Tengo Kawana as Odysseus in Haruki Murakami's "1Q84"

Tengo Kawana, the protagonist of Haruki Murakami's "1Q84," is part Odysseus and part Stephen Dedalus.  There's certainly a journey to his problems but also the perverse palpitations that the journey is an empty one, and that just like Dedalus' epiphany, the rewards are simply not worth the cause.  As a master of characterization, Murakami creates a Tengo Kawana that is the epitome of Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces."  Of course many readers feel it is useless to follow a hero on a journey that yields no reward, but with Tengo it is much different.  I say this not only because the young man is a highly identifiable with the reader, but mainly because sympathy/empathy (especially brought out for an imaginary character) is a human gift close to extinction these days.  Tengo is the person you want to sit down next to, the complete stranger crying in the subway car whom you don't know but you wish you could put your arm around him and console him in some way.
To begin with, Tengo's past is as tragic as they come in fiction.  His earliest memory is that of his mother exposing her breast to a man Tengo know it is not his father (hence the right or wrong conclusion that his mother was an adulterer).  The memory follows him to adult life, after a childhood where his mother, having disappeared from his life, is particularly present in the form of emotional pain.  Tengo's father, an NHK subscription fee collector is distant, resentful and emotionally abusive to him, taking Tengo on long subscription collecting routes.  There's a chapter in the middle of the novel when Tengo goes out and visit his elderly father at a nursing home.  On his way there he reads a paperback of short stories which includes a story entitled "Town of Cats."  The visit yields very few answers for poor Tengo, although he realizes he didn't go there seeking any.  The imagery and emotional beat of this chapter is excruciatingly painful and might make the toughest of readers shed a tear.

Enter Mr Ushikawa, a mysterious character who works for a "foundation" seeking to give Tengo a large amount of money in order for Tengo to work on his own novel uninterrupted.  What is happening in reality is Mr Ushikawa is trying to purchase Tengo's exit from the complicated world of "1Q84" (the parallel world, not the novel) for a purpose that is unclear and not yet revealed at this point in the novel.  It is clear, however, that Tengo's involvement in the re-writing of "Air Chrysalis" is the main factor behind Ushikawa's persistent ways; at least, that much is clear!  And as new revelations continue (such as the double-flip with the "dowager" and her potential connection to "The Little People"), it would be easy to connect Ushikawa as another agent of "The Little People," although at this point it strikes me quite unlikely due to its over-simplistic twist (not a habit by a master-conniver such as Murakami).  I wouldn't be surprise if Ushikawa turns out to be Tengo's real father, etc., but that's just my imagination.
"The Town of Cats" story appears as an allegory to the larger plot issues of "1Q84."  Will there be a revelation regarding this?  Will Ushikawa's character turn out as the archetypal Shakespeare's court jester, coming in in the middle of a serious scene to make some over-the-top remark, a seemingly nonsense statement that ends up being the key to the entire play.  I continue to read this novel with great care and calculated concentration... I don't think I've enjoyed this so much since graduate school.

Technique and Mastery of Plot in Haruki Murakami's "1Q84"

There's much to say about a 900+ page novel, especially if that novel is dependent on highly sophisticated story-telling techniques.  I am about half-way with "1Q84" and all I can say is that the novel not only displays Murakami's genius, but it does something else that might not help it make a commercial success (in a good way).  Literary fiction is not really the silver bullet needed to land on top of the NYT bestsellers list, if you catch my drift.  What is brilliant about "1Q84" is precisely what does not help it become a more widely or popular book.  Again, it is not designed to do that, and the fact that literary fiction is to "readers for the sake of escapism" as water is to oil, is the reason we need to keep at least one aspect of that argument nicely qualified.

The novel's amazing plot lines (main and sub) drive the story forward quite fast, but a moment changes everything when the reader discovers things had been taking place right under the sentences he/she happens to be reading at the time.  This is more than just a nice allegory to the many parallels of the plot line.  For example, I quickly became enamored of the character of the "dowager" and her complicated yet loving relationship with Aomame.  Since the chapters jump between Aomame and Tengo, I also found myself wanting to finish the current Tengo chapter just to see if the "dowager" would appear in the next Aomame chapter.  But the reader ignores the dowager's benevolence at his/her own risk.  It was far too simple, far too clean and clear cut.  It is only much later when the "Leader" is asking Aomame to send him to the other world that one slowly becomes aware not all things were right about the "dowager."  This, I believe, was probably one of the most clever, well-planned and amazingly structured pieces of Murakami's technique in story telling since "A Wild Sheep Chase," or "The Elephant Vanishes."  The levels of parallel plots and character existences in "1Q84" are enough to send an existentialist running off a tall building, or a philosopher in general looking for the law of alchemy again.  Here's Aomame, there's Fuka-Eri.  There's Tengo, and here's Aomame.  There are two-moons, and neither one of them is representative of either the world they are currently inhabiting or the one they left behind.... and behind this incredilbe maze of hopscotch, there is the truth of the story.
Then there's the element of "The Little People."  It was quite obvious to me as a reader that the novel inside the novel ("Air Chrysalis") is a parallel world running along sides of the current narrative presently being read.  This reminds me of the very end of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," when the protagonist realizes he is trying to translate the same story he is currently inhabiting from a Sanskrit manuscript, and everything gets blown away by the strong wind of reality.  So far, this is frankly Haruki Murakami's best and most innovative novel to-date.  I can't wait to see what happens next.

Haruki Murakami's "1Q84" and "The New York Times" misread

Haruki Murakami is known for his vast imagination.  Most of the times, that very same imagination tends to get him in trouble with critics.  Murakami is one of those writers you have to follow (if you were lucky you would have followed him from the very start) and grow with him both in terms of style and content.  By my own admission to other people who inquire about him, I have to say that Murakami is not for everyone.  If you cannot suspend your disbelief (a crucial variable in order to enjoy fiction, especially literary fiction), then Murakami is not for you.  In addition, if you don't like feeling like you just walked right into a Salvador Dali painting, then Murakami is not for you.

Case in point: Kathryn Schulz.  I agree with Ms. Schulz that there are by far too many similes, particularly in the first chapter.  Yet, trying to problematize a Murakami simile can lead one down a disturbing road to nowhere.  One must simply read them and enjoy them for what they are artistically, rather than taking it word by word, defining them and then having to reverse your opinion back to the acceptance of literary techniques and device usage.  For example, Ms. Schulz asserts that “it sounded less like applause and more like an endless Martian sandstorm.” I’ve never heard a Martian sandstorm (and I presume Murakami hasn’t either, although one wonders) while then returning to her important statement that "yet the simile seems, in its strangeness, precisely right." My advice to newcomers to Murakami is as follows: if you cannot simply read Murakami without suspension of disbelief, then Murakami is not for you.  Although I don't doubt Ms. Schulz knows Murakami well enough to know it's just "Murakami being Murakami."  Of course, Ms. Schulz' account of her reading is not without merit--it is as closely a reading of a long, long novel can be, and insightful in content.  I wonder if Ms. Schulz has read the Lieutenant Mamiya account on "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and whether she had the same inclination to dissect similes.  If she did, it must have been a long and painful process, to be sure.


I must list the overwhelming amount of similes that Murakami employs in order to give Ms. Schulz credit for pointing out that one alone.  Here are some of the most outrageous ones:


"With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents."


"'Decisiveness was key when I bought it,' the driver said, like a retired staff officer explaining a past military success."


"... all her knowledge of the piece came to her by reflex, like a flock of birds swooping through an open window."


"The wrinkles on the back of his neck moved like some kind of ancient creature."


"As she listened to the long recorded applause, it sounded less like applause and more like an endless Martian sandstorm."


"... she felt the surface of the road shake--or, rather, undulate--through her high heels, as if she were walking on the deck of an aircraft carrier on a stormy sea."


If you can't read any of this (in the short span of 10 pages) without having to look at them literally first, then, as I have said before, Murakami is not for you.  I am only a few chapters in and I suspect because I am a sucker for Murakami (and because my suspension of disbelief is so quick) that I am in for another masterful Murakami epic of distorted imagination and often crude account and descriptions of sexuality.  More to come.