I love Haruki Murakami; I’ve read most, though not all, of his books over the last 15 years or so since I discovered him. But I have a crappy memory, so except for The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (just about my favorite book ever except for The Famished Road by Ben Okri), I have trouble remembering the specifics of a lot of his books.
Anyway, I read Norwegian Wood a long time ago, and have not had a chance to revisit it. However, a book club I just joined will be discussing it in a few days. Anyone want to prompt my memory?
My recollection - and I’m posting this so you can all point and laugh, because it is almost certainly wrong - is that NW is rather a departure from most of his books, which tend to feature enigmatic subplots, an almost magic realist style, and compelling tributes to various classical music renditions (and perhaps some jazz). IF - huge if - I recall correctly, this book deals with a college relationship that dissipates, is fairly straightforward by HM standards, and has a lot of worshipful discussion of Beatles songs.
Alright folks - set me straight on the book. If you give me a precis, I can most likely dredge it up from the depths of my memory enough so that I can at least appreciate the book club discussion.
And feel free to ridicule me; I’ll join in with your amusement at how completely I can forget a book. (It’s kinda sad to be me, though. I think I was dropped on my head as an infant, because I forget so much. :()
It’s “the Catcher in the Rye of Japan” if the cliche rings true. Yeah, along with Pinball, 1973 and Hear the Wind Sing, NW is what Murakami’s voice was when he started writing. It wasn’t until A Wild Sheep Chase that things got weird.
Basically in NW, the protagonist Toru is coming of age, and he’s got two relationships with women that kinda sorta represent paths he could take. Naoko is artistic and unstable; Midori is stable and self confident. What he does, and doesn’t do, and what happens to the women shapes his path.
My son read it a couple of years ago and loves it so I got a bit reacquainted with it then. We got the little two-volume red and green Japanese-published version in English, so he carried it around.
We’re a big Haruki Murakami house. Some of his stuff doesn’t work - 1Q84 was, as one cartoonist showed it, like playing Murakami Cliche Bingo - but his good stuff works so well.
Guy meets girl and is invited to her sparely furnished apartment, but girl only wants to talk and has to work in the morning, so guy sleeps in the bath and after she has left in the morning, sets the room on fire. The End.
Or rather, that’s the story John Lennon wanted to portray to his wife.
I never got e vibe from the song that he wanted to nail her and she just wanted to talk. On the contrary, she was trying to seduce him, and he was having none of it.
Yes, why is why Lennon wrote it that way. He was trying to tell his wife that he was a good faithful husband who rejected the woman’s advances - even if he slept at her place. Lighting a fire was perhaps his way of saying it will never happen again.
