at all in characterising his work.

With 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' as an example, specifically the war 
episodes (the Boris and 'Clumsy Massacre' threads), while there are 
undisputedly elements of the fantastic present in these in terms of both 
events and their transmission to the characters who experience them, it 
would be a stretch to infer them as describing 'surrealist, alternative 
realities' since it's made quite clear that they are episodes of recalled 
memory, of actual past experience, embedded in the main narrative (whose 
realism, in turn, doesn't question their aunthenticity); they do not belong 
in an alternative reality - they are presented very much as constitute (and 
causal) fragments of an accurate past space/time; the absurd character of 
these descriptions of a past reality doesn't seem to ever challenge the 
adequacy the description itself (to me, anyway), or the form, and so, for 
myself at least, I wouldn't call them surreal.

As for the Borges comparison, I haven't read enough Borges to feel qualfied 
to comment. However, Murakami also gets compared to Brett Easton Ellis on 
the blurb on the vintage paperbacks i've read, but i've been hard-pressed to 
see that one clearly. Which would suggest either lazy reading or lazy 
journalism....





>From: bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>To: MalignD at aol.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: New Murakami
>Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:52:04 -0700
>
>At 7:11 PM -0400 6/26/06, MalignD at aol.com wrote:
>>In a message dated 6/26/06 6:53:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>>bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net writes:
>>
>><< The surrealist, alternative realities,  part.    In Kafka,  there's a
>>story about fish falling from the sky and dual personalities (or 
>>something)   And
>>in Wind-Up Bird I think the war episode in China was kind of surreal.     
>>In
>>Borges' Ficciones  try  "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (a fave),  "The 
>>Garden of
>>Forking Paths,"  or any of them really. >>
>>
>>Borges is rigorous, structured, intellectual, ironical.  Murakami is
>>free-roaming, instinctual, sensual.  I see no correspondence.
>
>
>
>I can see what you're saying and yes,  there are certainly differences, but 
>there are some similarities as well.
>It seems  they work with the same sort of things in two very different 
>ways.   Fwiw,  Murakami is frequently said to have similarities to Borges.  
>  (I thought of it on my own but used some googling to see if I was way off 
>base or if others had sensed that.)
>
>Bekah
>
>
>