Murakami: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Invitation to view

[John Bailey]

Did you write that piece Mark?

I think Wind Up Bird is his flawed masterpiece - suffers due to
on-the-run serialisation but contains some unforgettable and
provocative stuff. As the linked essay well notes, a lot of his
writing is allusive or demands that the reader think beyond the
apparently superficial details, but despite me being a frequent
defender of him, I can completely understand the Murakami hatred. His
style is a very particular one.

He does work really closely with his translators and is a translator
too, and has said that the English translation of WUBC was better than
the original Japanese, which he then went back and cut. So blame him
for the work's shortcomings. That said, the stories of his I admire
and the ones I loathe tend to be translated by the same people
respectively so there's got to be something to that.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 1:04 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe but don't forget he works hand over tongue with his English translators.
> He translates from English, as we know, so he makes many language
> choices, I'm sure.
> Which ones? What he makes time for, who knows?
>
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 9:42 AM, David Kilroy <thesaintgodard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> WUBC is a broken bird. It's his Lynchiest, improvised for
>> serialization, and with a deeply problematic, middle-aged divorcee's
>> view of sex and women... But the historical content quite favorably
>> recalls Ballard.  What mainly bugs me is how Wind-Up's American
>> edition was truncated by editors. It's bloated, safe to say, but not
>> having a complete translation I can't honestly determine whether it's
>> total twaddle. The jumps and plot holes, particularly the inconsistent
>> characterization, that might be Murakami wingin' it, or it could be
>> impatient Americans... I just can't tell.
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