'Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words' by Jay Rubin (Review)

Jay Rubin is an American academic who is well known for his translations of Japanese literature, including works by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Natsume Soseki.  However, he is undoubtedly best known in the west for his work on some of Haruki Murakami's back catalogue, including Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark.  Not content with just translating Murakami's fiction however, Rubin, who knows the writer quite well, decided to write a book about the man and his creations - and a good one it is too...

*****
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words is the next logical step for Murakami fans to take when they've burned through all of his translated works.  It's a book which gives an insight into the author's life while also shedding some light on what it is he is actually trying to say in his writing (something which has puzzled me for a long time...).

We follow Murakami through his less-than-stellar school days and his riot-interrupted time at university, finding out about his early marriage and his years running a jazz club along the way.  He was never a typical Japanese writer, showing little interest in his native literature or culture, preferring instead to experience American novels and jazz (which will come as little surprise to anyone who has read any of his books).  Eventually though, he decided to try his hand at writing - and the rest, as they say, is history...

As interesting as Murakami's life is though, what we're really here for is the guided tour through his books, and Rubin is just the man for the job.  He carefully takes the reader through assorted novels, stories and non-fiction pieces in chronological order (which isn't always the order, or the format, they appeared in overseas), explaining the thought processes behind the books and highlighting connections between the various works - some obvious, others not quite so easy to spot at first glance.

Rubin shows how Murakami was the first of a new breed of writers, one who (unlike his predecessors) was in tune with the new Japan:

"...Murakami has been called the first writer completely at home with the elements of American popular culture that permeate present-day Japan.  He has also been seen as the first genuinely "post-post-war writer", the first to cast off the "dank, heavy atmosphere" of the post-war period and to capture in literature the new Americanised mood of lightness." p.17 (Vintage Books, 2005)

As well as this difference in style, Murakami was also a literary outsider in other ways.  He was not a member of any literary group (very unusual for a Japanese author), and his books were initially frowned upon by such heavyweights as Kenzaburo Oe.

However, this difference was not quite as marked as first appears.  His stories, with their typical unresolved endings, are compared to traditional Japanese writers such as Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, and he is also the latest in a long line of writers to enrich Japanese literature through his work in translation (following in the footsteps of Tsubouchi and Futabatei!).  In fact, for those not overly familiar with Murakami, his work as a literary translator may come as a bit of a shock.  According to Rubin, he has translated dozens of American novels and short story collections and has been responsible for a resurgence in the popularity of American literature in Japan.

For me, the most useful part of the book though was the focus on themes in Murakami's work.  Rubin concentrates very heavily on Murakami's handling of the subject of memory and its unreliability, claiming that:

"Perhaps no other writer concerned with memory and the difficulty of reclaiming the past - not Kawabata, not even Proust - has succeeded as well as Murakami in capturing the immediacy of the experience of déjà vu." p.60

While I'm a little dubious about that boast (and in certain blogs I frequent, I'm sure them's fighting words...), it's true that the writer is fascinated with the way we see the world and the impossibility of ever knowing the truth about the past and other people.

Rubin also devotes a lot of time to Murakami's concept of 'the other place', the space occupied by the things that are not present in our current location.  Whether it refers to the psyche, an afterlife or another dimension, it's ever-present in Murakami's writing, and many of his protagonists are trying to bridge the gap between here and 'the other place'.  How?  Well, some of you may have noticed that there are a fair few wells, tunnels and corridors in his books...

While I could misinterpret Rubin's ideas all day, I think I'll leave the analysis there.  Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words is an excellent book and one I enjoyed immensely.  Still, there are a few issues I'd like to quickly point out.  If you haven't really read a lot of Murakami, I'm not sure that this is for you.  Part of the fun lies in recognising the stories Rubin is discussing - and there are a lot of them.  I was able to frequently refer to the many books on my Murakami shelf to jog my memory and spent a lot of time rereading certain short stories.  If all you've read is Norwegian Wood, leave this one for the future.

Another possible issue is that it doesn't always pay to see your heroes up close, warts and all.  On the whole, Rubin (a close friend) paints a very favourable picture of the writer (and any mention of his wife Yoko verges on hagiography), but I was a little troubled by a couple of images.  For one thing, his style of writing appears a little haphazard, and he rarely seems to know where he's going with the books he's writing.  He could also be accused of writing for the sake of writing as his output is truly phenomenal (and covers all kinds of areas and genres).  For a fan of translated fiction like me though, perhaps the most worrying revelation is that he is comfortable with translations of translations, preferring his work to get to readers quickly, even if it isn't quite what he wrote in the first place...

Still, nobody's perfect, and anyone expecting perfection deserves all the disappointments they get.  Readers who set their bar a little lower will have great fun with this book - just don't blame me if you get hooked on hunting down translated rarities of Murakami's work...

*****

...speaking of which, I have a little story to tell you ;)

I recently saw a comment on the January in Japan blog where someone signed up for the challenge, and (like a good host) I popped over to check out the blog.  The blogger was Carola of brilliant years, and she had just published a post - one in which a link was given to a translation of a rare Murakami work.  It's called The Sheep Man's Christmas, and while the quality of the translation (and the formatting) may leave a little to be desired, it's still a fun piece of writing with that inimitable Murakami sense of humour.

I was very happy with my unexpected Christmas present, and I'd urge you all to have a look too :)

Review Post 29 - In which Football is alluded to for no good reason...

Brazil, Holland, Argentina (definitely not England): there are many dream teams in the World Cup, but few can compare with the line-up Penguin Classics came up with for their edition of a popular Japanese classic.  Sanshiro, written by the 'Japanese Dickens', Natsume Soseki, is a wonderful Bildungsroman and would be worth the money all by itself.  However, when it's also translated by Jay Rubin, the man who brings Haruki Murakami's works to the English-speaking world (and who has written a book on Murakami), that just makes it a little more special.  And just when you think it can't get any better, who do you think Penguin have engaged to write the introduction?  None other than Murakami himself.  Now that is a team worth watching (or reading).

In Sanshiro, we follow the title character as he leaves his rural home in Kyushu to study English Literature at university in Tokyo.  His education starts on the train, before he even arrives, with a startling confrontation with a rather forward mature woman and an intriguing conversation with an extraordinary man.  On his arrival in the new capital, our young hero becomes part of a social group and attempts to make sense of life in society, not always successfully.  One of the group, the enigmatic and chastely seductive Mineko, becomes especially important in Sanshiro's life, but the young man from the provinces can never quite be sure whether she is toying with his affections or genuinely likes him...

As Murakami remarks in his introduction, while this is a Bildungsroman, it's very different to the European style novel.  In the typical Bildungsroman, a young man enters public life, usually in the big city, and undergoes a series of trials, be they emotional, romantic financial or violent.  By the end of the novel, the hero has successfully weathered the storm and has emerged older and wiser, a mature member of society.  However, this active progression towards becoming a fully-rounded citizen does not describe Sanshiro's journey; his path is characterised by indecision and procrastination, his trials subtle and confusing.  It's also doubtful that he learns much from his experiences at all, appearing almost as naive at the end of the novel as he is at the start.

Sanshiro is a dreamer, and his path through the book can be compared to that of the clouds which appear periodically.  He drifts aimlessly through his studies, picking up friends as he goes without actually appearing to know what he is doing or what he wants.  You may say he's a dreamer (and he's definitely not the only one, surrounded as he is by a bachelor teacher, a hermit PhD student, and a classmate who builds magnificent castles in the air on an hourly basis), but the whole book appears a little dreamlike; the social circle he finds himself a part of is almost like a little bubble, protecting (or keeping) him from the big, bad outside world.


This familiar circle of friends (similar to Mr. Sneaze's circle in I am a Cat) leads one to think that there are autobiographical elements to this book, and Rubin confirms this in his introduction.  The story involving a campaign to introduce a Japanese professor to the university mirrors the real life events around Natsume's start at Tokyo University (although in reality he was the interloper, brought in to replace a popular - and eccentric - American professor).  What's more, the title character was apparently based on a protege of Natsume's who, like Sanshiro, also came from the far-flung provinces of Kyushu. 

This book really is a joy to read, at once familiar and yet just different enough from its western equivalents to avoid sinking into cliche.  You can just imagine Murakami, sitting in a poky flat, poor, smoking, surrounded by cats, reading Sanshiro and forming the germ of an idea which would one day become a novel.  In the introduction to this book he discusses the Bildungsroman, saying "Virtually all novelists have such a work" (p.xxxvi, 2009, Penguin Classics).  He goes on to say that his is Norwegian Wood, and while he does not admit to being influenced by Sanshiro in the writing of his most famous book, it's not difficult to think that there's an element of truth in this.

Good luck to the Blue Samurai over in South Africa; I hope they at least get through to the quarter-finals, surpassing their previous best effort.*  However, they would have to pull off something quite spectacular to match up to this (imaginary) literary dream team.  Thank you, Jay Rubin; thank you, Haruki Murakami; and thank you, especially, Natsume Soseki.

Now it's back to the football...

*They didn't.  Stupid Penalties.