Murakami: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Invitation to view

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, this little spritz was a speculative review of the named book of stories. I was a stringer for the New York Sun at the time so submitted this review. ( early enough, I had an advance copy)
the editor liked it but I was a nobody and he needed a somebody to review it because Murakami is very somebody. I have repressed who did review it but it was a novelist....you can look it up. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 9, 2015, at 6:08 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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 But the historical content quite favorably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.
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l