The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, 2-18.10 (Sunniva)

Now, let me first say how sorry I am that this review comes this late. Due to circumstances, mostly my work with Global Dignity Day, I was far too busy to read outside of breakfast time and bed time, and I quickly realised I couldn’t read this book before bedtime. It was simply too creepy, right out stomach turning (these passages often showed up at my breakfast readings) and surreal for my easily influenced mind to ingest before sleep.

Then, the night I was going to finish the book and write and post the review, three days after the original posting date, I was also busy registering online with a new agency that will give me temporary jobs as a kindergarden assistant (long story) and drinking tea and getting ready before a Norwegian Friday night tv show (Nytt på Nytt), when I spilled tea all over my laptop and it started failing almost immediately. And believe me, I cried. As in tears.  My six-year-old Macbook Pro is just about everything to me, I hardly think I knew how much before it broke down. This following week has been spent trying to hand it in to the local Apple Store for a repair job, going back and forth with demands of a six-year-old-receipt, then being told I had to go home and do the back-up myself, or they could do it for a small £200 fee. What with seeing different people (also having a brilliant halibut dinner with Christine, I’m not complaining about my free time), working in kindergardens and going to the Red Cross Youth Autumn Camp this weekend, I never found the time to sit and write this.

SLIGHT SPOILERS FROM NOW ON
This is already far too long. What I want to say about the book is: I really, really wanted to like it. I was prepared to enjoy it, which was probably what went wrong. I have read a lot of Murakami in the past, from 2009 till 2011 I was reading him quite often, until I needed a break. I realised that there were two books I couldn’t tell apart. They both (as far as I can remember) feature young, single middleclass Japanese men who drink a lot of whiskey and talk with strange women and go into slightly surreal worlds next to this one where you’re never certain whether it’s a dream or the truth or an allegory. Does that sound familiar?

I still like, and want to like, Murakami. I am longing to read Sputnik Sweetheart, and to reread After Dark. I just didn’t think this was one of his best books. It was all right. I loved it in the beginning. The strangest thing is that it went downhill after Kumiko left. There is one point, a while later, probably page 307 or 393 or something like that (I don’t have my copy right now), where May Kasahara says something, and it feels very final, and the book could just as easily, or maybe even better, have ended there for my part.

There are too many threads that are not gathered. I’m a little confused in the end. Also, how did amazing and slightly weird (and therefore more amazing) May Kasahara turn into this sweet little girl who feeds bread to the ducks and wants to share a pocket in the cold weather? Even though I didn’t understand her reasoning earlier in the book, I preferred her as the girl who would test how long she could keep Toru Okada in the well without saving him. As much as she makes the point about the girls in the village only wanting to get married and stop working, Murakami seems to imply that she is happy with everything now that she has found the job in the wig factory. I just don’t believe it.

All right: I still enjoyed reading the book. I liked the different sections. I’m a little bit in love with Cinnamon in a sort of young boy – pat on the head- sort of way.

This will be too long if I mention all the small, big, simple and complex thoughts I had about this book. I wondered how the war stories fit in. I didn’t think they did. They were interesting, but they were certainly from a different book. I wondered about the different Japanese customs and practices that I don’t get, and I wonder whether Toru and Kumiko are slightly upper middle class (yet he says they couldn’t afford a house) when they keep dropping stuff off at the dry cleaner’s, or whether I am just from a country where only fairly rich people would make a habit of getting their clothes dry cleaned. Probably the last one.

My thoughts are a little muddled by now, and by not having the book here with me. Maybe I'll comment more later on?

"The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" - Haruki Murakami (11-18 Oct)

I feared for a while, that even though we tried to make this list of books as diverse as possible, going as fas as consciously throwing in books that we knew were outside of our "comfort zone", I would unarguably come to have a well crafted joy-ride through each one of them. However, "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" was no such joy-ride. What I mean is that halfway through the book I actually thought to myself: "this is bullshit; there's no philosophy here as the back-cover comments so staunchly proclaim, only a pretentiously spiritual mumbo-jumbo; the story is plagued with symbols and passages that fail to give any more consistency to the already drawn out story; and this Toru Okada is an empty shell becoming an even more empty shell who lives out of doing 'something' to the 'somethings' of some people."

But I am forced to believe now, that that senselessness mirrors the helpless confusion that Toru Okada must have been through most of the time. I seemed to have forgotten that one day his wife left him with no explanation whatsoever, and for someone like him, no, for anyone, that cannot be an easy thing to grasp. So I'm sorry, Toru. This is just another way to say, that in the end many loose ends do come together - albeit still in a very abstract manner, because Toru's final conclusions really were something only he (and not the reader) could have figured out, I believe - and my frustration might have just come from the fact that I got too restless with all of the side-stories.

However, this is not to say that it all made sense in the end - in a way, I did feel I was defiled by Murakami's narrative, in the sense that I now have to re-assemble the pieces I have read in order to make sense out of them, much in the same way Creta Kano did, after having been (SLIGHT SPOILER) defiled by Noboru Wataya. Because of this, I will write the rest in a different manner from before: trying to individually recollect the impressions that struck me the most. I will speak mostly of threads and nuances and associations, to try and squeeze some more sense out of them, not so much of the plotline, but some spoiler or other might slip through nonetheless. Then again, being the story that this is, that might not matter very much.

Toru Okada is a curious shell of a character. Most of what he does is resonate other characters' opinions and questions (it bothered me quite a bit that in most of his conversations with, for example, May Kasahara, his replies would usually be "maybe you're right", "it could be possible" or other such non-compromising words). In this aspect, he reminded me to some of Gaiman's characters as well (Shadow in "American Gods", Richard Mayhew in "Neverwhere"), because they too are (at least on the surface), fairly simple characters that provide, to some extent, little more than the eyes (and ears, and fingers...) through which I understood the unfolding story. But at least in those worlds, there was always somebody around who had any idea of what was going on! I like explanations. Which is not the same as being spoon-fed the story, I think, but the fact that every character here knew only a little bit and Toru had to work really hard to put all the pieces together, was a tough one.

Oh, I guess something makes sense now... After all, that's exactly what Nutmeg does with the stories she tells Cinnamon, which eventually become the actual "Wind-up Bird Chronicle". That is also the recurrent question of which ones are real memories, which ones dreams, which ones a cocktail of both, which ones neither. And Toru does throw this right at your face when he thinks about the shared Akasaka stories.Well now I feel silly. I have been confronted before with story-lines that are a kind of mosaic one has to put together (particularly an author from Venezuela, Eduardo Sánchez-Rugeles), but at least in those you can take the individual tiles' truth at face value (minus one or two). Here, each individual tile eventually becomes blurry, true and un-true at the same time, and one has to keep this in mind when trying to make sense out of things. Very Zen, yes... In hindsight, I enjoyed the exercise. At the moment, well, not so much.

Then again, I had been "warned" about this: a few months ago I had a coffee and a conversation with a friend who is a trained psychologist, amongst other things, about Murakami and his works (of which I had read nothing but the autobiographical "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running"). She said that from a psychologist's point of view, most of Murakami's main characters are sort of empty receptacles where the reader imprints her/his own reactions, because they rarely explain or explicitly reveal their emotions and their ways of dealing with things. From a narrative point of view, this may be one of the reasons he's such a popular writer outside of his own Japanese cultural home, because even though the surroundings and historicities are very much Asian/Japanese, the main character isn't culture-bound. And indeed, Toru spends most of the time babbling on about how he's getting closer and closer to the centre of things, but in real-life, he has only done three things: climb down a well, get filthy rich, and move into a new house. As you do.

But hey, I guess sometimes when you put rice pudding in the microwave, you do get cheese macaroni, right? Wise May Kasahara... Maybe this explanation helped Toru go along with it. Maybe he didn't get it at all.

The recurrent symbols... So many of them, I'm sure entire I.B. Higher Level Language papers could be (have been?) written about them. There's the mark on the cheek, shared by three people. There's labyrinths throughout history and worlds: the mines in Siberia, the hotel corridors, and the then-a-novelty circuitry of Cinnamon's computer, are all depicted as labyrinths in one way or another. All of these, places where people went to realize themselves one way or another - to die in the mines, or to execute great feats in the computer, or the risk for either one in the hotel corridors and room. There's the wells, as a practice for this: the one in Mongolia where Lieutenant Mamiya loses himself, and the one in the "hanging house" where Toru finds himself - then loses himself again. There are wigs that May Kasahara makes for bald people, and there are scalps taking from dead men's heads hanging from the ceiling. There are the new clothes that give Toru his new path towards Kumiko - his new persona, perhaps - and there's the old clothes that belonged to Kumiko, which Creta Kano wears in peculiar situations. There's the mark that May licks, the same mark that Nutmeg masturbates, the same mark that Noboru Wataya (?) slices open with a knife. There is Noboru Wataya's boot-licking dog, Ushikawa, and Toru and Kumiko's rather normal cat, Noboru Wataya. There's the Wind-up bird winding the spring of the world throughout time, but why is it only heard by a few particular people? That is still a mystery to me. Was it only heard by people holding the bat? I suppose the guitar player in Sapporo had some idea of what was going on in the world. But didn't the zoo's vet hear it too? I don't remember him being particularly keen-eyed.

In any case, when all of these come together in the end, what I got was a remaking of a classic fairytale: Noboru Wataya, the gifted and heinous tyrant with dark magic powers rises to glory and kidnaps our hero's princess, Kumiko. Upon realizing that the hero is figuring things out and meddling with unstable forces, he tries to throw him off the path, but alas! Toru Okada does not desist, and through unorthodox means breaks the spell and defeats the monster!

So is "The Wind-up Bird" the force of good? Or love? The desire for Toru to save Kumiko? Didn't May Kasahara think that Toru was trying to protect her? Were Kumiko, the woman on the phone, Creta and May the same person all along? Were Noboru Wataya and Boris Manskinner the same person too? Was rebel in baseball uniform No.4 both Toru and Noboru at the same time?

Kind of silly though, that it all boiled down to that - the dubiously honourable hero retrieving the promiscuous damsel in distress - yay gender roles... yay - in an otherworldly battle reminiscent of Inception's proportions. Though I don't think it's as simple as that, for if May, Kumiko and Creta are the same person (which I still think might be the case) (and if there's one thing this story puts forward without a doubt) it follows that no one story is "the truth".

But then, the one other relevant impression left in me was the one provided by the guitar player from Sapporo, that first night on stage: this is another story about stories. This is a premise I have always enjoyed (as most of "The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman is based on it - note, I hardly think Gaiman and Murakami are similar authors, there have only happened to be these two common traits), but this was, for me, a completely new focus to it:

Seeing individuals suffer or rejoice, we empathize - this is scientifically supported by what are called "mirror neurons" - but we have to look at pain or joy to the eyes to feel this, both for mirror neurons to trigger, and for such accounts to be as strong as they can be: the stories of massacres in the Siberian mines trigger indignation, helplessness, loss of faith. But the vivid description of the man being skinned alive in the middle of the Mongolian steppes, the telling of the chinese hostages being bayonetted to death, and the continuous cracking of skulls... Those trigger physical revulsion, nausea, nightmares, and tears. Individual stories matter. And looking back upon this as an age-old story of the struggle between creation and destruction, told in such personal terms, I think - maybe - I can forgive the winding roads.

"The Day of the Triffids" - John Wyndham (19-30 September)

A while back I said that the strongest message I got from "The Shadow over Innsmouth" was a sort of abhorrence towards the nasty inside of us. After reading "The Day of the Triffids", I think that anything that Lovecraft made me feel falls short of the revulsion Bill Masen went through. Several times.

Shortly after reading Lovecraft I felt like jumping right into Wyndham, because I thought they were both about some species or other taking over the world. Of course, it's never quite as simple as that, is it?

Where to begin... It seems I couldn't find a more appropriate moment to read this - the day after I move back into London. I would try to read outside as often as possible to get a clearer impression of the setting (at least for the London bits, but some overgrown gardens in my university campus would suffice at other times), but needless to say, I can no longer cross the Waterloo bridge every morning without feeling a kind of haunting when gazing at the skyline. There are things though, which I'm not sure I want to admit to myself.

Partly it has to do with what Isadora Wing called a kind of satisfactory helplessness in the face of natural catastrophes. I believe this is the same feeling that lets Bill and Josella say that they're happier in Shirning than they were before. It is also because of this fleeting image: Ozymandias.

Bill, Josella, Beadley and even Coker spend the big part of the story figuring out how to write the antithesis to the Percy B. Shelly poem. After all, the catastrophe did give them a chance to start anew, right? If we just assume (given we've sympathized enough with them throughout the novel) they're more or less on the right track, then this kind of lazy cataclysm was also slightly endearing. Or would these new ruins eventually become tourist attractions in the distant future?

Then again, it hasn't been easy getting there, of course. I can't remember the last time a book made me so sick, as when Bill describes some of the horrors he came across: the man on his way to his last drinks remembering his wife and children; a young man holding and comforting a little girl as he trudged towards the window at the end of the hallway; a blind girl who offers the most she can give in hopes of keeping her only chance of surviving around her...

But well, the journey certainly teaches. And I was also surprised by how relevant almost every commentary and discussion was to the world today; not only in the contents (say, the practicalities of leading a search party) but also the fact that all characters are really forced to cooperate and challenge their views from time to time, slowly becoming admirably fair people - thankfully, no silly U.S.Americans in shiny jet-packed armours playing the high-school heroes.

I grew specially fond of Susan as she was the one to represent, what I guess would be the "new kind" of people, that generation that grew up in the ideal point to acquire a no-nonsense character. However, I also have to say I found Coker to be one of the most interesting characters, as he seemed to be a really useful (and rare) mix of the thinker and the doer, besides being a kind of universal translator, which I found hilarious - no matter how much I shared Bill's frustration in his captivity, I easily began to forgive him as I got to know him. Bill himself was an interestingly thoughtful fellow, because even though he often avoided taking a stand in practical matters, he held fast to his principles when he was challenged. However, some things about him seemed a bit queer at times - for example, I never really understood how fast or why his relationship with Josella actually sparked at the beginning (maybe that's what happens after a catastrophe? we all become helpless sleazes?).

In the end, adaptation is key. And I think this is well put by a man who wanders around London decisively prodding around him with a stick, and complaining about all these newly blind people as if they should have learned to live without eyesight earlier in their lives. Maybe they offered courses for "sonar-orienteering" in case you thought you'd go blind? Maybe that's what books are?

"The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham, 16. -23. September (Sunniva)

Yes, man. I probably sneaked this book into the list because I remembered a conversation I had with my uni housemate Emma years ago. We were discussing our enjoyment of Science Fiction written in the 1950s or thereabouts, and how interesting it can be to see what inventions the authors have trusted us with in the year 2000. She mentioned this book, which is more of a Dystopia, and how she liked it because they also poke around a bit in her local geography of Devizes and Marlborough.

Never did I expect it to be this well-written. Or this creepy. I usually stay away from horror stories and suchlike before bedtime (The Shadow over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft was impossible to read after 9 pm), because I have a very active nightly imagination. And right enough, as I was carrying this book with me through Finnmark (about as far north as you can go in Norway), speaking Spanish with my Nicaraguans and Mexicans along the way, and only reading it during the quiet hours before bedtime, I have had so many strange dreams. There have been people that wanted rescuing. There have been strange dystopian places where people, including me, have had to trust complete strangers on their word, and ask beggars for their food. I even think my dream a few nights before I finished the book, about one lady wanting to commit suicide, and later on a group of teenagers wanting the same thing, come from this book.

WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILERSBecause right from the beginning, some twelve pages into the story, we have suicides. There are plenty of people who can't handle being suddenly blind, or who realise what a struggle there will be to survive, and choose another way out. My dream was incredibly disturbing, and I am choosing to believe it had with all the occurrences of suicides in the book, because I don't want to believe it has anything to do with anyone else.

"It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that 'it can't happen here' – that one's own little time and place is beyond cataclysms." 

p.86

What makes this book so potent and convincing is the straight forward language that Wyndham uses. Even on the first page does he talk about the end of the world. He has a brilliant way of mixing information about what has happened and will happen with seemingly random descriptions of his surroundings. Even many of these have a value later in the book, either as plot points or just as groundwork for what will come. Much of the smaller details make the book so much more likely. Like how the press uses several tentative names for the triffids, such as trigons, trilogs, trinits, and trippets, all "near-scientific", or "quasi-etymological". Like they always do.

There are also plenty of corners marked in this book, as you will see from the quotes dotted around this review. Of course it is a commentary on how we've developed our society with too many machines, not knowing where anything is made or how, not relying on nature and so on. The plants are taking over. More intriguing is that this book was written more than sixty years ago, and this problem – our distance from the actual world – is just getting bigger.

"...the amount we did not know and did not care to know about our daily lives is not only astonishing, but somehow a bit shocking. I knew practically nothing, for instance, of such ordinary things as how my food reached me, where the fresh water came from, how the clothes I wore were woven and made, how the drainage of cities kept them healthy." 

p.16

I still don't know half of this.

There were no characters I sympathised with very much, except for the protagonist of course, because he is most the only character we get to follow for a long while. I did however project other people onto the characters in the book. Juan writes a little like John, or Bill, therefore they are the same person. Josella is in fact Erica Jong, who in her turn is of course Isadora Wing. Coker is the character I would have liked to see more of, to turn him from your standard engaged representant for the working class (I will give you my favourite of these: Mr Higgins in North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell) into a someone I am glimpsing underneath.

Mr Thornton and Mr Higgins, the best video I could find

Josella suffers from a similar problem to Coker's – she's borderline stereotype. Of course the first non-blind girl -nay, person - the protagonist meets is very good-looking, three or four inches shorter than him, blonde, although not too blonde, strong, and definitely middle class. Who had a short teenage rebellion before going back to her safe family home. Please, Mr Wyndham.

But still. All the moral questions! This book is so intriguing. Will you help a larger amount of people for some time, or a smaller amount of people for a longer time? There is actually some very sad research, also known as cold logic, that our charity funds would be spent better if we helped a few children throughout their lives, instead of giving nutrition packs to millions and millions of them, which will last one month. But we can't do that. How would you choose the children? So we/NGOs/the state is/are always Coker in the beginning of the book.

I could write the longest review yet, even though Fear of Flying seemed more important to me than this book. There are themes of divisions of class, and how different classes form after a disaster. There are also supposedly radical ideas of free love, while the underlying message seems to be that we must all be man and wife living together. There are supposedly some ideas that men and women are equal, but when it comes to it, the man works outside, doing the hunting and gathering of materials, while the women stay inside to cook, sew, and repair. Then again, we are in the fifties. Then again, Wyndham shouldn't pretend he's being radical and new when he's really not. Maybe he believed he was.

"'You know perfectly well that women can do – or rather did – handle the most complicated and delicate machines when they took the trouble to understand them. What generally happens is that they're too lazy to take the trouble unless they have to.'" 

p.175

"'You are Josella Playton, author of -'
'You're quite wrong,' she interrupted him, firmly. 'I'm Josella Mason, author of "David Masen".'"

p.253

There is also the shortly mentioned, but slightly frightening, idea that most people need to be herded, because they are not intelligent enough to know their own good.

Why did we include the soundtrack in "how to write a review"? I seriously never listen to music while I am reading. If I hear it, I'm not listening.

My favourite quote to finish this rambling review:

"The word was 'when', but the tone was 'if'." 

p.207

*This edition: 1974, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England