1Q84

[John Bailey]

There's definitely a lot lost in translation with this one. People
who've read it in the original have said that the translations are
overly simplified and even lazy, as well as adding in lots of new
lines that explain things deemed too "japanese" but which are pretty
lame additions that make everything seemed overly spelled out.

And even from my limited knowledge I've spotted plenty of references
to Japanese myth as well as characters and scenes from earlier
Murakami novels. I haven't read a review that tries to grapple with
the ontological issues of the novel, which is essentially about two
people writing each other (Tengo and Aomame are fictions created by
one another), or the Little People metaphor which to me seems a direct
comment on the culture of patriarchal violence, conformity, complicity
and the sexual degradation of women and young girls in contemporary
Japanese society - in fact the most political statement the author's
ever managed.

All of this said, even given the mistakes in translation and reading,
this is a long book that doesn't justify its length in English and I
wouldn't recommend it particularly. You'd need to have an interest in
Murakami and Japan to want to bother even trying to work out what's
going on beneath the surface.

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:34 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Have you read his earlier novels?
> They're all clunkers.
>
> On Tuesday, January 17, 2012, Technopaegnion Tapinosis
> <technopaegniontapinosis at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Isn't this novel a clunker? It is stylistically lazy, ignorant of the
>> sounds of human voices, bereft of the kinds of  thought of real humans
>> engage in. Although praised for the blending of atmospheres and narratives,
>> it's hard to get through a page without thinking that everything must be
>> lost in translation.