New Murakami

[Joe Allonby]

I just got into a Murakami discussion while watching a baseball game in a
pub named after a drunken Irish writer. Curiously, this is not an unusual
event for me. This led to another Japanese guy named Kobo Abe. Do any of you
guys know anything about this cat. He sounds interesting. Then again there
is Hedeki Matsui.

On 6/27/06, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >I've read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but didn't find much resemblance to
> Pynchon, save for the WWII references.  I had trouble getting through it.  I
> thought he descended into cuteness (particularly in his characterizations of
> the female characters), in a way Pynchon never does, and I can believe that
> the spaghetti and lemon drop references were there more for quirkiness than
> any real meaning.
> >
> >Laura
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Sean Mannion <third_eye_unmoved at hotmail.com>
> >>Sent: Jun 27, 2006 1:51 PM
> >>To: bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net, pynchon-l at waste.org
> >>Subject: Re: New Murakami
> >>
> >>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
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
>
>
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