Of missing cats and wind-up birds

I sup­pose it was inev­it­able that the choice for the first entry on this part of An Unre­li­able Wit­ness would end up being between a novel from a Japan­ese writer or a mel­an­cholic song. How­ever, since I’m cur­rently try­ing to identify the mel­an­cholic side of my music col­lec­tion — and kid­ding myself that there is a ‘side’ rather than just, well, all of it — the Japan­ese novel has won out.

Over the last few months, I think it’s become some­thing of a run­ning joke amongst people who know me that I will invari­ably be seen with my head bur­ied inside a Japan­ese novel or talk­ing about the latest one I’m read­ing. It’s true. I’m addicted, and I tell people end­lessly about the sheer bril­liance of these books until they’re nod­ding wear­ily and say­ing they’ll fol­low up on one of my recom­mend­a­tions — but prob­ably only so I’ll stop gab­bling. Yet I can never clearly explain the reas­ons for my addic­tion, without them com­ing across almost as dread­ful racial ste­reo­types: in par­tic­u­lar, it’s the min­im­al­ism of the lan­guage that most attracts me. See? Japan­ese. Min­im­al­ist. So pre­dict­able. Though even I groaned when a friend help­fully enquired as to whether it was like “Feng Shui in writ­ten form”. Er, no.

The Wind-up Bird ChronicleI spent almost two weeks read­ing The Wind-up Bird Chron­icle back and forth on my daily com­mute from work, and for that fort­night I was so immersed in it that, more than just nearly miss­ing my sta­tion or wish­ing that I had a few more minutes on the tube to reach the end of a par­tic­u­lar chapter, I actu­ally felt as if I was liv­ing the kind of life that the book describes. Three weeks on from fin­ish­ing it, I still feel that.

To get the Murakami check­boxes out of the way, though: yes, it’s not exactly the most clear-cut plot. More like a labyrinth, in fact. Sur­real is an apt descrip­tion. But you come to expect that with his nov­els, and too many sens­ible, lin­ear plots tire me out just as much as too many labyrinths with twists and turns aplenty. Then there are all the mys­ter­i­ous, fas­cin­at­ing yet always strangely beau­ti­ful women who sud­denly begin to flock round the cent­ral Every­man char­ac­ter. It’s taken a fair bit of Murakami read­ing, but I think I’ve now nar­rowed down the types of women to the fol­low­ing: those who want to sleep with him; those who want to be his sis­ter; those who want to be his sis­ter and sleep with him; those who want to mother him; those who want to mother him and sleep with him; those who might not actu­ally be real, but prob­ably still want to sleep with him in some sort of mys­tical union between the earthly and the spir­itual; those who write him long, ram­bling let­ters from afar; and last but by no means least, those women on the edge of a nervous break­down who have either attemp­ted sui­cide or man­age to suc­cess­fully kill them­selves dur­ing the novel. Well, you get the pic­ture. If I was to haz­ard a guess, I’d say that Haruki Murakami has been hav­ing some kind of per­man­ent mid-life crisis since the day he first star­ted writ­ing. His atti­tudes to women are cer­tainly a little odd, but I would still prefer him to be writ­ing his nov­els than grow­ing his thin­ning hair, buy­ing a motor­bike and embar­rass­ing every­one he knows.

Other check­boxes to receive reas­sur­ing ticks include the pres­ence of a wise eld­erly gen­tle­men — usu­ally a vet­eran of the Second World War — who can some­how see inside the cent­ral char­ac­ter, and a cat. Cats seem to fea­ture heav­ily in Murakami’s work, and indeed it’s a miss­ing cat that starts off the whole sequence of unrav­el­ling events in The Wind-Up Bird Chron­icle. I don’t feel I’m reveal­ing any cru­cial secret of the plot to say that the cat does even­tu­ally come back, though by that point you’re so enmeshed in the cent­ral character’s search for answers — not least the reason why all these strange things seem to be hap­pen­ing to him — that the prod­igal feline’s return isn’t the big event one might have expec­ted it to be. I star­ted the novel by con­fid­ently identi­fy­ing that it would inev­it­ably end with the cat’s return. Wrong, very wrong.

But as I men­tioned earlier, it’s the sur­real world of the book that most suc­ceeded in com­pletely and utterly envel­op­ing me. It’s a world where the most mundane day ima­gin­able sud­denly turns extraordin­ary through the visit of one per­son or the sight­ing of some news head­line; through a meet­ing in the most banal sur­round­ings or the receipt of a let­ter. Maybe one way to explain The Wind-up Bird Chron­icle would be to say that the man to whom all this is hap­pen­ing, Toru Okada, simply thinks too much about … stuff whenever some new life event crosses his path, and that such immers­ive think­ing leads him to areas of his mind that he’d be bet­ter off keep­ing firmly under lock and key. True, that course of action would undoubtedly lead to a much more orderly exist­ence, but it would surely be far less enga­ging. It would also be a denial of his real per­son­al­ity, one that the reader begins to feel has been hid­den away dur­ing the every­day life that Okada has been lead­ing prior to the start of the novel.

That was what I recog­nised in The Wind-up Bird Chron­icle — not the same events that the cent­ral char­ac­ter exper­i­ences (no, please be reas­sured if you’ve read the book, def­in­itely not the same events), but the kind of mind­set that brings them into being. For vari­ous reas­ons, I’m pos­sibly unhealth­ily obsessed with the stranger corners of my mind, but I could see a reflec­tion of that in the pages of this mam­moth novel, and since read­ing it I’ve stayed in that world, linger­ing, want­ing to see what my own sub­con­scious could bring into focus if I con­cen­trated on it rather than, as I so often do, run­ning away from it. How many books offer that same over­whelm­ing escap­ism long after you’ve put it back on the shelves?

Indeed, the only down­side was that one of the after-effects — one of the after­shocks — of read­ing The Wind-up Bird Chron­icle was that I went for over a week without pick­ing up another book. I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to break the spell.

When you’ve got a mind like that of Toru Okada — or, as I’ve begun to identify it, like me — you need a place to think. I’ve wasted good­ness knows how many years of my life try­ing to find the right place to be com­pletely alone with my thoughts, without dis­trac­tions. I’ve never quite achieved it. Hid­ing under the duvet is good, prob­ably my favour­ite, but it does have an unfor­tu­nate tend­ency to send me to sleep even­tu­ally — usu­ally just at the point where I can feel I’m on the threshold of dis­cov­er­ing The Big Answer To Everything. I’ve tried the park, but invari­ably I get bothered by small yap­ping dogs, small yap­ping kids, scar­ily sway­ing men knock­ing back cans of Spe­cial Brew or, worst of all, small yap­ping kids knock­ing back cans of Spe­cial Brew. Far too many dis­trac­tions. I’ve tried churches — too formal and holy, and def­in­itely a feel­ing that God is look­ing over my shoulder and tak­ing a keen interest in everything that I’m think­ing. In the days when I had such a lux­ury as a garden shed — and those times are long gone — I would try and hide in there, but sur­roun­ded by so much clut­ter I would invari­ably start tidy­ing up. In short, I’ve never found the ideal place to be alone and just think.

Toru Okada, the lucky bas­tard, has a well: a dry and long-neglected well, com­plete with a lad­der down to the bot­tom, which becomes his bolthole from the world out there, the world which is prov­ing so very con­fus­ing and alien. It’s com­pletely black at the bot­tom of the well, to the extent that he can barely see his hands in front of his face, and as he sits curled up on the floor there is noth­ing, abso­lutely noth­ing — well, apart from one or two slightly paranor­mal hap­pen­ings, but I’m con­veni­ently for­get­ting about those in pur­suit of my obses­sion — to dis­tract him. It’s perfect.

I’ve star­ted read­ing again. Other books. I’m begin­ning to emerge from the world of The Wind-up Bird Chron­icle, back into the world that I’ve lived in all along, but which is now some­how slightly more reas­sur­ing and wel­com­ing than before. At its heart, des­pite all the sur­real­ism, the tale that Murakami tells is an adven­ture, a meta­phys­ical detect­ive story. Some­times I feel like I’m in the middle of a sim­ilar adven­ture, a sim­il­arly inex­plic­able quest. I’m not entirely sure that I know what I’m look­ing for and what my goal is sup­posed to be at the end, but maybe that’s not the point any more.

Most of all, I just want a place to think. I want a well of my own.

• Haruki Murakami
• The Com­plete Review on The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Comments: 16

    I really like the fact that you are going to review things here. It is an ACE plan. I did start to read The Ele­phant Van­ishes … but was dis­trac­ted by other books … maybe I’ll give it a second look.

    andre | 05.29.06, 19:29

    This review really makes me wish I’d liked the book more. You make it sound won­der­ful, yet I hated it. Bugger.

    Cheerful One | 05.29.06, 20:08

    I loved this one too — I think it was the third of my five-card-flush of Murakami. I only just fin­ished the fifth, though, and haven’t read another since. You can — or I can, at least — have too much of a good thing. The next book I read was David Mitchell’s number9dream, which was a very good way to fol­low the Japan­ese mas­ter, I must say, flawed though Mitchell’s books inev­it­ably are.

    By the way, I firmly believe it’s a good thing you fall asleep under the duvet just before dis­cov­er­ing the Big Answer to Everything. I have a the­ory — yet to be dis­proved by sci­ent­ists, OI might add — that dis­cov­er­ing the BAtE is what trig­gers spon­tan­eous com­bus­tion. So you just carry on drift­ing off — only make sure you wake up often enough to write us the odd review from time to time…

    Waterhot | 05.29.06, 23:20

    Bril­liant review! I also loved this, but was left at the end not with the weave of the story intact, but with a strange, detached set of emo­tions linked to odd head-pictures — a ward­robe full of clothes for instance, or a half moon in the dark. It just seemed to me that the prot­ag­on­ist was deeply ter­ri­fied of everything, and that tiny events seemed to be portents of impend­ing doom. I always get the feel­ing that Murakami’s char­ac­ters feel that they are the centre of the uni­verse in a way that other books don’t really cap­ture. I espe­cially liked Hard Boiled Won­der­land. Have you read that one? Can heart­ily recom­mend it — it’s my favour­ite of his. OK. Stop­ping now.

    rachie | 05.30.06, 12:18

    Also, I think I have worked out why I don’t gen­er­ally like Murakami, which I need to share quickly before I for­get, and as well as that I’ve just read the Kazuo Ishig­uro which you recom­men­ded and badly need to dis­cuss it with someone.

    And no, I have no inten­tion of doing either in a com­ment box.

    Cheerful One | 05.30.06, 23:35

    Cer­tainly the review is not a waste of space. At the moment though music is my drug of choice, until I cure myself that is.

    cosmosgirl | 05.31.06, 08:16

    I like this review, espe­cially the stuff about Murakami’s women. My mate made that point to me a few weeks ago and I laughed then and I laugh now. A per­cept­ive and funny analysis.

    I’ve read Nor­we­gian Wood (liked) and Kafka On The Shore (abhorred). I’m pleased you took from this book that Murakami was wel­com­ing you, the reader, to go on sim­ilar travels to the nar­rator. ‘Plunge to the depths of the psyche’ was a phrase I heard used this morn­ing. Some­thing like that maybe, or a more gradual descent.

    Murakami can use sym­bolic imagery and a min­im­al­ist poetic touch quite delight­fully and evoc­at­ively, when he can be bothered. At other times I find his writ­ing slack, flac­cid and pre­ten­tious and, ulti­mately, his labyrinth­ine plots go nowhere so I don’t see the point. Not a fan.

    Waterhot’s Big Answer To Everything = spon­tan­eous com­bus­tion the­ory. I like that, its pretty cool. Regards x

    benjamin | 06.07.06, 21:58

    Murakami does that, leaves you without the will to pick up a dif­fer­ent book for a while… in a good way… but I also feel that it is pos­sible to over­dose on him. I saw a film based on a short story of his, can’t remem­ber it’s name, but it felt like a short story, all *unfin­ished* but sat­is­fy­ing for it… I very nearly picked up the Wind-Up Bird Chron­icle again — I’ve never got past page 76 before…

    ping | 09.05.06, 12:31

    What a great review.

    I don’t nor­mally read reviews of stuff, cos they’re nor­mally about things that I’m never likely to con­sume (I don’t have much time or money for con­sump­tion, of any­thing), and not about any­thing else.

    But this is a bril­liant com­bin­a­tion of per­sonal blog piece and intel­li­gent review. And there­fore I read it, and enjoyed it. And now I want to read the Murakami, too.

    Clare | 09.27.06, 09:08

    An excel­lent review, excel­lently written.

    I’m a Murakami super­fan, so have to agree with you about Win­dup Bird. I’ve read most of his books and this one is my favor­ite. I love it. I remem­ber the first time I read it, it made me want to go sit at the bot­tom of a deep well on the off chance that I would dis­cover a secret world.

    What other Japan­ese authors are you reading/have you read? I’ve been want­ing to branch out, but aside from “Kit­chen” by Banana Yoshimoto, I haven’t. Ideas?

    jeremy | 11.27.06, 12:38

    I read the book about a year and a half ago, and oddly enough, it opened some floodgates for me — before read­ing ‘Wind-Up Bird’ I made abso­lutely no head­way into all of those great works of lit­er­at­ure that are a little…unconventional, shall we say, in terms of lin­ear plots, mak­ing sense and so on. So since Wind-Up I’ve been a lot more laid back about that sort of thing, and just enjoyed the exper­i­ence of read­ing and try­ing to make sense of it all (or not, as the case may be…Virginia Woolf, I’m look­ing at you).

    Great review.

    Stuart | 11.29.06, 16:21

    I just fin­ished the book and I abso­lutely loved it. I became com­pletely engrossed in Toru Okada’s world and I def­in­itely have that serenely hazy feel­ing that still lingers after fin­ish­ing. The unfor­tu­nate thing is that I couldn’t help but have a big ques­tion mark over my head at the end, much like I do after watch­ing a David Lynch film. Even though I loved and was sucked into every moment of it…a part of me always wants answers. Well I am most def­in­itely glad that yours was the first link I clicked because your review helped me to under­stand, maybe I don’t need con­crete answers, maybe there aren’t any to be had, and maybe that is just the point. Loved it!

    Jen | 11.22.08, 21:12

    I am a fan of Murakami’s writ­ing as I think he offers such an inter­est­ing amal­gam of oddness and unfold­ing, non lin­ear­ity, but within the scaf­fold­ing of exist­en­tial themes
    I loved Nor­we­gian Wood (the most straight­for­ward) the best, and also really liked Kafka and Wind up Bird. I exper­i­ence the sur­real­istic touches as con­cret­iz­a­tions (graphic illus­tra­tions) of psy­cho­lo­gical states, emo­tional expres­sions. I had the same impres­sion while watch­ing the movie Syn­ec­doche by Charlie Kauf­man– a pretty per­fect exist­en­tial film– and the oddnesses and sur­real aspects then make per­fect sense.

    Here’s a weird thing: I fin­ished the Wind up Bird on march 6, 2011 at 2 AM. At 10 AM, I heard the wind up bird out­side my win­dow! I’m not kid­ding! it soun­ded just like what I would have ima­gined the wind up bird sound­ing like. And 5 days later the massive 9.0 earth­quake hit Japan. So that got me think­ing: what is the sig­ni­fic­ance of the wind up bird? It seems to me to be set­ting the events in motion in the book, so when i heard that it felt ominous…

    Julia Schwartz | 03.18.11, 15:47

    Thank you. Thank you for writ­ing this review.
    The Wind-Up Bird Chron­icle is prob­ably my favour­ite book. It took me on an indes­crib­ably intense inner jour­ney. And after read­ing it, I didn’t feel the same. It was a life-changing exper­i­ence, even if that sounds a bit too dra­matic. I guess, being an intro­vert, I felt more iden­ti­fied with this novel than with any­thing else I’d read until then. It was my first Murakami novel, and I’ve been a huge fan ever since.
    And I thank you because you con­veyed my thoughts about the novel almost per­fectly, and it moves me. I haven’t seen many people talk about it like that, more often than not they find it a bor­ing, non-sensical mess. That’s pre­fectly cool. But it’s nice to see someone appre­ci­ate it the way I think it deserves. :)

    Hedorian | 06.26.11, 23:59

    Excel­lent “review”. I loved the jour­ney of read­ing it, and was a bit sad as I neared the close. I am with you in that I love quiet places by myself, where I can think about the mys­tery of the world around us. Mine hap­pens to be a rock in the woods. You’re so right, Wind-up bird chron­icle is a story of one such per­son who gains access to another side of this world for a little while, and decides to explore it. I loved the way the book simply wound down and then con­cluded. You say the haze lasts about a week? I will make sure to enjoy the next few days.

    daveb | 09.12.11, 19:53

    Was given the book by a friend some years ago and finally read (bits of) it over the last few weeks. People talk about his ‘emo­tional dis­tance’ etc., but I just found quite a lot of it point­less. I know per­haps he is try­ing to high­light the point­less­ness of so much ‘stuff’ in our lives, but I don’t want someone to waste my time. I find these post-modern dystopic self-absorbed nov­els do not really offer me all that much apart from some clever word play and a few reflec­tions that could be had in about an hour, rather than two weeks.

    Rebecca | 08.19.12, 13:26

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