Andrew Post 1

I read a Buzzfeed article that describes Murakami's style as "normcore" and I found that to be hilariously accurate. Ironing shirts, cooking, drinking beer, tidying up the apartment: on the surface, Murakami's characters don't spend their time so much as they simply pass it. Their lives are filled by a series of routines and obsessive habits. And yet, I've never felt like Murakami's books really condemn the relatively normal lives (aside from the whole surreal metaphysical journey bits) of their main characters. There's no telling how much of the strange odyssey's Boku and his like embark on are results of their own inner lives as opposed to external forces. It's why the final chapters of A Wild Sheep Chase feature Boku largely alone, girlfriend gone, winter swiftly approaching in the mountains, his only company a dead friend who may or may not exist. Yet this is the point where the novel shines brightest, where Boku does little more than cook, read, and occasionally question the fundamentals of existence. It highlights the reason why I think so many people are drawn to Murakami's works again and again: he tells stories that value the maintenance and exploration of colorful inner lives. 

Here's a link to the article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/alannaokun/missing-and-finding-the-magic-of-haruki-murakami#.kt93rNxzx

Maylin Post #2

Having never read any of his works, I really didn't know what to expect from Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. Reading it along with Chandler's A Long Goodbye was an interesting way to compare the similarities and differences between both protagonists. Murakamis' short, simple sentence structure was an aspect that stood out to me immediately, as most works I've read always included long and elaborate descriptions that sometimes became paragraphs. It was very refreshing to see Murakami's style of writing and how he cut out any unnecessary words to keep everything short and sweet. 

There were times where I started wondering if some paragraphs in A Wild Sheep Chase were necessary, but after finishing the book I decided that the book would not be the same without all the words Murakami used. As mentioned in some of the analytic readings we've read in class regarding Murakami's writing style, he has a certain way of creating a rhythm with his words. It's possible that the rhythm Murakami establishes in his works would be disturbed by removing or changing some of the words. At the same time, it's possible that since we are reading the English translated versions of his works, there may be a disrupted rhythm compared to the original Japanese versions. Overall, I'm very honored to be able to read Murakami's works, and I'm looking forward to reading more of his works in the future.

Blog Post 1

So, for me, the intertextuality of Murakami isn't particularly novel on the basis that it is a relatively new convention that the complete 'originality' of literature is valued. In many cultures older writings, it was a sign of learnedness and understanding to reference works by literati who have come before. This was largely true up to the rise of the novel and the middle class. Some theories of the novel posit that the value of the novel itself is in its 'originality' and distinctiveness from other stories. On a certain level this may conflict with what we read of Barthes, but, if we understand the fuller argument and background of Barthes as a structuralist, what he likely means is that the specific arrangement of elements of binaries in the structure of the story. This is where Murakami becomes more interesting and intertextuality becomes far more interesting, because Murakami is certainly drawing on other works, but he uses their elements in a new and novel way so that while the structural elements may remain the greater meaning of the work is different.

Chloe's post

Ever since reading Murakami, I've started to draw more significance from every day occurrences or coincidences than normal. I do think that at times my life is like one of his novels, and it's exciting to think that there are elements of magical realism at work. It makes life more interesting, for sure. But in reality, these coincidences or patterns are usually meaningless. More often than naught, I make a list of questions while I'm reading the novel about certain quirky/strange characteristics or happenings but they are never addressed again, or resolved. That's the thing in Murakami's novels - although there is some sort of resolution to the bigger conflict, they still usually leave the reader wanting at the end. Little issues are never addressed, only implied or open to interpretation. I've learned to accept that that is his style, though - nothing is really definitive or concrete. That's a theme of his metaphysical world. Even the protagonist is unusually wishy-washy or passive, and he has to undergo a metaphysical change (usually triggered by a small happening, like a cat running away) that requires him to take charge of his life. And even though the change he undergoes may not seem that different, it definitely feels like there has been a shift from the main character's mindset. I enjoy that the most, because it seems realistic. 

Blog Post 1

In comparing Murakami and Conrad, both authors employ imagery in their storytelling to better understand the "reality" that they have created.  In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, we rely on Marlow to tell the story of what is was like being in Congo. He conveys his emotions by describing the nature of his surroundings. For instance, in the scene with the ornamental knobs surrounding Mr. Kurtz's sleeping quarters, at first glance, Marlow thought the knobs were decorations. But on closer examination, did he see that they were the skulls of the native people. There are layers to this scene, which reveals the sequence of what Marlow sees. Only when Marlow steps back, do we see the full picture that depicts hatred and racism towards the Congolese people.

Murakami also creates a setting that blends both Japanese and American aspects. In "Cooking Dinner Spaghetti in Japan," the act of cooking spaghetti is colorfully expressed. However, when he adds the eels to his spaghetti, the imagery not only conveys what is being written but also seems to disrupt the writing. His surreal-like imagery forces us to see what we take for granted through some sort of distorted lens. While the imagery helps the authors convey a story, it also creates ambiguity and forces readers to take a second glance at what we consider an everyday norm.

Blog Post 1

Having never actually read through a Murakami novel, besides a few excerpts from IQ84,  The Wild Sheep Chase, was an interesting introduction to Murakami's writing style and structure. The use of magical realism and the way he includes symbolism was at first quite confusing. However, comparing it to works such as The Long Goodbye, and other books that Murakami has been influenced by, one can understand where he may have been influenced by.
     Haruki Murakami's style and departure from typical Japanese subjects, makes his writing more universally applicable. As we see through Boku's journey, this could possibly be anyone's internal journey, however surreal it may seem. There were times when I was reading it that I wondered if it was necessary to have certain parts and why Murakami went to such lengths to incorporate it. For example, what was Boku's obsession with the model's ears supposed to represent? Or is it supposed to represent whatever interpretation the reader puts into it?
Because of A Wild Sheep Chase, I wonder if many of Murakami's novels also have an overall puzzling tone of surrealism. Maybe it's this mystery about him and his works that makes him so attractive.

Alison - Post 1: Translators

The Influences of Translators

Haruki Murakami is not shy about the massive amount of Western influence present in his works. As we have discussed, that is part of what makes his work so different from that of his Japanese contemporaries. However, in the initial stages of reading A Wild Sheep Chase, I actually found myself reminded the most of another translated-to-English crime novel, Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Both works, beyond being essentially detective novels, share some traits we have discussed before, like their descriptive sections and the short sentences also characteristic of Chandler. What sparked my comparison between the two, though, was their use of partitioning their works into titled section that often included specific dates during which the story occurred. Explicitly dating the events of a novel is something that I don't often come across, so it stuck out to me.

This made me wonder whether the authors were perhaps influenced by the same people, or even by each other; however, a small amount of research did not show much of a link. I kept thinking about it, and I began to wonder whether the English translators had any overlap in their documented influences. Of course, the structure of a work likely came from the original author himself, but I realized that I've never really considered the literary influences on a translator as to how a work may be translated. We know that each translator is different, but I've never thought too deeply on where these differences might stem from.

Unfortunately, translators do not usually attain the same degree of notoriety as the authors they translate, so there was not much information out there about the sources of influence for either of the two translators in question. I did manage to find, however, that the translator for Stieg Larsson listed Haruki Murakami as one of his favorite authors. This is not to say that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was then influenced by his like of Murakami (who knows whether Stieg Larsson or Murakami influenced the translator first?), but it is very interesting to think about the vast number of factors that play into the form a work takes when it is translated.

Blake Post 1

Two interesting links related to A Wild Sheep Chase / Murakami themes:

I found this Buzzfeed quiz: “Which Type Of Haruki Murakami Character Are You?” http://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/which-type-of-haruki-murakami-character-are-you#.qi9BB2MRJx

I think our class could make a better quiz. But, if you take the one on Buzzfeed, let me know your result. Here’s what I got:

Speaking of ears, an interesting excerpt from The Paris Review’s interview with Murakami where he talks about his female characters as "harbingers of the coming world" because of their sexuality: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami

In the same interview, Murakami comments on his development as a writer, which really took root with A Wild Sheep Chase:

Interestingly, Murakami calls A Wild Sheep Chase the beginning of his style but also apparently took inspiration from ‘rival’ author Ryu Murakami’s Coin Locker Babies. (Coin Locker Babies is about a gruesome type of infanticide that occurred most frequently in Japan and China, where an alarming number of unwanted babies were abandoned inside coin lockers to die.)

Charmaine Blog Post 1

Having read A Wild Sheep Chase once before, I found that I enjoyed it more the second time around. This pattern often occurs for me when reading Murakami. I think it's because I've let the story sink in after the first reading, and the second time I read it, I could focus more on the details. Now I can recall the details of A Wild Sheep Chase more clearly and can appreciate the story more.

In regards to A Wild Sheep Chase being a hard-boiled fiction, I couldn't really relate to it as a detective novel. However, I found that there were elements of mystery that added to the novel in every detail throughout the plot-line, and I really enjoyed the feeling of mystery that this brought. I think that the combination of mystery and magical-surrealism in Murakami's novels are my favorite aspects of his novels, as they set him distinctly apart from other contemporary writers.

Krystal Blog post 1

     I’ve heard of The Long Goodbye a long time ago for being an innovative, well-known detective story. And you can hear the name of “Chandler” a lot in my country, China. One respected Chinese writer, named Qian Zhong Shu, likes and admires him a lot (just like murakami.)

       Although The Long Goodbye is a detective story, I feel like that the story doesn’t have many detective elements. That being said, the book does not only focuses on how to unravel a mystery, but rather is a literary and artistic masterpiece. I like the protagonist very much. Marlowe, the detective, is a private investigator. He is poor but he is not greedy for money. He is petty and low, but he is not “dirty.” He doesn’t have many friends but he treats his friend very well, especially the one he just met, terry. He helps him to escape, and refuses to talk about him even though he was arrested by the police. He didn’t give up searching for his friend throughout. His personality makes him standouts in the lower class.

       Unlike other detective story, this book is not that tense and doesn’t have a complicated plot with a quirky twist. It didn’t describe a lot the details and the process of Marlowe finding out the actual murder of Sylvia and Roger. Instead, Chandler focuses on depicting the characters. Everyone in the story, Roger Wade, Eileen Wade, Candy, Linda Roring, has a distinctive characteristic and personality. I think that’s why I appreciate the novel so much.  The ending is also impressive, when Marlowe unexpectedly met Terry again. At that time, Terry has a different appearance, and he looks unfamiliar to Marlowe.  It makes me feel a little upset.

Mystery in Murakami and Chandler  


  I've really enjoyed reading Murakami's short stories because he is able to really hone one what makes him so interesting and bizarre and make it more puzzling. In "Where I'm Likely to Find It," the reader only reads a couple pages of mystery and therefore the strangeness of Murakami's subjects ad events are that much more obvious. I appreciated Murakami's surreal-ness mixed into everyday life more in his other novels such as Sputnik Sweetheart and South of the Border West of the Sun than I did in A Wild Sheep Chase. Perhaps it is because those novels were later so Murakami had a stronger grasp on his craft. I felt at times that A Wild Sheep Chase knew where it was going but almost got a little bored with itself on the way and although everything that happened in the story was relevant plot-wise, it seemed to meander sometimes. In The Long Goodbye I had absolute confidence in Chandler the entire time I was reading the story that every detail was going to be resolved and we would be left with no questions. I thought Chandler made the red herring details as subtle as the large clues so that the reader was at his complete mercy. In A Wild Sheep Chase every detail was obvious in its importance from the beginning and the mystery was how the detail was important, not if a detail was important as in Chandler.

A post from Leyla Tonak

Haruki Murakami borrows heavily from the annals of the hard-boiled detective genre. His introspective and methodical everyman protagonist, often known only as “Boku,” the Japanese pronoun for “I,” encounters reinvented hard-boiled tropes in the new landscape of magical realism. A vague air of mystery winds through the endless hours spent in bars and movie theaters or on long journeys, the countless cups of coffee brewed and drunk, the reliable entrance and exit of quirky quasi-femmes fatales, interspersed with episodes of death or violence, dream sequences and matter-of-fact rumination on life’s idiosyncrasies. As often as Murakami borrows, he alters, so that the climax of his stories are not the whodunit reveal to which detective-genre fans are accustomed but quite the opposite, seeming to fade out or hang suspended in time, drawing vague and unformulated conclusions. The plots, of course, are also largely constituted by Murakami additions of bizarre and surreal encounters and experiences which certainly would not appear in the street-sense harsh pseudo-realism worlds of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade.

This intertextuality between Murakami and hard-boiled giants like Hammett and Chandler has been a recent discovery for me. It was not so long ago that I first discovered the film noir genre, and with it the gritty P.I.’s of hard-boiled detective fiction. When I entered the class, I had already read and loved several of Murakami’s books, totally unaware of their connection with the genre. So for me, my journey with Murakami has been rather like a surgery (or a skinning); first examining the body at face-value, seeing its skin and the functioning whole, and then looking beneath to explore the organs which operate unseen and make up the system. I have been journeying into Murakami, learning his influences, his critiques, his personal history and the effect of translation on his prose, only after discovering him with no prior knowledge of these things and being sucked into his world by the sheer force of his singular style. I understood some of his references of course, but this class has illuminated many more parallels. It’s an immensely rewarding way to experience an author, and I look forward to continuing the process of exploring Murakami’s biology.

Melancholy Ending

A Wild Sheep Chase was my first full experience with Haruki Murakami's work.  After finishing the book I am unsure about my feelings towards the ending.  Boku's girlfriend leaves him and her special ear power is taken away.  On top of that the friend Boku was looking for turned out to be dead.  Boku is a hard boiled character and is unfazed by these things but the ending is still slightly depressing.  Despite Boku being fine I am left in a damper mood.  I have never read any other novels by Murakami and it makes me wonder if Murakami's other works also have a melancholy ending.

Murakami Gives Advice to Fans

We all know that Murakami has many fans worldwide, so it's no surprise that some fans would like to receive advice or answers to questions they may have. In 2015, Murakami responded to these fans by starting an advice column called "Murakami-san No Tokoro", which translates into "Murakami's Place". 

Image borrowed from Murakami's webpage where he answered fans: http://www.welluneednt.com/

The questions were interesting, but I think Murakami's replies were the highlight of the column. Murakami likes to keep his life details private, so some may believe that it's hard to get to know him personally. However, the advice column allows us to see how humorous Murakami really is with his unique and witty responses. Here are some questions and responses that were asked in the column:

Posts were borrowed from http://www.vulture.com/2015/02/best-of-haruki-murakami-advice-column.html

Most Frequently-Assigned English Books

Here is a table from the Washington Post article I mentioned yesterday, comparing the most frequently-assigned books at all schools vs. the Ivies. Heart of Darkness is on both lists.

To read the whole article, click here. 

Adventures of Sherlock Homes

In the current section of reading, boku is seen again reading the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and Professor Elliott mentioned why he would be reading that. I believe it's a nod to the detective fiction genre that Murakami uses as inspiration for The Wild Sheep Chase because while boku isn't exactly a P.I he is sent to find a sheep that he innocently used in a photograph. The circumstances and the job are something a P.I like Marlowe would do.

T.S. Eliot liked detective fiction!

Here is a link to an article by Paul Grimstad in the newest New Yorker. I thought it might interest you since we have been talking a lot about detective fiction lately.


http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-makes-great-detective-fiction-according-to-t-s-eliot



And here is the first paragraph:

FEBRUARY 2, 2016

What Makes Great Detective Fiction, According to T. S. Eliot

In 1944 the literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote an exasperated essay in the pages of The New Yorker titled “Why Do People Read Detective Stories?” Wilson, who at the time was about to go abroad to cover the Allied bombing campaign on Germany, felt that he’d outgrown the detective genre by the age of twelve, by which time he’d read through the stories of the early masters, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. Yet everyone he knew seemed to be addicted. His wife at the time, Mary McCarthy, was in the habit of recommending her favorite detective novels to their émigré pal Vladimir Nabokov; she lent him R. F. Heard’s beekeeper whodunit “Taste for Honey,” which the Russian author enjoyed while recovering from dental surgery. (After reading Wilson’s essay, Nabokov advised his friend not to dismiss the genre tout court until he’d tried some Dorothy Sayers.) Surrounded on all sides by detection connoisseurs, Wilson sounded genuinely perplexed when he wondered, “What, then, is the spell of the detective story that has been felt by T. S. Eliot and Paul Elmer More but which I seem to be unable to feel?”