Eephus
Footballguy
Well, I was afraid I'd be writing up my #1 book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, sooner than I would have liked. I knew it was on OH's list, and I had some hope that maybe it would at least get a third vote, but here we are.
I struggled putting my list together, because I don't have a second- or third-favorite book. I have only a favorite book. After this one, the order doesn't matter.
@Long Ball Larry , as a Murakami-curious fellow, this is the one I recommend most strongly by far. I still think you might wish to dip your toe into the short stories, and the collection "The Elephant Vanishes" made my list at #36, but if you're feeling crazy, just jump right into this 600+-page masterpiece instead.
A description of the plot would read like one of the joke descriptions I posted when I talked about Murakami earlier. Meek man looks for his missing cat, and later his wife. Sometimes he sits in an abandoned well and thinks. He also talks with a teenager about death, and sometimes life.
Of course, there's a whole lot more to it than that, but I find that the plots of Murakami's books aren't important. The plots are there, sorta, but the work is meant to invoke deeper emotions, like you're on a journey where there might not be a particular destination but you're meant to enjoy the scenery along the way. It's best just to read his books and let them wash over you. As I mentioned before, they can conjure a dreamlike state not just in the characters, but in yourself. While there is something of a structure to the journey for the protagonist, the situations are often surreal. Both you and the protagonist will be questioning what is real. It could lead to confusion, but somehow I've always found that it made sense to me. As if you're in a dream and know you're in a dream because of certain aspects not being possible, but in another way it also seems fully realistic.
Why this one, then? It's as difficult to describe as it is to describe his writing itself, but this one conjured all of the usual Murakami-induced feelings - particularly alienation/solitude, grief, and the desperate search for meaning - more strongly than any of his other brilliant works. While it has plenty of his usual fantastical elements, it's also grounded enough that I could relate to it in the midst of the surrealism. The following passage, from a letter written by the teenager I mentioned, is one of my favorites and also happens to be an apt description of the Murakami writing style:
"Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living… they think that the world or life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical or consistent… ‘A is like this, so that’s why B happened.’ I mean, that doesn’t explain anything. It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni cheese in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me, that is just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I suppose I’d be shocked, of course, but I don’t know, I think I’d be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn’t be so upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real."
I eagerly await OH's cooking tomorrow night so that he can talk about this more persuasively than I am.
mmm rice pudding
