All semester I’ve been thinking about the connection between Murakami’s writing and contemporary art. We examined this somewhat in our discussion of postmodernism, but couldn’t entirely assign that label to Murakami’s style. In art, we have currently moved even beyond postmodernism, and I think Murakami is even more at home here in this post-post mishmash of ideologies. Here’s what I’ve been able to distill: Murakami’s work reminds me of current art in its fluid subjectivity, its denial of meaning but paradoxically inherent poignance, and the unobvious way in which that meaning is conveyed or withheld. There is also a certain transparency of material, which has been a theme in art movements since impressionism. We are made aware of the fact that this is writing, maybe even writing for writing’s sake, the same way that impressionism embraces the physicality of paint. The viewer is not presented with the closest imitation of the reality of an object, but a painting of an object. In Murakami, cadence, word choice, incongruous subject matter chosen for the pleasure of its depiction, these seem to be on equal footing with content or message.
Murakami’s work, just like so much art today, abhors didacticism. It’s meaning is elusive and possessed of many multivalent interpretations. It occupies a space between mundane reality and the realm of magic, psychology and imagination. And Murakami himself seems to subscribe to that opinion that art is best left unexplained and thus untainted by its author, owing a much greater portion of its creation to the constructions of its audience.
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