Norwegian Wood

Over the years I have read my fair share of Murakami short stories but I am yet to read him in the longer format. And now I must. Why? Because we are acquainted now. Okay, that's an exaggeration. He knows of me. He does! Or atleast that's what I intend to believe. I have exchanged emails with his agent, Sam in NY to procure a license to perform one of his short stories for the next event at Readings in the Shed. This is how my mozzarella-like stretched imagination imagines the chat between Sam and Murakami.
S: So, there's this girl Himali, brilliant writer it seems from her emails, she has written to me for a license to read your story...
M: Uh huh (I imagine he is a man of few words...he saves them for his stories)
S: It is for this brilliant initiative (Here Sam goes on to extol the work of Readings for a full 5 minutes)
M: Wow (High praise coming from him!)
S: So should I give them the license?
M: Hai!

Or, more likely Sam is at his filing cabinet checking his list of documented instructions on license requests for Murakami stories and gave me a thumbs up without any calls to Tokyo.

But, I am going to go with scenario one.

****

I choose Murakami's Norwegian Wood. It is the story of Toru Watanabe, in flashback, as he recalls his years at university. When Toru starts university, besides the usual pressures of transitioning from a teenager to an young adult, he is also coming to terms with the suicide of his best friend. He goes to class, makes new friends, gets up some shenanigans, has one night stands, falls in love and has his heart broken. But, he also grapples with issues far behind his years, death, mental illness, loss, friendship...and he wades through all this and comes of age. Watanabe is the smartest, sportiest, handsomest or for that matyer any -est. But, it is impossible not to fall in love with him, much like the many female characters in the story. He is not the perfect guy but there could not be a better guy.
One of his love interests Midori tell him,
"I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”
Toru is that guy.

Murakami describes Norwegian Wood as his most realistic story. He says he made a conscious effort to steer away from his preferred surrealist style and write something that more people would enjoy. While the story may be more realistic, the quality of writing brings out the extraordinary in the ordinary.
He lends depth to commonplace thoughts:
The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute—like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness.
He creates images that demand a second read to be savoured:
Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul.

Mental illness is a huge part of the plot almost to the point of being rampant amongst the youth of Japan. The novel is set in the 1960s, about 20 years after the Second World War and the nuclear bombings... the darkest period in the country's history. Murakami's characters would have likely been born just after the war. Could the adult generation's occupation with rebuilding the nation and coping with the loss have contributed to building an emotionally stunted generation? Perhaps. Or, perhaps it is simply the novel's fabric.

I am left shocked by the sex scenes. Their graphic nature would make writers of hardcore porn turn deep shades of red. I admit I would have been less.hocked had the story been set in America. The young characters discuss sexual acts with an abandon that I do not associate with Japanese people. I have a single image of the Japanese in my head...they are shy, reticent people and correct to a fault in their speech and behaviour. I had succumbed to the danger of a single story (despite Chimamanda's warning) and had assumed all Japanese as the same. It is due credit to Murakami, that not once do I question the realness of his characters, despite what I mistakenly perceive as their un-Japaneseness. Toru, Midori, Naoka and every other character become living, breathing windows to Japan.

Such is the power of good fiction, it opens the mind to the realities of the world.

The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl

Horror films don't freak me out. Yes, I close my eyes and then peek from between two fingers. But, they don't haunt my dreams and turn them into nightmares. Maybe because I don't really believe in the living dead. What do put the heebies and the jeebies in me are evil tales of seemingly innocuous people leading a regular life.

The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl has 50-plus short stories by the author and each one of them revels in jumping out of the bushes and screaming "Boo" at the reader. The settings are of the ordinary, a bed and breakfast or an apiary or a country manor or a farm. The characters too don't draw any suspicion be it a matronly landlady or a bookseller or a travelling salesman or a country hick. Then, as the stories moved, some element would be introduced, almost as subtly as the pea under the princess' bed. Sometimes I spotted it as soon as it appeared and at times I missed it, and had to read back to figure out where he had twisted the simple tale. But, the resolution was almost always rewarding.

My favourites in the collection were The Landlady and The Bookseller. The Landlady starts off with a young man in search for a B&B in Bath. He chances upon a place run by a middle-aged lady. There were many clues that pointed to the oddities in the establishment but nothing quite prepared me for the creepy end. In the Bookseller the author's detailed description of the dusty shop and the spiritless owner and his secretary almost lulled me into a false sense of security, but not quite. It is almost at the end of the collection so I had smartened up to Dahl's tricks. And when the secretary called her boss William Buggage, "Billy", I knew the twist was around the corner.


Next review: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and The Sea is a short read, but not a quick one. I had attempted it before but abandoned it after 20 pages, can’t remember why. This time I persevered. Maybe it was the pressure of years of forsaken resolutions. Maybe it was the fact that I am a more evolved reader. probably a bit of both. This was Hemingway’s last novel published before his death. It was also one of his most successful stories.

The story is about an old fisherman in the middle of an unlucky spell and his three day struggle, as he tries to bring in, against all odds, the biggest catch of his life. What worked for me was not so much the story as his writing style. The simplicity gripped me. I also could not help but admire the patience with which he delves into the details, thus conjuring up vivid images. For most of the book, the old man is the only character but Hemingway uses the fish, the sky, the sea, the sun, moon and stars as an effective support cast. And therein lies his brilliance. I must admit that I tuned off at times especially when he detailed the fishing technicalities, but was baited back after a sentence of two.