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A Dream Within A Dream(Edgar Allan Poe)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Posted in Random Poems | | | 0 Comments

Kafka on the Shore(Haruki Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

Kafka on the Shore is many things: the title of a song, for one, a painting for another. And the novel’s central character is Kafka Tamura — though he doesn’t actually spend much time on any shore. Not any real one, anyway. But this is a Murakami novel and, as in all Murakami novels, as one of the characters observes: “The world is a metaphor, Kafka Tamura”. No doubt: the kid is practically drowning in that metaphor — but then aren’t we all ?
The novel is presented in alternating chapters, plot-lines that inevitably converge and cross (but without completely merging). The odd-numbered chapters are narrated by disaffected youth Kafka Tamura, who decides that his fifteenth birthday “is the ideal time to run away from home”. He doesn’t get along with his father, a famous artist, and there’s a deep emptiness left by the absence of his mother and sister, whom he has not seen since he was a small child. Dad doesn’t help matters by burdening him with one hell of a prophecy — “More like a curse than a prophecy” — foreseeing an Oedipal fate for Kafka, patricide and all. It’s understandable, then, that Kafka wants to get out of there — though, as one of the characters reminds him, running away may not be the ideal solution: “Distance might not solve anything.” It didn’t work for Oedipus, after all, and it will come as no surprise that Murakami doesn’t allow (physical) distance to be much of an issue here either.
The other story-line begins with earlier events, a mysterious occurrence from World War II. A class expedition into the woods ended with all the schoolchildren (but not the teacher) falling into coma-like states. Except for one, they snap out of it quickly, and seem to have suffered no ill effects (though they also have no memory of what happened to them). The exception is Nakata, who only comes out of this state weeks later and has been changed: he is completely empty. Whatever happened to him appears also to have affected his mind: he used to be a bright boy, but now seems a bit slow, and he never learns to read, for example. In the present day Nakata is retired, living pretty much without friends (and ignored by his family) but getting along well and happily enough.
Destiny has something in mind for both Kafka and Nakata. They’re not clear about it, almost drifting along, but they always seem to know which way to turn, compelled to act in a certain way. They can’t express it in words (a common problem in Murakami books, and certainly afflicting many of the characters in this one), but they just seem to know what to do. This device is by far the most annoying aspect of the book, and never adequately explained: absolutely everything seems predestined in the book and the characters seem unable to do anything wrong (in the sense of what they’re not supposed to), and, while that is the way novels work (the ending is printed and fixed before you start, and nothing is going to change it, or anything that happens along the way) it takes away some of the suspense. The fact that Murakami also resorts to occurrences that make the ancient Greek device of deus ex machina look tame by comparison doesn’t help either.
Kafka heads south, for Shikoku. Typically:

That’s where I’ll go. There’s no particular reason it has to be Shikoku, only that studying the map I got the feeling that’s where I should head. Feeling — of this sort (and Murakami-characters have them all the time) — always trumps reason. Needless, to say, Shikoku is the place he has to be. For a fifteen year-old runaway, things also work out remarkably well for him. Indeed: things constantly seem to work out — but then since he seems to be guided by the Fates and nothing else, it’s not that surprising (though it does get a bit boring, since Murakami allows for almost no suspense whatsoever).
Eventually, Kafka is drawn to a library, the Komura Memorial Library, which turns out to be just the place for him. He finds a helpful friend in one of the workers, Oshima, and is also drawn to the head of the library, old Miss Saeki — both if not quite outcasts at least very much on the periphery of society. There are a few problems — Kafka wakes up in the middle of nowhere one night, his T-shirt all bloody, with no memory of what happened the past few hours — but no matter, things just seem to work out.
Nakata’s adventures run parallel to Kafka’s. Among his talents is his ability to talk to cats, which he has parlayed into a small business, helping locals find their lost cats. This, however, now leads him to an unsavoury character who also has a project involving cats — one which Nakata puts an end to. And once that is done he too feels compelled to head south. Towards Shikoku, as it will turn out — not that he understands much about geography or the like (but that’s the way things work in Murakami novels: you don’t have to know anything about geography — in fact, it almost seems better not to concern yourself with it: you’ll still be guided on your way).
Like Kafka, Nakata pretty much always finds what he needs. No one takes advantage of him (except, in a way, the cat-man that sets this in motion), and somehow or other he manages to make his way south, eventually in the company of Hoshino, who doesn’t know why he’s going along with all this crazy stuff this old man leads him into but understands that it’s the right thing to do. Needless to say, they’ll eventually make their way to the Komura Memorial Library …..
Besides the talking cats there are other touches of the unusual: from the semi-plausible (a Bergson-quoting prostitute) to the far-fetched (leeches and fish raining down from the skies) to the outrageous (an all-powerful being — though it claims: “I’m neither God nor Buddha” — dressed up as Colonel Sanders working as a pimp). There’s also that boy called Crow that Kafka occasionally converses with (and there’s also the matter of his name — not his real one, and taken not so much because of what the Czech writer wrote …), an unwieldy but important stone, the one-time hit-single, &quotKafka on the Shore”, considerable sexual confusion (with the Oedipus-story overshadowing much), and even some soldiers that got lost in the woods decades earlier. And then there’s the whole other-worldly aspect of the novel. Much of it feels otherworldy anyway, what with the almost dreamlike state of these many characters, largely cut off from what might be considered normal life. Needless to say, dreams and visions also figure prominently — and several of the characters literally aren’t all there: memory-less Nakata understands only the present, Miss Saeki has only the past.
In the novel the characters are allowed to become, in some way, whole. Murakami isn’t entirely predictable in how he goes about this — ‘whole’ may not be what the reader always expected — but again, there is a lack of suspense in how this unfolds. Only Kafka appears to have a choice between worlds and futures, and he explores the alternative more deeply than most Murakami characters have. But in the end it doesn’t really feel like he had much of a choice: the brief glimpse of free will more like a flash in the pan, barely convincing.

Chapter by chapter Kafka on the Shore is an entertaining read: Murakami tells his stories well, and what happens is, at the very least, unusual. (It also bubbles over — as Kafka occasionally threatens to — into some strong violence, gruesome but effective stuff.) The characters’ uncertainty can be a bit trying, especially since there is no cost to the uncertainty — just sitting around, doing whatever they feel like is enough to eventually find them going the right way again — but there’s enough here to hold one’s interest.
The novel is meant to be a modern Greek tragedy — not just because of the curse on Kafka, but in its whole world-view. But Murakami fails on this count in large part because he’s not fully committed to tragedy: his characters are all properly tied to their inescapable fates, but Murakami is just too nice about these. The world is an uglier place than he is willing to describe.
The failing of the novel can also be summed up in the fact that no one in it really gets lost. There is simply no doubt that everything will work out for these characters, as Murakami makes it much too easy for them. He starts out promisingly enough: some cats do get lost, and there’s a strong fear that the one Nakata has been hired to find won’t be found; as it turns out some of the cats do, in a way, remain lost, but after that it’s all … well, if not sunshine-endings, so at least very predictable. The book would have been much stronger if the reader might have been at least led to believe that one of these characters might not wind up as they should.
Kafka is also not an entirely satisfying protagonist; surprisingly the empty Nakata is in many ways the more interesting character. Kafka has a lot on his shoulders, but perhaps he’s the wrong age (just fifteen), and certainly his family difficulties should have been developed more fully. Dad’s curse may be horrific, but by itself isn’t compelling enough in this setting (and, after all, even Oedipus had more of a backstory).
A lot happens in Kafka on the Shore but it is a disturbingly passive book. The world it describes — be it metaphor or real — is one in which fate rules all and free will seems non-existent. As such, Kafka on the Shore reads much like a religious fiction, willing an artificial world that works according to a simple (if peculiar) design, the end always the same (and like a religious fiction, the ending is not necessarily something one would describe as ‘happy’, but rather the way things ought to be). The characters are essentially robotic, going through the motions without appearing to be able to influence them. Murakami does quite a bit with them, but ultimately not enough: a wolf in sheep’s clothing here could have done wonders for the story.
Odd and philosophically certainly unsatisfying, Kafka on the Shore is still fairly enjoyable; Murakami-fans likely won’t be disappointed. As far as the episodes and the quirky details go, Murakami offers as much as usual, and does it as well. However, unlike his best novels, it is too far (and, more significantly: too unconvincingly far) from the world we know to be a true success.

Note: there’s one aesthetically inelegant slip in the book: crows play a significant role, and Tamura even ‘explains’: “That’s what Kafka means in Czech, you know — crow.” Unfortunately, that is not what ‘Kafka’ means in Czech. ‘Kafka’ mean ‘jackdaw’ — an admittedly crow-like bird, but, as the very different English names suggest, not what is commonly considered a crow. Possibly Japanese does not differentiate between the two, explaining the mistake — but it’s awkward in the English translation. (The German translation makes the same mistake.)

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/murakamih/kafkaots.htm

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South of the Border,West of the Sun(Haruki Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

South of the Border, West of the Sun is an odd echo of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (see our review), written five years earlier. In both the narrator is 37 (though in Norwegian Wood the focus is on the narrator’s university years, while in South of the Border the crisis is in the present). In both music serves as a significant backdrop — most notably, among the many tunes, the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” in the eponymous novel, and Nat King Cole’s “South of the Border” and “Star-Crossed Lovers” in the other. Women disappear from each narrator’s life, and much is left unspoken and unexplained. And there are strong autobiographical elements in both — like the narrator of this novel Murakami also ran a jazz bar, for example.
South of the Border is a novel about a midlife crisis. Hajime, the narrator is a single child, born in 1951 when there were few single children in Japan. He has a close childhood friend, Shimamoto, a girl with a partially lame leg who is also a single child. Young love does not quite blossom and they grow apart once they begin attending different junior high schools, but the connection between the two was obviously a strong one. She remains on his mind long after.
In high school Hajime has a girlfriend, Izumi; he hurts her deeply by having a wild, purely sexual affair with her cousin. He goes to college, gets a boring job, and finally gets married when he is thirty, to Yukiko. Her father offers him the chance to open his own business, and he takes it, opening first one and then a second jazz bar. It turns out that this something that he is good at, and that satisfies him.
Hajime and his wife have two daughters, and lead a fairly happy existence. But Hajime isn’t completely satisfied. For one his father-in-law has vaguely drawn him into shady businesses and then insider trading. And then there is the lingering memory of Shimamoto.
Hajime never really got her out of his mind, and he still turns (and occasionally runs after) every lame woman he encounters. Once he thought he saw her in the street and followed her, leading to a bizarre confrontation — an event that is never completely understood by him.
A magazine article about the successful jazz-bar owner leads a number of his old friends to get in touch with him again. One tells him about seeing Izumi, whose life has clearly not gone very well. And then, suddenly, Shimamoto appears in his bar.
Even then her presence is vague and unclear. She reveals little about her current situation, or what has happened to her since her youth. She fades from sight again, and reappears. Hajime is still drawn to her, and twice he goes on trips with her, putting his marriage in jeopardy. He is willing to give it all up for Shimamoto, but she has other sacrifices in mind.
Love is lost, time can not be regained. The past is done with, even if it haunts us. Eventually the midlife crisis is resolved: Hajime knows what he has to do.
When he was young the mysterious promise of what is “South of the Border” fascinated him. Eventually he learnt it meant nothing more than Mexico. “West of the Sun” is more elusive — Shimamoto gives the example of hysteria siberiana, an illness affecting Siberian farmers overwhelmed by the distance in and the plains of Siberia, heading off “like someone possessed” for a land west of the sun. Hajime conquers the urge and the illusion, staying in place.
A melancholy, subtle, simple and elusive story, South of the Border is not entirely successful. There is, perhaps, too little to it. The story moves forward rapidly, with only a few significant encounters and events. Murakami could have fleshed it out more. Nevertheless, it is a good, quick, and ultimately haunting read.

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/murakamih/southotb.htm

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The Wind-up Bird Chronicle(Haruki Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a big, rambling book. The almost always entertaining and imaginative Murakami here weaves a complex tale in a simple setting, covering a great deal of ground and making for an enjoyable read.
Narrator Toru Okada quit his job a few months before the book begins. He worked as a legal assistant, a job he had held since graduating from college, but that held no more appeal for him. His wife Kumiko works as a magazine editor, and makes enough for them to get by. Toru is not too ambitious. He putters around the house. He cooks. He goes out to look for the family cat.
Life, of course, takes some unusual turns. He gets strange phone calls, and meets a woman called Malta Okano, who tells him that her sister, Creta, was raped by his brother-in-law, Noboru Wataya, five years earlier. The sinister and unpleasant Wataya has become famous and influential after writing a big economics book. Noboru Wataya also happens to be the cat’s name, and Malta offers to help find the missing feline.
Toru makes other new acquaintances, such as neighborhood teen May Kasahara who shows him an empty well that he later takes to. Creta Kano also introduces herself, and tells her story.
Toru lives in “a narrow world, a world that was standing still”, but outside forces do push and tug at him, the strange lives of those he encounters echoing oddly in his own empty life. His wife, Kumiko, once told him: “There’s a kind of gap between what I think is real and what’s really real”, an affliction from which many of the characters seem to suffer. When Toru’s main anchor, his wife, simply disappears from his life, Toru is left bereft — but he still can’t rouse himself, drifting along with (or rather buffeted by) the lives of others.
A Lieutenant Mamiya tells long stories of Japan’s military past, horrors from the war that also have odd connexions to the present. Much of the book contrasts Japan’s military past and its present.
Life around Toru remains uncertain. He takes to the empty well, withdrawing there to ponder, his retreat of last resort. Occasionally he finds himself stuck there, without a way of getting out. Mysteries continue to unfold, including the question of what really happened to his wife who — her relatives say — wants to divorce him. Toru meets Nutmeg Akasaka and her computer savvy son Cinnamon, who helps him contact his wife on-line.
The people and mysteries swirl around Toru, coming together and falling apart. He is not a center that can hold. The novel reaches a vaguely (if not entirely) satisfying conclusion.
Murakami offers many tangential stories, some of which are very good. Horrors from World War II contrast neatly with the lost and aimless atmosphere of modern times. There is little feel of the bustle and obsessiveness of modern Japan. Toru interacts with few people, and they too live isolated or out-of-the-ordinary lives. Nevertheless, it gives a picture of a disaffected country that has lost its way — and of some underlying hope.
Rich (though occasionally too quirky) characters and much neat invention make The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle a consistently entertaining read. Murakami very effectively sets a mood, and sustains it throughout. The story does not come together quite as neatly as one might hope, but it is still a good one. A fine, big, entertaining read.

Note that if Yoshiko Yokochi Samuel is correct in saying (in a review in World Literature Today) that “the English version has been subjected to extensive cutting”, this fact might help explain why there are a few loose ends in the English version. If it bothers you — and it should — contact the publishers and tell them that you don’t want them making stupid editorial decisions like this on your behalf: translations (already a crime against literature) should be as true to the original as possible — and that certainly means NO cuts under ANY circumstances.

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/murakamih/windupbc.htm

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Norwegian Wood(Haruki Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

The British edition of Norwegian Wood is a neatly presented novel. Divided exactly in two (separated right in the middle of a chapter, in fact) it comes in two handy, almost truly pocket-sized volumes of exactly 247 pages each, neatly contained in an attractive box the size of a slim hardback. The cover of the first volume is an almost alarmingly bright red, the second a subdued forest green. The Japanese edition was apparently presented the same way. It seems appropriate, highlighting the contrasts in the text as the narrative moves forward. (Needless to say, the American edition is a bland, unwieldy single-volume trade paperback — we recommend that, if at all possible, you purchase the British edition (you can get it here))
Norwegian Wood is a fairly early work by Murakami, first published in Japan in 1987. It was also his most resounding success there, a phenomenal bestseller. It was translated into English, by Alfred Birnbaum, but that edition was basically only made available in Japan itself. Now, finally, the book appears in an authorized translation by Jay Rubin.
The novel is not as wildly imagined as much of Murakami’s work that Western audiences are familiar with. It is a fairly straightforward Bildungsroman, closest in feel to Murakami’s recent South of the Border, West of the Sun (see our review).
The Beatles song from which the book takes its title echoes throughout the novel, the melancholy tune and sentiment imbuing the work. The novel begins with a brief introductory chapter in which the 37 year old narrator, Toru Watanabe, once again hears the song, a “sweet orchestral cover version” this time. It reminds him of his life almost twenty years earlier, and the rest of the book retells the events of those times.
The murky ambiguity and confusion of The Beatles song is similar to that in the novel. It is a love story, or several love stories, as baffling as love often is. The Beatles sang: “I once had a girl / or should I say / she once had me”. Toru is similarly unclear as to how he should consider his relationships.
There are two women involved. One is Naoko. In high school she was Toru’s best (and only) friend’s girlfriend, and the three of them got along very well. Then the friend, Kizuki, only 17 at the time, committed suicide; Toru and Naoko would not see one another for almost a year after the funeral.
Toru wanted to escape Kobe, where they had all grown up together, and he opted to go to a private university in Tokyo. Naoko also came to Tokyo for college, and it is there they run into one another again. They see each other on occasion, and make love once — after which Naoko leaves Tokyo. Emotionally unstable she returns to her family, and then goes to live in a sort of sanatorium.
The second woman Toru gets involved with is Midori (which means “green”), whom he meets after Naoko has left. She is in the same History of Drama class as him. Both Midori and Naoko are not entirely approachable. They like, or even love Toru, but they are wary of having him close or revealing too much about themselves. Midori’s father, who she first says is off in Uruguay, is actually very sick, and Midori and her sister spend much of their time taking care of him. Toru accepts things as they come, always helpful but trying not too intrude too much. He is drawn to Midori but feels an obligation towards Naoko.
There are few other significant people in his life. His parents are hardly a presence at all. He has a fastidious roommate, nicknamed the Storm Trooper, who simply disappears from his life. He makes one good friend, the only person he meets who has read his favourite book at the time, The Great GatsbyThe Centaur !). Nagasawa is two years older than him, a law student at Todai (Tokyo University) with a promising career ahead of him. A great success with the women, he occasionally takes Toru with him when he goes to bars or the like, looking for a one-night stand. Toru enjoys these outings, though they are also unfulfilling for him.
Nagasawa also has a steady girlfriend, the too-understanding Hatsumi, who sticks by him despite his philandering and his cold philosophy. It is also an ill-fated relationship.
After several months in her sanatorium Naoko asks Toru to come visit, which he does. It is a striking, secluded place, with an odd assortment of characters. Naoko’s roommate, the older Reiko — a music teacher with her own sad tale of a relationship that could not be sustained (she had a husband and child, but she left them) — acts as intermediary, friend, and chaperone. Needless to say, there is some guitar playing — including the haunting “Norwegian Wood”, and the time Toru spends there all has the feel of that particular song.
Nothing becomes settled for Toru, drawn closer to both Naoko and Midori. Crises come, including when Midori’s father dies. Midori also realizes that Toru is not ready to have a true relationship with her. She explains to him: (replacing his previous favourite — John Updike’s

You were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that you’re having yours, it seems there’s not a thing I can do for you. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside. There is, ultimately, another suicide (a somewhat too popular solution in Japan), and Toru finally figures things out in a quite satisfactory way.

The relatively simple story is told in a deceptively simple and straightforward manner. There is a lot of care and art behind what Murakami has done. The novel is affecting and clever. It is touching without getting too caught up in sentiment. Murakami even manages to use the Beatles song of the title without getting too unbearably sappy.
Tokyo, Japan in general, and the semi-turbulent times (the late 60s and early 70s) remain firmly in the background, but they are well-evoked and Murakami gives a good picture of them in using them for his setting.
The portrayal of sex in the book is relatively unusual. There is quite a lot of it, though most involves manual gratification of one sort or another. Actual consummation tends to be a unique experience, either a one-night stand or a once in a lifetime experience — perhaps a bit too much emphasis to place on the act.
The book is more obviously Japanese than most of Murakami’s work. From the surfeit of suicides (beside the significant ones a couple of peripheral figures and relatives are also suicides) to Japanese customs and expectations some of the book will strike Western readers as odd. Most of the book, however, comes across very well in this universal story of love, loss, and finding one’s place in the world.
Love, ultimately, is marvelous, even if it is unfathomable. “Isn’t it good / Norwegian wood”. Indeed.
Well worth reading. And bonus points for the nice packaging — to UK publisher Harvill. (Minus points to boring American publisher Vintage for not following suit and instead presenting it in the usual (unattractive and unwieldy) trade paperback format.)

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/murakamih/norwood.htm

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After Dark(Haruki Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

After Dark is set in a single night, beginning just before midnight and ending with the sun rising again. Some chance encounters, the intersection of a variety of lives: not much happens in these hours, yet Murakami dangles enough in front of the reader and constantly leaves small questions unanswered (from: what is that book the girl is reading at Denny’s ?) to hold the reader’s attention. Without much obvious progression — a character who has to remember to do some shopping on his way home is about the most goal-oriented of the lot — Murakami nevertheless creates a world of great (and often ominous) possibility and expectation.
The narrator’s presence is sometimes very emphatically put — all the more noticeable because it is not an “I” but a “we”. A reader might bristle at being included in this way, powerless even as s/he’s told: “Our line of sight chooses an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, silently descends to it” (since there’s no choice whatsoever for the reader here: the perspective, here and throughout, is pre-determined, with no opportunity for choosing a different locale to light upon …), and so might choose to read the ‘we’ as some sort of omniscient cluster-narrator, the gods who aren’t quite in control. Either way, Murakami is very firm in what he allows (and what he doesn’t). In later scenes, especially around Mari’s sister Eri, the narrator again comes to the fore, and again insists on a particular point of view — even as it is framed as a matter of choice (”We want to check out the interior of that other room directly, with our own eyes”, etc.) and makes it teasingly easy:

It’s not that difficult once we make up our mind. All we have to do is separate from the flesh, leave all substance behind, and allow ourselves to become a conceptual point of view devoid of mass.
The reader is drawn along with this “conceptual point of view”; some perhaps go willingly, but when Murakami puts it this way it’s hard to keep from imagining the alternatives that could be chosen, the other nooks and crannies that could be explored but that “we” are not allowed to …..
At Denny’s trombone player Tetsuya Takahashi, taking a break from an all-night jam session, sits down at Mari’s table. They’ve met before — and he knows her sister, the beautiful Eri. Mari isn’t very open to begin with, but Takahashi doesn’t mind and is glad to lead the conversation, and over the course of the night they’ll meet and talk some more.
It’s Takahashi that also gets her involved in other people’s lives: a Chinese girl is beaten up at a ‘love hotel’, and he sends the manager to Denny’s to ask for Mari’s help, since the girl can’t speak Japanese but Mari is fluent in Chinese.
The novel follows these few threads — including the rest of the night of the man responsible for beating up the Chinese girl — but they’re fairly loosely intertwined. Murakami’s world is one of chance and glancing encounters rather than tightening connexions and clear resolutions. The criss-crossing is as likely to be incidental as head-on: so, for example, the goon-handler of the Chinese girl drives his motorcycle right beside the taxi in which the man he’s looking for is riding — but the moment passes, potential unfulfilled. (The attacker also leaves the Chinese girl’s cellphone in a convenience store, the threatening calls her handlers then make thus going into almost a void — they reach someone (people pick up the phone and answer it) but not the person they want to; it’s like some vast sea of anonymity, yet where everyone is somehow touched by everything that happens.)
One of the issues Mari has is with her sister, the popular and beautiful one in the family, but Eri has her own issues, which only become clearer later in the novel. Several scenes focus on her troubled sleep, but Murakami only fits the pieces together slowly. It’s fairly effective, even in its resolutions, though not all of Murakami’s games around her (and the camera angles he chooses …) convince.
There are many stretches of After Dark which read like they were written by a very young author, trying out different things, unable to stick to one style and approach. It doesn’t speak against the novel, however — indeed, it even gives the book a very youthful freshness. (Murakami has also always been particularly good with younger characters, and that reinforces that feeling here, too: here Mari is 19, her sister and Takahashi not much older, and Murakami again nails the feel of life at that age.)
Much of the night in question feels almost everyday, what happens just as likely to happen any other day “we” might have chosen, and much of the appeal of Murakami’s writing is in how well he conveys what seem like unremarkable scenes. As it turns out, there is more to this evening than most, from it being Takahashi’s last time with the band to Mari’s future (not to mention sleeping beauty Eri …). Murakami doesn’t always seem sure of how best to present the story, but for the most part he does do a very nice job of it.
Appealing, surprisingly resonant.

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/murakamih/afterdark.htm

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Audition Film Review

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

By:Tom Mes

Though accompanied by the highest audience walk-out count I was ever lucky enough to witness, Takashi Miike’s Audition played to great critical acclaim at 2000’s Rotterdam film festival and subsequently went on to become a worldwide festival and art house favourite.

Audition was based on a novel by Ryu Murakami, who - even though a number of his books haven been translated into English - is best known outside Japan as the director of the art house hit Tokyo Decadence (Topazu, 1991). Murakami was reportedly so enamoured by Miike’s film that he personally asked the director to adapt his best-known novel Coin Locker Babies.

Despite the fact that it was originated by someone else, Audition’s story of a middle-aged, widowed tv-producer’s search for a bride through the means of a fake audition for young actresses, once again adheres to the Miike trademark of being both attractive and repellent, fascinating and disgusting. After a deceptively languid and almost melodramatic first hour, this develops into a white-knuckle endurance test of viewer’s nerves.

Like so many of Miike’s films, Audition revolves around collision. In this case, it’s men’s attitudes towards women which get violently overrun by their own naivet�. The film seems to be an indictment of the (Japanese) male’s attitude towards, and views of, women. Ryo Ishibashi’s widower wants a beautiful, chaste, dutiful, young and humble wife, but doesn’t mind letting the potential candidate go through the meat market process of the audition, where she is expected to wait in line with a thousand others in order to bare her breasts for two middle-aged men she has never met. And all because he lacks the nerve and the social skills to meet someone in the real world, where the odds are more even. He is driven by fear and weakness, looking for a quick and easy solution that becomes his downfall.

However, though the above fits the character, Miike and screenwriter Daisuke Tengan also give Aoyama a sense of doubt about the wrongfulness of the path he has chosen. His personality is a grey area, not black or white. He may lack nerve and social skills after seven years of being alone, but that doesn’t make him evil. During the audition scenes, he watches somewhat uncomfortably at the procession of young women parading in front of him, while his colleague, who suggested the idea of the audition to him, goes through it all without a hint of emotion. As the film proceeds it becomes clear that Aoyama’s feelings for this girl Asami are indeed true and we get the feeling that given time this relationship might work. But time is not on their side, cut short by the sledgehammer finale Miike serves up for us.

Miike himself vehemently denies that Audition is meant as social criticism. In fact he denies the existence of any kind of artistic pretense in his films, instead stating that he is in no position to criticise his fellow men and that he simply wants to create the best possible result from the material offered to him.

Whichever way you look at it, the film works. Psycho-thriller, social indictment or both, Audition proves to be a powerhouse.

from:http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/audition.shtml

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Piercing(Ryu Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

There’s a scene in Piercing where someone from the front desk at a hotel calls the main character’s room, where it’s been getting a bit noisy. The hotel employee’s roundabout way of addressing the subject leads to the digression:

What a roundabout way of complaining, Kawashima thought. Somewhere a little kid was getting his brains beaten to a pulp because he’d wet the bed; somewhere a woman who’d broken some arbitrary rule was being taken to a room where unspeakable things could be done to her away from prying eyes; and meanwhile: Is everything alright, sir ? Thank you so much for your cooperation, sir — a complaint that sounded more like an apology.
It’s this duality that is of particular interest to Murakami: a Japanese society where on the surface all is very formal and orderly - but which covers up and turns a blind eye to a great deal. It’s also a duality he finds in his characters: the central ones here, the graphic designer Kawashima Masayuki and the prostitute Chiaki, who were both abused in their childhoods and have clearly not gotten over that — despite leading what appear to me or less ordinary lives.
Piercing begins with a powerful and disturbing scene: Kawashima seems to be a content family man, with a wife and a baby. But for ten days he’s been getting up at night and staring at the sleeping infant. With an ice pick in his hand. Worried: “Not again“.
Yes, the one secret he’s been keeping even from his wife is that he once stabbed a woman with an ice pick. And that urge seems to be coming back ….. Kawashima does admit to having night terrors — just like Chiaki suffers from “the Nightmare”, an episode she’s endured seven times. In both cases, it’s clear that it’s a consequence of their horrible childhoods. They seem to have survived their childhoods remarkably well, considering, for example, what happened to most of the kids Kawashima was raised with, but, like Japan itself, appearances can be deceptive.
Kawashima become obsessed with his ice-picking idea and decides he has to get it out of his system. He draws up an elaborate plan to take it all out on a prostitute — but the girl he winds up with is Chiaki, a kindred spirit who has her own problems to deal with, messing up his plan.
Kawashima’s carefully written-up blueprint (he carries the notes with him, too) falls apart almost immediately, but he tries to make the best of it. Meanwhile, Chiaki is going through her own thing, further confusing and confounding him. There’s blood and violence — though rarely exactly as planned. And, yes, the book ends with some piercing …..
Both Kawashima and Chiaki have the opportunity to turn to authorities to try to get themselves out of this situation — he considers calling her employers, at some point they each consider telling the police — but it’s just easier to leave them out of it. Indeed, they consider it hardly worth their time. Even when Chiaki goes to the emergency room to get some very unpleasant wounds attended to she lies to the doctor and even though it’s obvious she’s lying he’s more than willing to accept her story and leave it at that. Like the abused kids who are ignored, everyone prefers to pretend everything is alright. Life is just much simpler that way — except, of course, that Murakami means to show it’s really not.
Piercing is a pretty gory and often unpleasant tale, but Murakami does a fairly good job with it. Both Kawashima and Chiaki are convincing characters — and the contrast to Kawashima’s domestic life is particularly well presented. There’s a bit too much reliance on the altered-mind-states of his characters — their losing control — but on the other hand it is completely plausible that they have suffered such intense psychological damage which occasionally manifests itself in these ways.
Certainly unlikely to be to everyone’s taste, Piercing nevertheless is a far more convincing examination of the demons within than was Murakami’s In the Miso Soup — though he perhaps tries too hard to place the blame on his characters’ horrible childhoods here. But it still makes for a cold and devastating commentary on contemporary Japan, and — for those who can take the blood and gore — is a quick, worthwhile read.

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/japannew/murakr3.htm

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69(Ryu Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

69 is the story of the year, 1969, as seen and lived by Murakami-stand-in, Kensuke Yazaki, the seventeen-year-old narrator of the novel. Ken lives in Sasebo (where Murakami grew up), a small city dominated by an American military base:

The base occupies the very best land, as it does in every town that has one.
Ken’s main ambition is to impress the girls, and particularly one he calls ‘Lady Jane’. From a promising start, his grades have been slipping throughout high school: he’s concerned about that, but notes that: “in 1969 failures were having a lot of fun”. Certainly, there are enough outlets other than academics that attract attention, from a widespread anti-authoritarian streak to pop culture. Everyone seems to play music, and Ken plans to make both a film and write a play. (Traditional outlets, such as sports, on the other hand, Ken finds considerably less appealing.)
Ken and his friends are in over their heads in practically everything they do (a political action they take gets them in deep trouble, for example), but there’s an enthusiasm for the new and different:

It’s funny: not one of us — Iwase, Adama, or me — had ever seen a single underground movie, yet we all dreamed of making one. It was like the French living on the Atlantic coast under the Nazi occupation, dreaming of an Allied landing.
Ken has his own style and approach, and most of the time it stands him in good stead. He’s a faker, but he’s good at it:

It was around this time that I’d begun trying to perfect the art of fucking with people’s minds. I’d figured out that when someone else was hogging the limelight, you could cut him down to size by bringing up a subject he didn’t know anything about. If the other person knew a lot about literature, I’d talk about the Velvet Underground; if he knew a lot about rock, I’d talk about Messiaen; if he knew a lot about classical music, I’d talk about Roy Lichtenstein; if he knew a lot about pop art, I’d talk about Jean Genet; and so on. Do that in a small provincial city and you never lose an argument.
Ken is always trying to do something, bored and annoyed by school (which he sees as “a factory, a sorting house”). Among his grand ambitions: the Morning Erection Festival. His attempts — to make a statement, make a movie, make a festival, get the girl, and deal with teachers and thugs alike — all makes for fairly entertaining reading.
69 is a somewhat nostalgic look back at coming of age in the late 60s — the now thirty-two-year-old narrator specifically mentioning the perspective from which he recounts his tale (and also offering an appendix of sorts, where he describes what happened to many of the other characters in the meantime).
Lively, often funny, the novel offers a good look at Japanese small-city culture in the 1960s, touched by the changing world and yet still very set in its small town, army-base ways. 69 is the most Haruki-like of all of this Murakami’s fiction, but Ryu’s narrator is less turned in on himself than Haruki’s tend to be, more eager to be in a crowd (and a leader in the crowd — foisting his ideas on them, and (he hopes) impressing the girls).)
Somewhat rough in its presentation, 69 is — for those interested in that period — a worthwhile and fairly amusing look at 60s culture from a (provincial but ambitious) Japanese perspective.

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/japannew/murakr2.htm

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In the Miso Soup(Ryu Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

In the Miso Soup is narrated by twenty-year-old Kenji who hires himself out as a “nightlife guide” for foreign tourists in Tokyo, helping them navigate this world of odd and expensive customs and possibilities. In the last days of 1996 he hooks up with Frank, an American looking to have a good time (or so he claims), and the novel relates their expeditions together as the new year approaches.
Kenji meets all sorts in his line of work, but he finds Frank troubling almost from the beginning. Nothing Frank says about himself is convincing, and he even seems to lie about irrelevant things. But the money is good — and then, before he knows it, Kenji finds Frank has more of a hold over him than he’s comfortable with.
Kenji first hears from Frank when the American calls him, inquiring about his availability; Kenji happens to be reading about a schoolgirl who had been murdered and dismembered when the call comes. Their first night out they pass by the place where she was killed — and Kenji notices that Frank pays with what looks like a bloodstained ¥ 10,000 note at the first place they go to. These coincidences — and Frank’s general demeanour and behaviour — make Kenji ever more suspicious.
There is no plausible reason to suspect Frank of any connexion to this (and other) crimes, but it becomes an idée fixe. As Kenji tells his sixteen-year-old girlfriend:

“I mean, I don’t have any actual evidence that he did it. The real mystery to me is why I can’t shake the feeling that maybe he did.”
This is also one of the big mysteries for the reader, as this implausible plot-twist is completely unnecessary and serves more to annoy than create much of an atmosphere of foreboding (which is presumably what Murakami was trying to do).
The descriptions of Kenji and Frank’s nights out — which take up most of the novel — do have their moments. The different sorts of nightclubs, the men (and, especially, the women) who frequent them, the services on offer are all described, and the seemingly jolly, naïve gaijin (foreigner) Frank is shown to be a quite spectacular fish out of water. Repeatedly, however, Kenji focusses his attention (and disappointment) on Japanese society, many of its failures reflected in these semi-seedy doings. (Frank is something of a foil, but ultimately far too cartoonish to be of much use as a representative of American society — except, perhaps, in its ultimate, apocalyptic manifestation (which may very well be how the Japanese would like to read this).)
The outings aren’t very pleasant. Frank claims to be after sex, but there’s clearly something else going on here. The scenes in the club they go to where the true Frank finally reveals himself are largely convincingly (if painfully) awkward, people brought together out of desperation, lying to each other and themselves, a protracted scene of miscommunication and unwillingness to admit to personal weakness or failure, everyone there a lost soul.
Fairly early on Kenji recognises that Frank isn’t quite like everybody else:

I didn’t know if he was a murderer, but I knew he had a bottomless void inside him. And that void was what made him lie. I’ve been there. Compared to where Frank was at, it may have been like a Hello Kitty version, but I’ve been there.
Things get very ugly and gory and brutal. Unfortunately, they also strain credulity: too many things that happen (and a few that don’t happen) are simply too unbelievable, and that undermines the entire book (nearly fatally). Murakami plays with some good ideas here, but the actions that go with the thoughts are cartoonishly exaggerated, from the true Frank to Kenji’s reactions.
Unevenly paced, unconvincingly plotted, and extremely gory, In the Miso Soup is far from satisfying. It does offer an interesting, bleak glimpse of contemporary Japanese society, but it’s unfortunate that Murakami uses the simply unbelievable Frank-figure (and Kenji’s unlikely suspicions) to make many of his points.
In the Miso Soup is an ambitious novel, but unfortunately Murakami seems to believe that such grand ambitions require everything in the book (especially the violence) to be on a similarly grand scale; it is a terrible miscalculation.

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/japannew/murakr1.htm

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