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[BlahBlah]

Jeph must be psychic, as last night I read A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. After he has sex the narrator thinks about a whale's penis he went to see when he was a child.

It was a brilliant book, and the translation seemed to be perfect. The language Murakami uses and his writing style are great and it really feels like a modern book. Highly recommended, go buy it now.

Has anyone else read it, or any of his others? I'm going to go look for some more of his books.

[tomselleck69]

I've read every one except for that one, the untranslated ones, and a chunk of the most recent short story collection.

Wind Up Bird Chronicle is my favorite, and I am baffled by his ability to write the same story over and over again and have it be entertaining every time.

[Vertical Stripes]

I've read and own like a million of them, but I've never read Wild Sheep Chase, even though I've read and own the sequel.  My favourite was the short story collection After the Quake and the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. 

[Ikrik]

I found The Wind Up Bird Chronicle to be good but Kafka On The Shore is so much better.  I wouldn't say he writes the same story everytime but he has this amazing habit of having characters just randomly pop up or reveal just crazy things about themselves.  Honestly when I was reading books for a while I was starting to get a little bored, a little tired, and I read Kafka On The Shore and I absolutely loved it, he's amazing.

[tomselleck69]

Okay, not identical stories, but he certainly sticks to a formula:

-woman vanishes
-main character is taciturn and unemployed OR has a job but is never seen working
-a small object is INCREDIBLY significant for an unexplained reason
-meanwhile in this half-allegorical world...
-mentioning a classical piece/jazz tune/brand of whiskey 40 times as characterization

Kafka on the Shore is among my favorites (after Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood), it's certainly one of the more unique ones. It took a while for me to really get into it, though. Both Kafka's and Nakata's storylines took a little too long to get off the ground for my taste, but from the point where they really get going it's definitely one of his better novels.

[Inlander]

I've only read South of the Border, West of the Sun - which I'm given to understand is much closer to "realism" than is typical of Murakami's writing - and I haven't been moved to explore his writing any further since then. It seemed rather obsessed with oral sex, to an extent that it seemed to me to become pure male fantasy - like, the guy has a relationship with a girl, and she flat-out refuses to have penetrative sex with him, but practically leaps at the chance to suck his dick? I don't know, maybe that really is a less confronting sexual option for women, but I found it frankly ludicrous. In general I found the sexual relationships in that book absolutely laughable at best, and borderline narcissistic at worst, and that severely tainted my experience of the book as a whole.

Maybe I'll give Murakami another chance some time soon, though. Everyone else seems to like him - especially a lot of women I know, so maybe his sexual politics aren't as bad as I make them out to be based on my very limited reading.

[De_El]

Since I started reading Carl Hiaasen, I no longer begrudge an author to write the same book over and over.

[Blue Kitty]

Thanks to Kafka on the Shore I will never look at the Colonel the same again

[pilsner]

I've read Wild Sheep Chase and After Dark, and enjoyed them both.  But not to the point of buying all his other works -- his books give me the feeling of being novellas with tons of padding.  I second Inlander's point about his writing wish fulfillment fiction -- I haven't yet read a female character of his that struck me as even marginally real.

Also I think he should stop making sculptures like this one (NSFW) and this one (NSFW) , although this one (NSFW)  is just fine.

...

Yes, I know.

[tomselleck69]

It's never really seemed like wish fulfillment to me. He'll invariably lead into sex by establishing "ah yes now the time is right for the mysterious female to give herself to our hero," but it always leaves the character confused and distressed, rather than content or satisfied. It's kind of frustrating that the scenario is another part of his formula, but it never puts me in a high-fivin' "awesome this dudes gettin' his bone on" mood, it's always wistful unhappy sex that casts both characters in a pathetic light.

He's done more realistic & multidimensional female characters in other books, but yeah---whether by design or lack of ability, no aspect of Murakami's writing is all that concerned with realism.


FACT: Takashi and Haruki Murakami are identical twins. Since all of Haruki's books are nonfictional autobiographies, (and contrary to popular belief), Takashi can be considered the "good" one.

[Joseph]

Sorry to revive an old topic, but I just had to say something.  Takashi Murakami is the one who made those sculptures which were linked, not Haruki Murakami.  And the two are not related.  Definitely not identical twins, seeing as how Haruki is fourteen years older than Takashi.

[Inlander]

Well there's always one older twin.

[tomselleck69]

Sorry to revive an old topic, but I just had to say something.  Takashi Murakami is the one who made those sculptures which were linked, not Haruki Murakami.  And the two are not related.  Definitely not identical twins, seeing as how Haruki is fourteen years older than Takashi.

I was just joking.

The truth is that they are identical quadruplets (Jimmy Murakami and Ryu Murakami being the other two) and that any age difference is irrelevant because there is a double-recessive gene expressed by many Japanese people that allows them to preternaturally produce an extreme amount of the "willpower hormones" (a biological cocktail of ghrelin, somatostatin and neuropeptide Y) and simply stay in the womb until they are ready to leave.

[marikun]

I'm sad to say I've only read Dance Dance Dance and parts of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Wild Sheep Chase. Dancex3 is seriously an amazing book and I was in awe during the entire book. I've meant to read more Murakami but... haven't.