Maylin Post #4

Although Norwegian Wood and A Wild Sheep Chase had similar themes, I ended up liking Norwegian Wood more even though I disliked some of the characters. I actually liked most of the characters from A Wild Sheep Chase, so I find it strange how I don't prefer this book instead.

 I found myself pitying the female characters more than the male characters even though everyone had their own struggles they were dealing with. Perhaps it was because I felt like Nagasawa and Watanabe were too indecisive with their relationships and were hurting the other party unnecessarily. Nagasawa was the character I hated the most, as he was mistreating and taking advantage of Hatsumi's kind personality. He tries to justify his decisions and that makes it worse. I feel like he was partially responsible for Hatsumi's decision to commit suicide and it annoyed me how he wrote how sad he was to Watanabe in a letter. I whole-heartedly agreed with Watanabe's decision to stop responding to Nagasawa.

 I did feel sympathetic to Watanabe, but I'm not entirely convinced he was in love with Naoko or Midori. While he was not in an official relationship with either in the book, his decision to sleep with other women while sorting out his feelings was a bad move in my opinion. Although Midori does come off as bossy, I can't really blame her for getting angry at Watanabe's insensitivity to her feelings. Also, while I do see the relevance of Watanabe sleeping with Reiko to tie loose-ends with Naoko, I had to wonder how Watanabe would explain this to Midori, who was waiting for him to sort out his feelings. I'm actually surprised Watanabe didn't sleep with Hatsumi. Murakami never wrote out an ending to Watanabe and Midori's potential relationship, but I think that's ok as it lets the readers decide what happens to them. As much as I dislike how indecisive Watanabe is, I hope he and Midori have a happy future together.

Chloe's Post #4

I personally love Midori as a character. She's the only comedic element in the novel, and she's such a colorful, honest, odd person. She reminded me of May Kasahara from Wind-Up Bird. But I didn't like that she was so demanding with Watanabe; she could be very selfish and leading with him. I also think I was against them as a couple because I was secretly rooting for Naoko, although as a character I knew that she wasn't as engaging and probably would make Watanabe unhappy because she didn't love him. Yet once Midori and W actually declared their love for one another and got together, I was very fond of them as a couple. 

The ending was, like we discussed in class, mixed. It's not a definitively happy note despite the fact that Watanabe finally reaches out to Midori and is ready to be with her. He feels lost among a sea of people and is having some sort of internal crisis following the revelation that he is ready to commit. Personally, I would've just ended it after he says "I want the two of us to start from the beginning." but because Murakami is Murakami, his novels always have open-endings and multiple interpretations.

Suicide and sex were two common themes throughout Norwegian Wood. It feels like Watanabe treats sex like shaking a woman's hand or something - he does it with nearly all of the women in the novel except for Hatsumi (and I still thought they were going to do it when he escorted her home). And there were four suicides in the novel - Kizuki, Naoko, Naoko's sister, and Hatsumi. 

Change in the Mediator

We spoke about it class briefly, and I wanted to explore the idea more fully. The idea arose that in terms of the increased eroticism and explicit sexuality that occurred later on in the book that Toru became a sort of mirror through which each character mediated or navigated their own psychic issues via sexuality. For me this was an intriguing idea that I found very justified, but, to an extent, it clashes with my view that Reiko is the mediator and guide, particularly to the realm of the dead.

I think both views have merit, and I'm going to try and synthesize them. This book, more than any of the other Murakami stories we have read deals with relationships and mediation. I think the psycho-sexual component is clearly present, as nearly every character has some sexual 'quirk' and psychological issue we can relate it to (I quote to emphasize the arbitrary nature of normative values).

As Reiko points out shortly after being introduced, she often gets confused whether she is staff or patient herself. If we extend this to all the characters, they are all both mediators and mediated. It is through the relationships and sex that determines whether the characters are able to move forward or not. Note that the only person who Toru completely cuts off by the end is Nagasawa who writes it all off as meaningless, a value Toru seems to espouse but ultimately does not go along with, partly perhaps due to Hatsumi's criticism of it, finding a certain resolution with his relationship with Naoko by having sex with Reiko in Naoko's clothing, so that she becomes a proxy. Likewise, Naoko is able to resolve the situation in a sense by conferring to Toru, through Reiko, that it wasn't his fault or anything he did wrong. And it would seem that some of Reiko's own issues are resolved through the ordeal. Certainly, we could say that Naoko was initially attempting to come to terms with Kizuki's death via her relationship with Toru, earlier in the book.

Alison Post 4

Finishing Norwegian Wood, I began to wonder if Toru had committed suicide like so many others in his life had. He had danced on the edge between life and death for the majority of the work, with his associations with Naoko, and seemed utterly through with the world once she died. After sleeping with Reiko four (the number symbolic of death) times he seemed to be in another world when trying to contact Midori. However, I remembered that the novel starts out in the future with the rest of the work essentially being a flashback, which put a hole in the idea that Toru committed suicide at the end of the novel. So, I looked online to see what other people thought, and found Jay Rubin's response to a reader who asked about this topic in a forum. (Quoted in a comment a little down on the page: https://www.flickr.com/groups/22186094@N00/discuss/72057594129000378/)

"Hmmm, Simon's view makes sense--and is certainly consistent with the presence of "death" in Murakami's "other world" (as in DANCE DANCE DANCE), but to conclude that he is a ghost (a ghost who can write)--and has been a ghost for eighteen years--seems to me to throw out too many of the ground rules of reality that the novel itself has established since its opening lines. I don't think Murakami is deliberately jerking his readers around the way some of those movie examples (which do not involve written--published--pages) do. 

If you look at my HARUKI MURAKAMI AND THE MUSIC OF WORDS, though, on pp. 158-59, I emphasize the presence of death at the end of the book. The "four" occasions of lovemaking with Reiko seem deliberately to evoke the traditional Japanese association between "four" (shi) and "death" (shi): "By sleeping (four times) with Reiko, a sexually functional surrogate for the sexually dysfunctional Naoko, he implicitly chooses death and negativity (Naoko) over life (Midori); Toru will live with his memories of Naoko rather than give himself over to the vitality of Midori."

As translator, I chose to encourage this interpretation by using the expression "dead center" in the last line. The Japanese word for "center" is strongly emphasized but English "dead center" may have been--dare I say?--overkill."

It seems reasonable to think that Toru may not have died and instead gone on to live his life with the actually living Midori, but while still keeping one foot in the world of death. As Toru explained, death is a part of life. I believe he chose life, though not to the exclusion of death.

Alison Post 3

One could look to any of a number of traits of Haruki Murakami's works in order to make the argument that they fit into the theoretical scheme outlined within postmodernism. Our readings gave us a fairly clear understanding of the current theorizing around this way of interpreting the world, and Murakami fits the framework.

One such fitting trait is randomness for the sake of being random. We have seen this in number of Murakami's works so far. There is the sheep man from Wild Sheep Chase, the spontaneous attack on a McDonald's in the short story, as well as many of Midair's outbursts in Norwegian Wood. Murakami does not shy away from the random in his works, and they become all the more interesting for it.

While being random, the works still exist within a canon and are impossible to analyze entirely outside of that history. It is difficult to ignore that Murakami's writings break the mold of what had been the standard way of writing in Japan, and engaged the postmodern by utilizing "new contexts." Indeed, Murakami seems to love finding ways to use things already in the world in new ways, like titles, plot points, or genres. Here Murakami also embraces the postmodern rejection of tradition and traditional values in art. He does not follow the tradition of Japanese literature (as is evidenced by the established literary figures' criticisms of his style), and allows his characters the space to come to terms with the messiness of life, even as they still try to cling onto socially acceptable "order" - perhaps by having a 12-step plan for ironing shirts and turning to this order when life gets messy and difficult.

Charmaine Blog Post 4

Norwegian Wood was definitely a different experience to me than reading Murakami's other novels. In an obvious sense, the storyline took a more realistic turn as opposed to A Wild Sheep Chase or 1Q84. Rather than having an alternate universe or talking animals, the experiences of the Norwegian Wood characters all felt realistic, although Murakami added a twist to each of them. People fall in love, a love triangle forms, but it isn't a fairy tale. Instead, multiple characters commit suicide, some are committed to psychiatric facilities, others become estranged from each other, and so on. It was a tragic and bizarre love story with no clear happy ending, but a love story nonetheless; Murakami puts a heavier emphasis on the romance in this novel, as opposed to some of his other novels that I've read where the plot lies elsewhere.

However, the novel still feels very Murakami-esque in qualities that match other Murakami novels. The male character, though on the younger side, has a personality and tone of narration typical of Murakami's protagonists. And like in many of Murakami's novels, the male character has multiple female "love interests" that the protagonist jumps between, specifically Naoko and Midori. The way Murakami describes the female characters' physical appearances is also similar to how he details them in other novels, with the infamous blue dress, in this novel on Hatsumi, popping up toward the end of the novel.

krystal blog post 4

The tone and style of the novel Norwegian Wood is pretty slow, flat and simple. However, through the words, I can feel a great power seems to resonate with me.  This is a story about love, friendship, and moreover, sex.  It relates accurately the life and mentality of the youth. Every characters in the story has their own personalities, while Watanabe being dull and emotionless, Naoko being shy and conservative, Nagasawa being outgoing and talkative, Midori being optimistic and sunny. They represent different people that we can possibly meet in our life.

Growing up, they have to face different choices. Watanabe has to choose between Naoko and Midori. Naoko was terribly ill and she chose to suicide. Midori chose Watanabe over her boyfriend. Hatsumi chose suicide as well. Nagasawa chose studying abroad over Hatsumi. I think these characters are lonely and confused. They don’t really know what love and what their inner thoughts are. They don’t belong to anyone else. They had to find their own values and directions through this.  When some of the characters chose to end their lives, I feel a little pitiful and sympathetic for them.

The story reveals and reflects the perplexity of sex, love, friendship, self-valuable of the teenagers in the society at that time. Through the eyes of Watanabe, we see the youth of Japan in late 1960s with their puberty and frustration. It’s a story about growth.

Post 3

Recently in class we talked about Boku having qualities of some mental disorder.  Whenever he feels confused or nervous about something he resorts to cleaning or ironing as a way of coping with these feelings.  Although doing something familiar can help anyone cope with something confusing, the way that Boku does the cleaning is what makes it seem like he has a mental disorder.  He puts more effort than necessary to do the cleaning or ironing, like the twelve step process that he has in The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Boku does not only exhibit this characteristic in that novel either.  In The Wild Sheep Chase he completely cleans the house while waiting for the Rat or the Sheepman to show up.  When he realizes that he missed cleaning the mirror, it upsets him and is more than a minor annoyance.  It seems like he uses the cleaning as a way of maintaining mental stability during scenes where he is becoming stressed.  These type of actions are common with people who are on the autism spectrum.  The use of something familiar to comfort oneself and the keen attention to the process of actions is common among people on the autism spectrum.

Blog Post 3

The male protagonists in Murakami's stories seem to have an autistic or Asperger's quality when interacting with women. This could be due to the woman and man being quite different, or that the relationships tend to randomly occur. It doesn't help when the male characters have a lot of identity issues going on as well. The men in Murakami's stories often view their female partners as being difficult to understand, but also that the women have something that they themselves are missing or that the women are there for comfort. For instance, there is the sense of clarity with the woman and her ear in A Wild Sheep Chase or the innocence of the woman in Barn Burning.

It's really rare to see a couple who stays together happily – although it does happen in The Second Bakery Attack – in Murakami's stories. The sudden breakups, the misunderstandings and the spontaneous actions between the man and woman deconstruct the traditional values of marriage and relationships. In Murakami's stories, such as in A Wild Sheep Chase, you often find the male character going from one woman to another. There is a sense of playfulness as well in the relationships that perhaps you wouldn't find in the constraints of a normal relationship. You never get the sense that the man and woman in the relationship were destined to be together in Murakami's stories, which gives a dismal outlook on the idealistic, romantic relationships.

Leyla's post #3

 Certain critics have said that Haruki Murakami’s writing falls under the heading of postmodernism. His magical realist style certainly lends itself well to the postmodern rejection of ultimate truths and inherent meanings, thus demonstrating its somewhat nihilistic approach which is often reinforced in the protagonist’s ambivalent or even apathetic response to events in his life. Further, Murakami’s books seem to embrace and accept the inherent messiness of life, not as something to be lamented or struggled against but rather leaned into. 

However, at the same time, Murakami deviates slightly from conceptions of postmodernism, most notably in his works’ underlying weighty existential themes, the element of nostalgia present in his stories, and in his male characters’ approach to women. 

Themes of death, isolation, self-knowledge, love - these are the topics of scholars and artists throughout modernity in their search for truth. While his vehicle for exploring them may be absurd or ironic, Murakami’s approach to these questions does not seem overtly self-conscious or quotational, as would be expected in postmodern writing. 

Most of Murakami’s narratives are set in the 60’s and 70’s, which for one facilitates his frequent use of landline phone calls, but also serves to inject an amount of nostalgia or glorification of a past era, sentiments not entirely aligned with the pillars of postmodern theory. 

Lastly, postmodernism has a connotation of being tied to radical, leftist social opinions ie. feminism, but Murakami protagonists can border on sexist in their relationships with women. At the very least, the women tend to be treated like objects or understood through the context of objects, and often act more as conduits for Boku’s self-discovery than as equal and desired partners. 

So perhaps Murakami really is better defined under the frustration banner of “paramodernism,” or at least he is composed of somewhat contradictory elements. Perhaps the friction between these elements is part of his appeal, or perhaps the very coexistence of such disparate parts is in itself postmodern. In general, pinning down any theory on Murakami is rather a wild sheep chase.

Andrew Post 2

Daniella's blog post touches on my biggest English major pet peeve: the book is always better than the movie. No! Wrong! Reject! Film and literature tell their stories in different ways and each has their own strengths and shortcomings. While a film may challenge how we originally imagined something while reading it, it's a good practice to lean into the way filmmakers have visualized a story because it can encourage us to consider the source material from outside our own perspectives. I'm sure if I had read Bakery Attack I would never have pictured the story unfolding in such a strange way. The  idiosyncratic camera moves, the exaggerated acting of the woman choosing what pastries she wants, the serious narration over such oddities all served to tell the story in an exciting new way. It made me think of Murakami's forays into critiquing capitalism (I believe we read an excerpt from Dance, Dance,Dance that touched on this). The woman agonizes over pastries because she is convinced that choosing melon bread over something else is indicative of the quality of her person and what sort of life she leads. It is the absurd extreme of consumerism: the idea that the things we buy somehow define and shape us. Even the narrator and his dolt of a friend feel that they can't just be given food, they expect to either take it through violence or to obtain it through some sort of exchange. Robbing the bakery is also a temporary fix for them. They'll just get hungry again later. 

It's important not let our preconceptions of a story too heavily influence our viewing of another interpretation. Even a bad adaptation of a work could lead us to a new way of looking at the source material, encouraging us to take no interpretation for granted. 

Post 3

In class, I brought up the late David Bowie starting off as a mime who studied under a famous pantomime in relation to Barn Burning and the girl who studied under a famous pantomime. Given Murakami's relationship to music, it makes me wonder if there is some connection or reference here, but I wasn't able to find any connection between the two. Still, I wanted to follow up and try to complete a connection at least between pantomime and Barn Burning and explore why I feel there is some connection, however vague it may be.

For me, pantomime gets back to the idea of the signifier and signified the word and the concrete object it arbitrarily evokes. From what I understand, pantomime depicts a signified object or action--say for instance, climbing a tree--the act of signifying is so strong that the illusion of the signified being physically present is evoked. We see this to some extent with the Cathedral. The blind man is able to help the husband feel something higher from the cathedral, despite not being religious by drawing, signifying the cathedral.

Though, the darker implications of the boyfriend are also present for interpretation, I feel that, in many ways, the protagonist of Barn Burning has been made to signify the act of burning the barn. After all, he did all the meticulous planning of selecting which barns could be burned, even thought about doing it himself. In trying to figure out which barn would be burned, he practically pantomimes the act of how you would go about burning a barn, if you were to.

This then reinforces darker implications of the story. If the protagonist is pantomiming burning a barn, is he somehow complicit in the boyfriend's darker desires and actions or is the boyfriend in some way his alter ego? In many ways this actually does get back to my original comment about David Bowie and his Mask performance and relationships of performance, identity confusion, and alter egos. In the short skit, the actor purchases a mask which he puts on as a performance. The performance is highly popular, and he keeps performing it, until he is unable to take the mask off and strangles himself in attempting to. In the epilogue, there was no mention of a mask in newspapers, leading the viewer to wonder if there ever was a mask or if by taking on a certain identity--by pantomiming, if you will--there is truly a difference between that action and the real thing.

I couldn't find it on Youtube; it may have been taken down after his death, but I attached a link to the skit if anyone is interested.

David Bowie's The Mask

Post 2

I would say the only similarity between Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing" and Murakami's "The Second Bakery Attack" is that they are linked by a setting based on food. The tone and the overall theme in both are quite different even though both contain metaphysical symbolic elements. In Carver's short story, the morbid accidental death of her son turns the bakery setting into a place of consolation and comfort. Where as the characters constantly avoid the bakery as it is a reminder of the tragedy that fell upon them; in contrast, the couple in "The Second Bakery Attack" actively go to search to find food. Murakami's short story plays on a much lighter quirkier note with the couple going to McDonald's-- a cheap, fast food place. The setting that they rob provides even more of a comedic undertone and asserts the magical realistic qualities of Murakami's writing. It's interesting to see that the Boku here is also a passive character in comparison to his wife. The wife takes control when they're at McDonald's, leading the action and dialogue of the story. Boku instead pays attention to himself and his surroundings more so than the robbery. However, both stories portray main characters that lack something. There's an indication of emptiness and/or hunger for something to either physically or emotionally complete them, which leads them to a place of food.

Murakami and postmodernism

According to got Klage's article, the characteristics of a postmodernism novel "doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.



" and "favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.

" Murakami while has many things that mark his work as postmodernism like pastiche, an artistic work imitating another artistic work, because his novel A Wild Sheep Chase echos Raymond Chandler's Long Goodbye and his short story Barn Burning echos the ending of Raymond Carver's story the Blackbird pie. There is also themes of inner reflection and fragmentation in his novels. However, Murakami is a reluctant postmodernist because he wrote without the intention of being well. He became a writer by coincidence and the nonsensical, mystical elements in his work adds the fragmentation that defines post monderism.However, there is meaning to his work. Even though Murakami is famously known for not giving clarification and saying that it means what you think it means, which implies that it is up the reader to figure out the themes of the story. It is like Boku at the end of A Wild Sheep Chase because Boku may not have found the meaning of life, but he is on the journey to figure it out. We don't know what the result is going to be, but there is something. Which adds a hopeful twist to his postmonderist works which makes him so popular.

Literary Music Videos

I love when short stories are made into short films! Thus, the video we watched in class of Murakami's "Bakery Attack" was a joy to see. But, I didn't always think this way... I used to (and still sometimes do) fall into the "but the book was better than the movie!" dilemma. While films of short stories are an intriguing interpretation of the story, our imaginations as readers can sometimes seem undermined (even attacked!) by the filmmaker when what we see in our minds is different then what we see on screen. The first time i became aware of this dilemma was when I saw a short film of a short story by one of my favorite authors (Etgar Keret, who coincidentally reminds me a lot of Murakami). His story "What do we have in our pockets?" was turned into a short film by the Croatian director Goran Dukić (who also turned one of Keret's other stories into a feature film). When I first saw the film I liked it, but was irked by the fact that it was nothing like I had directed it in my mind. However, once I began to let go of my "but the book was better than the movie!" state of mind I appreciated a separate work of art altogether and thus my love for short stories into short films (or what apparently are called "literary music videos") began.

Keret in fact has created a whole initiative to incorporate multimedia and the short story called StoryVid.

Here is a link to that very short story/short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qrwwM1Hgwk

Here is a link to learn more about StoryVid: http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/awesome_of_the_day/2013/01/story-vid-literary-music-videos.html

Barn Burning and avoidance

Murakami's "Barn Burning" brought to mind a snippet of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." In the play, Algernon creates a fictitious character called Bunbury who is an invalid and whose illness is alway an excuse for Algernon to get out of social engagements. Thus, "bunburying" is a humorous noun used to mean "avoiding one's duties and responsibilities by claiming to have appointments to see a fictitious person."

While Murakami's story and Wilde's word may have nothing more in common than they are slight homonyms, I can't help but see that the excuse "barn burning" is a way for the barn burner in Murakami's story to disconnect from the woman. He claims to have burned the bar yet the narrator can't seem to find it - the only thing missing is the woman and their relationship to her, thus she has been avoided by the fictitious excuse of barn burning.

This is a stretch, I know, yet every time I  say "barn burning" out loud, I hear "bunburying," and thus the connection is unavoidably made.

Chloe's post #3

I'm not sure if I was the only one who thought this, but the relationship between the wife and the blind man in "Cathedral" seemed a little too close for comfort. I kept on thinking that the blind man would reveal himself to not be blind at some point, or that he would make a move on the wife, but this never came to fruition. It seemed to me that the narrator was a little resentful of the relationship they shared, since the wife told this man everything about the narrator and their marriage.  But I liked that the story took a turn with the narrator and the blind man bonding and the latter helping the narrator to "open his eyes", so to speak. 

The "Barn Burning" story ended on a slightly creepy note for me (not sure if that's the right adjective). The way the boyfriend described the barn burning and the way he planted that seed in the narrator's head was very deliberate. Upon first reading this, I didn't think that the barn burning translated to murdering women, but now I've realized that I get that same creepy feeling when I think about serial killers methodically targeting victims. It also falls in line with the girl's disappearance, but initially I had just chalked that up an innocent exit. She did seem to be the type of Murakami female that could disappear without a trace, much like the girl with the special ears, but perhaps the reason behind her disappearance was more sinister. I didn't think the boyfriend had that much of a role to play at first, because the way Murakami framed it was that the focus of the story was on the relationship between the girl and Boku. But as with "Cathedral", the focus shifted from that relationship to the one between the two men. My initial impression of the boyfriend in "Barn Burning" was that he was harmless, a kind of colorless guy. But after he smoked with Boku and as he described the barn burning, he appeared to be vaguely menacing to me. 

Carver's "Cathedral" and a blind artist

The end of Raymond Carver's "The Cathedral" was strange, inviting, and mesmerizing all at once. It felt that way to me as a reader, but more so it felt that way as I placed myself in the narrator's mind, hearing his voice and  feeling his hands on the blind man's hands - just as he himself felt the way the blind man did. The tangible nature of drawing something from sight is remarkable in itself, drawing from memory (as the narrator did) is another skill altogether - being able to visually recall the shape and look of something and then translating it onto paper. Yet, the blind man's understanding of the Cathedral seems to be the inversion of drawing; it is translating spatial understanding alone to create a mental image.

Carver's story called to mind a video I saw many years ago on the Discovery Channel of a blind Turkish painter. Esref Armagan was born blind, yet he is able to accurately draw perspective and color by "seeing the world with his fingertips." In the Discovery Channel video, a neurology team from Harvard asks Esref to draw the Duomo Cathedral in Florence, the very building which allowed Brunelleschi to bring forth the notion of perspective. After feeling his way around the Duomo, Esref is able to accurately depict what he's felt onto paper.

I am attaching a link to the video.

http://www.wimp.com/blindpaint/

Charmaine Post 3

In Murakami's "Barn Burning," I found myself interpreting the burned barns as murdered women, much like many others expressed during class on Monday. When the female character's boyfriend talked about burning a barn very close to the narrator, I interpreted it a bit different from how someone had mentioned in class. While it can be interpreted as the man "burning a barn" near the narrator's home, I did not take it as literally. I thought he meant he would murder someone who was close relationship-wise to the narrator. In this case, the female character was rather close to the narrator in a way, at least in her perspective. She asked the narrator to pick her up from the airport, spent a bit of time with him after her return, introduced her boyfriend, etc. The boyfriend said he only burned barns that nobody would exactly notice were missing, something people could easily pass over. And in the past, the man had never told anyone about him burning barns before.
Maybe the girl was someone people would not have missed, or someone people wouldn't have noticed had gone missing. However, the narrator definitely noticed, and because the boyfriend had told the narrator about his "barn burning" and that he would "burn" something close to the narrator, it's as if the man wanted the narrator to know that he purposely chose to burn this particular barn and to be aware of it happening. But we don't really know if the narrator eventually comes to the conclusion that the burning is actually murdering.

krystal blog post 3

In the readings we’ve done recently, I found Barn Burning the most interesting. The story is also uneasy to understand what Murakami’s trying to deliver and it’s hard to know what exactly does burning the barn symbolize.

I guess the most responsible interpretation is that the female main character’s new boyfriend didn’t actually “burn” the barn. The barn here may imply the girl. In that society, women were considered the plaything of men. No one really cares about them. They are isolated when they are adhered to a man. Therefore, no one will notice if she disappeared. Barn symbolized the forgotten women who have no one to rely on in the society. The “burn” here probably mean to get rid of. That’s being said, in the new boyfriend’s mind, this kind of woman should be eliminated, because they will become useless eventually. So he hooks up with a beautiful girl every two months and gets rid of her when he feels enough. The act of his barn burning represents a kind of morbid mentality which is reflected on the discrimination of women.

I was struck by how cold and ruthless the relation of a man and woman can be. The affection murakami depicted of woman and man is just talking, making love, and drinking bear together. It’s fragile and loveless. The depiction asks the audience to reflect upon the human relationships.

Maylin Post 3

We talked in class about how some of Murakami's works share similar aspects to other writers, especially with works written by American and British authors. In December, it was discovered that Murakami had borrowed books written by Joseph Kessel, who is a French author. The Kobe Shimbun obtained this information when they were able to gain access to old cards from the school's library that contained information about what books were borrowed by which student. Whether or not it was legal to release this information is still in debate, but the general population is now aware of what books Murakami has borrowed in his school days. While I do agree that the release of the information is invasive to Murakami's privacy, I think this is also an important discovery in terms of finding other ways Murakami's works are similar to works written in other countries. Perhaps there are missed references in his books that can now be linked to not only American and British works, but also French works too.

Original Link: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/02/librarians-in-uproar-after-borrowing-record-of-haruki-murakami-is-leaked

Blog Post 2

In our recent readings of Murakami and Carver, there is the common theme of talking on the phone. However, they are not just your normal conversations – a stranger would pick up the phone and know a lot of information about the person, or the caller would hang up suddenly. The phone conversations, especially in Carver's Are You a Doctor? and Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird and the Tuesday's Women, create a really weird, tense atmosphere. In the beginning of the story, the out-of-the-blue phone calls create a forced connection between the unknown caller and the protagonist.

Both male protagonists live at home while their wives are out working. In Are You a Doctor?, the wife is out on a business trip while in The Wind-Up Bird and the Tuesday's Woman, the husband is trying to find the house cat. They don't have much going on in their lives. The phone call forces something to stir from within. Although the caller and the protagonist do not know one another, interestingly, they are able to immediately sustain a conversation. Perhaps, for the protagonists, hearing themselves speak out loud gives them a sense of being. It also could show that the husbands may not be on the best terms with their wives. The unknown female callers in both stories have a seductive power to them.

Ty-Post 2

Recently in class we talked about reading works that mention music while listening to the music mentioned.  Before reading while listening to Girl From Ipanema I had never listened to a specific song mentioned while reading.  I always listen to music while doing homework, but I make sure the music does not interfere with my concentration.  If I'm reading, usually the song is in Japanese or has no lyrics.  This keeps me from splitting my focus between the book and the music and from having the music impact the way I read a scene.  When I do Japanese homework, I have to switch to English music or else the Japanese in the song distracts me from the Japanese I'm writing.  This made me skeptical about trying to listen to music while reading, but when we did the exercise in class I felt like the words in the story matched perfectly with the song in the background.  Because it matched so perfectly, the song did not distract me from the story.  From what I can remember, no other work I've read has matched the words written so perfectly to a song like Murakami did.  It makes me want to pay attention to any music mentioned more while I'm reading.  If I see a song I don't know, I'll look it up so I can see what it sounds like and how it affects the way the scene feels.  Murakami seems to often mention music in his works, so hopefully I'll be able to apply this to future readings.

Alison Post 2

Our discussion of the possible pedophilia in A Perfect Day for Bananafish has made me consider the consequences of viewing actions in novels set in the past only in the way that they would have been perceived then. More widely, I have wondered whether it is fair to judge a work based on today's values, or if content should be appreciated in the manner it would have been at the time of its conception.

The interactions between Seymour Glass and the little girl in Bananafish are a fine example. At the time this work was written, all of the actions likely seemed rather benign to a reader. Seymour was entertaining this girl, neglected by her mother, and enjoying the youthful energy around him. He was gentle with her, but engaged her, and made sure she stayed safe. Because nothing inappropriate happened in the end, there was nothing to worry about in that regard, and his suicide was likely caused by his PTSD.

However, as someone fairly well-versed in present-day social justice issues and groups prone to victimization (children included), and steeps herself in the world of true and fictional crime, I perhaps come with a biased view. To me, the behaviors in this work appeared as such: A very young girl comes to play with man, who she seems to have some familiarity with.  He shows signs of keeping tabs on the whereabouts of her parents, talks to her about what she is wearing, deflects the conversation from himself and things related to him, and entices her to come even closer to him. He continues to comment on her appearance, maintains physical points of contact, and tries to get her to tell him things about herself. When she feels insecure about the appearance of another young girl in his life, he tells her things to make her feel special, but also simultaneously jealous of this other girl - for instance by asking her directly where she lives and saying this other, younger girl knew where she lived. He still maintains a point of contact, like a hand-hold. He even addresses her as "my love" and kisses her foot. He immediately ends the ocean adventure upon the kiss, however, returns inside, and becomes very self-conscious about the topic of feet. Then he commits suicide. In this interpretation of the narrative, I get the feeling that he is struggling with the idea of himself as a pedophile, can't stand it, and ends it instead of allowing it to actually hurt someone.

But who knows, maybe I'm reading too much into this and viewing it through the lens of today's understanding of the prevalence of child abuse. You can spin interpretations of stories in any number of ways - and this doesn't seem to be a theme in Murakami's Kangaroos. But it also begs the question, if the kind of behavior we see in Bananafish was considered normal, was that because it actually was, or because the people of the time didn't look for danger in the same way we do now? Have times really changed since then, or has our society just opened our eyes to what was always there?

Blog Post 2

In class, we had difficulty coming up with much similarity between A Perfect Day for Bananafish and A Perfect Day for Kangaroos. Salinger's story is far more grim with a man who likes children (in a not-so-creepy way), has lost his innocence, and commits suicide. This seems like a strong contrast from Murakami's story which is not so grim. However, key elements show a remarkable similarity: the kangaroo is a baby or child, the discussion of the kangaroo growing up, the girlfriend's concern about whether or not it was a baby, and the girlfriend's comments about the womb. I would argue that in this story, the roles are reversed. The girlfriend parallels Seymour while the boyfriend parallels Seymour's wife, who is just going along with their lover's eccentricities, despite seeing problems with it. Seymour's wife is conscious of problems; the boyfriend notes that the kangaroo had indeed grown up. Yet both play along.

The relation the Murakami story has to death is also the relation it has to innocence. Psychoanalysis in literary criticism or art criticism in general often remarks on the psychic wound of leaving the womb, the end of being a baby, when one is conscious of a difference between itself and mother. The end of innocence so to speak. The little girl in Salinger's story is notedly not with her mother, and the baby kangaroo when first seen is separate from its mother and in all appearances has grown up significantly. Death or suicide can often be seen as a return to an innocent, unknowing state, and so the suicide in Salinger can be seen in the kangaroo's return to its mother's pouch (signifying the womb).

Veronica Post 2- Ambiguity in Carver and Murakami

Many of Murakami's works have ambiguous details that could be symbols and ambiguous endings. Upon doing my own research about Raymond Chandler for my presentation I found that most of the criticism he received was regarding his own ambiguous endings to his short stories. Murakami himself has proclaimed Carver as one of his main inspirations and influences. In "The Second Bakery Attack" by Murakami he writes that Boku sees a volcano under water as he and his wife's stomachs rumble. In the chapters we read in Jay Rubin's Murakami and the Music of Words Rubin writes about a time that Murakami visited Harvard and a student asked what the volcano symbolized. When Murakami said it wasn't a symbol, an attending academic cried out in protest. Professor Elliott in class mentioned the scene in which Boku looks at the art in J's bar and describes it as similar to a Rorschach test, which is interesting as Murakami denies symbols in his writing. At first these attributes in Carver's and Murakami's writing aggravated me. But the more I read both of their works, and works similar where endings and symbols (or what appears to be symbols) are ambiguous, the more I came to love the ambiguity. Ambiguousness in literature is a wonderful example of art imitates life and life imitates art. Life is beautifully ambiguous and more often than not, events happen in which no meaning is clear but one must extrapolate the meaning. Nothing in life has clear cut meaning. We have to find meaning in the seemingly randomness of events in Carver and Murakami's stories as we do in our own lives. And I think that's beautiful. 

Amy Post 2

Perhaps the reason Murakami is called the 80's Japanese J.D Salinger is because his characters are rebels in their way, and like Holden Caulfield, they are lost. Their books take place in different time periods and different parts of the world. But thematically they are linked. For example, in A Wild Sheep Chase Boku does not aspire to have children, which is unusual because he appears to have the common life of being a salary man. However, his wife divorced him, and he acts completely unaffected even though divorce is a major life changing event like it was something that happened, which signals that even though Boku had a wife he was alone. Not to mention, that he didn't aspire to have children which is the one thing he needed to complete his life. It's like he went through the motions of life but not  living.  Another example is in Murakami's short story"Year of Spaghetti", Boku cooks spaghetti, a decidedly western meal, even though he is in Japan where rice reigns supreme. Boku goes against the grain, and he is also alone in his apartment. No wife or mentioned of a job like as if he solely existed to make spaghetti.

Sam Blog Post 1

Haruki Murakami and Identification

I find that Murakami's work deals very much with a purposeful lack of detailed information about his characters, at least beyond general traits and thoughts.  What I find interesting about this is that this 'lack of details or traits' that could be used to identify a character more deeply, or to illustrate a character more precisely, creates an atmosphere where said character actually becomes easier to identify with, at least in a general sense.  Murakami's clean-cut, nondescript, average, everyday characters are people who's shoes most readers can easily slip into.  In the case of Boku, the purposeful lack of a name and his 'average Joe' quality seem to almost be purposefully created that way, in order to allow vast amounts of readers to easily see the world through Boku's eyes, and to allow them to feel a sense of closeness with him in a 'general' way.  Of course, the possible downside to this, in my opinion, is that you can never have an extreme, or intimate, level of closeness or identification with his characters.  While nearly everyone, including myself, can identify with the 'average' type, there's something to be said for a more detailed, more outside-of-the-box character too.  The more niche group of people that can identify with that type of character will very likely feel a more intimate level of identification with him or her.

Krystal blog post 2

       The most impressive book I’ve read in this class recently in The Heart of Darkness (though I don’t like it very much.)  The reason why I don’t really like it is because it’s first, a little hard to read. Secondly, the narrative style is a little confusing, to me.

       I was impressed by the character Kurtz and I was stroke by the scenes of the black workers being starving and dying slowly. It’s brutal. It was an uncivilized society. The “darkness” from the title symbolizes this kind of racism and uncivilization. The last decade of the nineteenth century is the time when some European countries gained their powers with their advanced technology. And on the other side, Africa was still be colonized, suffering under poverty and inequality. Kurtz in the society serves a hero. Kurtz knows that, technology coming to the Congo can have a positive impact on the region and its inhabitant. Therefore, he is a cultured man, an emissary of western culture. He believes that Europe can help to civilize the Congo. I can see the reason why he has achieved a godlike status among the natives. He is the symbol of European civilization.

       I would say that if the books included the perspective of Kurtz, it would be more powerful and appealing to read. Because I assume that all the readers are curious of what Kurtz thinks and observed.