1Q84

[Mark Kohut]

Not knowing a word of Japanese except seppuku, I am going to be
a contrarian here. There are almost no writers who are so involved in
a translation of their works into English as is Murakami. He knows English
well enough to have translated many modern classics from English into Japanese.
Part of his international sales success is his Westernness. (Check out how the Japanese
literary establishment dissed him mightily for the longest time).....
 
I did not find the prose clunky, but instead clear and smooth and---page-turning. HM 
set up chapter after cfhapter to end with anticipation. No small feat for 'literary' writers
since the 20th Century. (David & others: I know you gag at 'literary' here, feeling he ain't.
So be it. I don't pretend to know my own final judgments re him..yet. And I'm nobody) 
 
One of his strengths is, maybe, as a modern myth-maker. A novelist of ideas embedded
in characters, scenes, symbols--ye old 'objective correlatives' Eliot labeled--
overarchiing philosophical and societal perspectives---as John Bailey
observes about 1Q84's 'metaphysical' foundations. 
 
I do think there is laziness in the book. Murakami-caused. Most obvious to me is when he
has characters reflect on some books that have mattered to them. To me, HM gave them 
HIS thoughts not theirs, jarred me like someone lying. 
 
Do we who have read it think it is Murakami's rejection of 1984? Japan is not a boot in the face forever
anymore. In M's lifelong wrestling with Mishima---see that masterpiece of a story---yes, David and others---\
'The Hunting Knife' is one masterpiece at least, imho. 
 

From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> 
Cc: Technopaegnion Tapinosis <technopaegniontapinosis at gmail.com>; "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: 1Q84

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.
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