"A Slow Boat to China" by Haruki Murakami

 

A Slow Boat to China is about a man who recalls his relationships with three main Chinese people living in Japan. The first was a proctor he met in school. The second, a girl whom he worked with during a part-time job. Many years later, he bumped into the third, a salesman who sells encyclopedias to the Chinese in Tokyo. 

The best way to describe the thirteenth story of The Elephant Vanishes is by saying it's impressionistic. As an artist, Murakami is striking with his brush of a pen the canvas of paper events from the protagonist's life. They seem unrelated and hazy, so hazy, in fact, that readers are left to wonder what is it that the story is trying to communicate. 

I'm not an expert when it comes to subtlety, but I can't help but notice the undertow of the theme of memory.

'What is memory' The story seems to ask. 'How does it define our humanity? Why do some people retain so much of their memories? Why the others can retain so little? Is it because of bad genes or biology or the work of selective amnesia based on carelessness or selfishness?

This story has become personal. For a long time, I've been struggling with 'overlooking' details. I'm not talking here about trivia, but about details that define one's life, details about childhood for example. Thankfully, it's not something medical. Still, it's a bit of a nuisance, if not depressing. It's like when I meet one of my childhood friends and he starts recalling stuff I don't even remember living through. It brings me down, making me think that I'm a selfish person who cares only about himself, not paying attention to those around him. That's why I can relate to the protagonist. He's like a helpless leaf caught in the wind. He's simply a man drifting through life, a man with an impressionistic idea about the past. A man living in the moment with no prospects for the future.

The protagonist is torn by the outcome his life has arrived at. He's beating himself to remember all those tiny details that forever derailed his life, details like 'when was it the year he met his first Chinese?' or why 'he's terrible with (remembering) people's faces'. Everything adds to the jigsaw puzzle of why he never met that Chinese coworker again after he put her on the wrong train and then accidentally threw away the matchbox with her number written on it. But was his 'carelessness' to blame? Why didn't he ask the Chinese old friend about her, or ask him to track her down? He's a salesman specializing in selling encyclopedias to the Chinese in Tokyo by 'going through the Tokyo directory picking out Chinese names, making a list and going through the list one by one'. Why didn't—couldn't he? 

Maybe he didn't have an interest in the girl in the first place. Maybe he felt obligated to meet again and then subconsciously sent her away because 'he tends to forget about the past'.

So many 'maybe's. So many ifs. So few answers. But that's Murakami for you.

To encapsulate A Slow Boat to China, I thought of a metaphor. Here it goes:

Let's suppose that intergalactic travel is possible and that humans have managed to build independent civilizations across the galaxy. Passengers can meet at stations, right? But due to the relative nature of the hypothetical reaching-the-speed-of-light, the chances for two people to meet again is highly infinitesimal. [Don't judge me. I might be wrong. This is my understanding of the theory.] Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that Tokyo is a big, big city, and because of the busy life of such a big city, people might not come across each other, again, if they don't find interest in each other. They're simply busy running their humdrum lives. And if they don't take the initiative or will it enough to be attached to one of them, s/he will be 'another China', a China that isn't China, a China for all those lost opportunities and possibilities, a China that is uncharted and unknown.

A Slow Boat to China is a story about missed opportunities, about what makes someone unforgettable, about loss and regret. It's a story about life.

"TV People" by Haruki Murakami

 

This definitely requires a second if not a third read. It's weird and filled with what-the-hell-is-going-on moments. Usually, the problem with some Murakami stories stems from the fact that they contain more than one major symbol. It can be confusing to the readers. What's with the reduced people, for instance, the TV set, the airplane that doesn't look like an airplane. What all of this have to do with the unnamed protagonist and the wife? So many questions and Murakami's tendency for subtlety can, sometimes, be overwhelming.

I googled for some explanations and I came across this: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/murakami/comments/hpj94t/curious_to_hear_peoples_thoughts_on_tv_people/

The story can mean many things. I was surprised to learn that a theory states that the wife is [SPOILER ALERT] cheating on the protagonist. There are many other theories, but one thing I'm quite certain of which is that the story is about disconnection or being divorced not from reality but from human contact. You need only notice how the protagonist refers to his wife as the wife.

This is a typical Murakamian story. The mood is exceptional. (or maybe because today is the first rain: the sky is dark and it's raining cats and dogs. The smell of earth permeates my library while I'm sipping my coffee listening to the audiobook). But anyway, TV People should be lengthened to a full novel, just like The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women. Maybe then, we'll get our answers.

"Barn Burning" by Haruki Murakami

 

The short story of Barn Burning caught me completely off guard. I wasn't prepared for it. It's one of those Murakami stories that you need to read, sit back for a while, ignore it for some time, then reread it in order for you to come up with an explanation that may/may not be close to what Murakami meant. 

It's a story about a married man who has a girl that is a friend (not a girlfriend). She works as an advertisement model and studies pantomime. The unnamed girl who is a friend of the narrator is a carefree, simple character who doesn't value what most people think of as important in a relationship (even a dealbreaker). Things like age or marital status or income to be of the same importance "as shoe size and vocal pitch and the shape of one's fingernails". She's young, having financial troubles. She lost her father about one year after she'd met the narrator. With the inheritance, she decided to travel to Algeria. When she returned to Japan, she brought with her a man she'd met in Algiers. One day, the couple decides to stay in the narrator's house. After some drinks, mixed with some weed smoking, the girl leaves the narrator and the Algerian man alone. Out of the blue, the man confesses that he burns barns from time to time. In fact, he already decided to burn one close to the narrator's place. The narrator searches for every barn in the area, but all of them are untouched. After a while, the narrator meets the Algerian man who tells him that he already burned the barn. He also informs the narrator that the girl went missing. 

Reading the story was a rollercoaster of a ride. At first, it began like any Murakami story, making expositions to the characters and the settings, etc. I thought it was another social-commentary story. Then the story turned to be a moody one when the three characters started partaking while Miles Davis was playing in the background. Then, out of the blue, the mood dissipated and turned into a mystery when the Algerian man stated that he burns barns. Then, it dramatically shifted into a psychological thriller when the girl was nowhere to be found.

There's a lot going on for sure. I think—and I'm not one hundred percent sure—that the man whom the girl brought with her from Algeria has something to do with her disappearance. Murakami can be really tricky when it comes to symbols and metaphors. The guy tailors his bespoke symbols and metaphors! The neglected 'barns' could mean anything. They, perhaps, mean literal barns, or people whose lives are in ruin, either by circumstance or by their own hands. The unnamed girl could be a barn that is "waiting to be burned". And when they are burned, there will be "no grief to anyone". They're nobodies, and no one will miss them. "They just...vanish. One, two, poof!"

I'm inclined to believe the latter since Murakami mentioned something in his epic 1Q84 about 'My body is my temple'.

My take on this short story is really dark. I could be wrong, terribly wrong. Even so, it didn't stand in my way having fun scratching my brain for answers.

"Lederhosen" by Haruki Murakami

“MOTHER DUMPED MY FATHER,” a friend of my wife’s was saying one day, “all because of a pair of shorts.”

That's the whole premise of Lederhosen, which is, by the way, a kind of traditional German shorts. The way Murakami decided to tell us in a few words what the story is all about right from the beginning and then tried later to explain it reminded me instantly of Dave Chapelle's Equanimity & The Third Bird Revelation. Chapelle opened his special by saying that 'he actually writes jokes backwards'. What he meant was that he tells his audience the punchline in the beginning. Then, he sets out telling random stories about this and that so that everyone completely forgets about the punchline... until it finally arrives. This is when it'll have a double effect.

Yeah... Murakami did it before it was cool.

Lederhosen is a short snack about how frustrating marriage can be, how women put up with men, how forgiving they can be until the final straw that breaks the camel's back. I love how natural and spontaneous that narrative is, even though the beginning confused me. 

"Sleep" by Haruki Murakami

 

Sleep, the fifth short story from The Elephant Vanishes, tells the story of a thirty-year-old wife who, somehow, is unable to sleep anymore. Her inability to fall asleep affects her life and the relationships between her and those around her, including her husband and son.

What separates Murakami as a writer is his ability to tell stories of absolutely normal protagonists who experience extraordinary things. In his long novels, the extraordinary is mostly about something external and the characters are caught in bizarre happenings which compel them to act. However, in his short works, the extraordinary is mostly about something internal, like a curse that causes certain physiological malfunctions in the protagonists' bodies: be it a specific kind of memory loss that causes one to forget his/her own name (A Shinagawa Monkey), or insatiable hunger (The Second Bakery Attack), or an awful case of non-stop vomiting (Nausea 1979), to name but a few.

In Sleep, the wife experienced an awful nightmare that made her unable to sleep. Throughout the story, she tells how her life has changed before this unique condition and after.

Before 'the sleep-eating' nightmare:

She used to be an active person with a distinctive character who drank a lot, read whole volumes of books, especially Russian literature, and ate chocolate without restriction. Her first early months of marriage were happy, but as the years rolled on, this feeling started to fade away. Life became a drag, and every day was a copy of the next, even the exchanges or dialogues between her and her husband and son were 'always the same dialogue'. She began, bit by bit, to lose important things she shouldn't lose, like for instance, the thing that made her husband unique to her, despite his 'not-being-such-a-nice-looking-guy'. 'How can you live with a man so long and not be able to bring his face to mind?' the protagonist asks.

After 'the sleep-eating' nightmare:

At first, she isn't deeply worried about her condition, but then she starts to notice new changes in her: her body, and the way she spends her waking days and nights. Her skin 'has far more glow, far more tautness'. She starts to indulge herself in Russian Literature, coupled with drinking wine and eating chocolate. 

However, as she edges closer and closer to the seventeenth day without sleeping, her worries begin to surface as she realizes that 'this extended life' has to have a 'debt' to settle. Not to mention, that the more she doesn't sleep, the more she distances herself from her family as they're becoming 'strangers' to her day by day. 

We can see the two states of the protagonist's lives. The first where she was 'free' to do whatever she pleased and had more confidence, and the later where the killing routine of marriage has shackled her. The nightmare acts as a catalyst to let her break loose (at a great cost sadly). The man in the nightmare is wearing a tight-fitting sweatsuit (symbolizing her young self), but he's an old man (symbolizing what she's become). The old man acts as a premonition of 'the curse' he's inflicted on the protagonist. It's like saying to her: 'Hey! You'll become just like me: an old woman who keeps clinging to her past'. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Sleep. The prose. The flow of the main character's thoughts. The parallels between the story and Anna Karenina.  

"On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl on One Beautiful April Morning" by Haruki Murakami

 

Only Haruki Murakami has the balls to write titles that are, relatively speaking, longer than their main stories. The five-page-long story of On Seeing the 100% Girl... is a plotless one, but not without heart or meaning. In fact, it's soulful and quite heartbreaking... but also realistic in a world governed by chances and randomness.

It's about a boy who met the 100% girl for him one day and how he failed to make up a line that will attract her. So he indulges himself in the most fantastical perfect line in the history of all pick-up lines ever.

"The Second Bakery Attack" by Haruki Murakami

 

The Second Bakery Attack

by Haruki Murakami

I got this short story from the book The Elephant Vanishes which is a short story collection written by Haruki Murakami from 1980 to 1991.

The Second Bakery Attack, the second story in the collection, centers around a newlywed couple who have little to dine on. The couple spends their time before bed conversing during which the man recounts his first attack on a bakery some years ago with the help of a friend of his. The baker, for some reason, suggested that if they listened to Richard Wagner's LP, he'd allow them to have all the bread they wanted. The problem was that after this 'attack', a kind of curse began to affect the 'attacker' and all those around him, including his girlfriend, with a kind of hunger that cannot be satisfied. The girlfriend suggests that they should attack another bakery right away in an attempt to undo the curse.

While Murakami is known for his long works such as Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, 1Q84, etc, his mastery of the written word is most noticeable in his short stories. They are weird, absurd, and stuffed with subtleties that are easily overlooked. 

I enjoyed reading TSBA. I think it's not as hard as Murakami's other short stories. I can relate to the main protagonist. Sometimes in life, you set out to do something and you get it done, but you still feel that void consuming you. Like for example, you want to pass an exam, but you haven't studied, but with the help of a friend, you cheated and passed the exam. You're happy for a moment... but deep, deep down, you know there's something wrong. You know you don't deserve to pass. You know you didn't study (the protagonist didn't want to work). You know you're not fulfilled (the protagonist felt the ever-gnawing hunger deep within). The thrill is gone. The feeling of achieving something by yourself is gone. 

As the story progresses, the couple decides to search for a bakery but then settles for a McDonald's. The "attack" is a success, and the couple feels good. After reading this, we feel as readers that the story ended well for everyone. The curse is undone, their hunger is satisfied, but is it? Of course, they feel at the end calm and content, but how couldn't they when they've wolfed down a couple of big Macs. What about when the 'physiological' hunger is gone some hours later? It's a nice touch--and a sneaky one--to finish the story right there.  

"The Strange Library" by Haruki Murakami

[In case The Strange Library is on your reading list. Please, skip reading. This review contains major spoilers.]

I was browsing an online bookstore to complete my Murakami collection when I noticed a couple of titles that I didn't have. One of them was The Strange Library. I was intrigued right away and ordered it. I mean, come on, it's Murakami. One thing I'd like him to talk about other than jazz or some weird ear fetishes is to talk about libraries and books. 

When the book arrived, I was super hyped and felt... weird: hyped because it was a hardcover with beautiful illustrations inside... and feeling weird because, frankly speaking, this book didn't seem like a book written by Murakami. 

Anyway, I started reading and finished the book in one sitting. It's a small book after all, despite the fact that Wikipedia states that it's a novella! The story tells the story of an unnamed child who returns some books to a public library and then decides to borrow some other books. The librarian tells him that he needs to speak to an old man who takes the young kid to a secret room, then a labyrinth, then down a stairway right into a jail cell... and locks him up.

"All I did was go to the library to borrow some books."

 

My reaction as I reached the final page was like my all other reactions when I finish any book by Murakami, except it was doubly so in this case. I was like Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas, trying to figure out the meaning behind the holiday. 

***

I'm not an expert when it comes to allegory or symbolic hidden meanings, but I think I got the gist of the story. I think it's about obsession about the past/letting go of it/confronting it and accepting reality as it is. Maybe I'm wrong, drifting miles and miles away from what the story is really about. Maybe, this is the genius of Murakami, letting readers draw their own interpretations in accordance with their own experiences. Some might find the story is about grief or loneliness, or even find the entire escapade is a form of escapism. That's ok. That's the beauty of literature when it triggers readers to think of books as puzzles that need to be dissected and deciphered.

I think that the unnamed child's mother died before his venture into the backstage of the library (whether it's a dream or a parallel reality or a simple daydreaming sequence). Maybe she really died after that nightmarish sequence along with the starling (which makes the venture a premonition of what's to come). But one thing I'm certain of, which is that the whole sequence is some kind of coping mechanism (whether the narrator has developed or fate has chosen for him) that backfired on him and locked him inside. So, the boy's mother died. He retreats to reading as an escape, but this habit became an obsession that isolated him from the outside world. Remember, we're dealing with a very timid boy who "isn't good at giving anyone a clear no". In my Arabic culture, individuals with these traits are sadly stereotyped as 'lacking personality'. But no one is without character; it's just in these cases, their personalities have retreated from the surface, some kind of self-implosion. What they need are no helping hands from others. The only help that will have an effect on them, however, is the one they give themselves. So our young protagonist has to accept his loss by discarding everything to do with the accompanying pain (his shoes which were a gift from his mother). 

***

Summary:

The Strange Library is indeed strange, one I enjoyed thoroughly. Why shouldn't I when it's happening in my favorite of all places--libraries. I've always dreamt of going to public libraries like Dublin's Trinity Library for instance, but Murakami has managed to make these cosy, happy places the birthplace of nightmares. 

The story is short but the way it's told, with the use of the impressionistic form corresponding to meaning, makes it a unique reading experience.

3.5/5

"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

 

[In case Lord of the Flies is on your reading list. Please, skip reading. This post contains major spoilers.]

Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel written by British writer William Golding. He served in the royal navy during world war II before being a school teacher.

His debut novel, Lord of the Flies, tells the story of a group of boys who 'somehow' survived a plane crash and found themselves on a deserted tropical island. The boys have to do everything it takes to survive, which includes maintaining a beacon at the top of a mountain and securing their daily fruits and meat. However, the dynamics of their relationships ultimately drive them to lose themselves to savagery. 

The story is basic and straightforward which may give the impression to some readers that it's even without a plot. I'm not arguing against that, but I'm merely asserting that LotF is a book that belongs to what can be referred to as 'Idea Books'. I'm not sure if this is a thing, but anyway, these books explore ideas of hypothetical situations. In this book, Golding's main concern is the idea of whether humans are inherently good or evil. It's very controversial; you may find arguments for both sides. But I get where Golding is coming from, witnessing the horrors of WW2 for one, and the horrors of kids in high school for another (just kidding around😜. No pun intended). 

Maybe we are evil. Maybe we are good. It's all about the definitions of these two concepts. What makes a person good or evil? Circumstance? Basic instincts to ensure survival? Emotions like fear or hate? Or Pure mindless insanity? Let's face it, there's no agreed-upon universal definition of what's good or what's bad, because basically, what's good for me can be considered evil or bad for someone else.

Maybe, the answer isn't that obvious, just like the typical archetypes of the characters in the novel. Maybe, we are both good and evil. In the context of the book, the boys wanted to survive no matter what (a selfish need but justifiable nonetheless), but this can't be achieved without sticking together and acting as a community. This is another theme that the book explores: individualism vs collectivism. 

At any rate, I enjoyed reading LotF. It's an easy read, a short one, and a thought-provoking experience. What entertained me the most were the dialogues between the kids. They were believable and quite hilarious, especially when it concerned 'Piggy' (my favorite character after Ralph). 

There are many scenes that I felt intriguing such as Simon's hallucinations about the peg head (or were they?), but the last scene that served as a punch line was the final one when the Deux-ex Machina officer arrived on the island in the nick of time and saved the boys from slaughtering each other. It was Ralph's expressions, his tears falling, his body shaking all over. To me, Ralph is the tragic hero, all of the boys are, but he's the epitome because we saw things through his eyes. Yes, he was saved... but at what cost? Innocence... he, as well as, all of the boys have lost their innocence.

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

 

On the other hand, what put me off was the prose. I don't know why it didn't sink in me. The descriptions felt as if they were coming from a diver in a tank and reaching me through thick walls. They just felt prosaic and... 'soul-less'. Something must be wrong with me I guess! But that's how I felt.

I give it 3.5 stars.

"Authority" by Jeff VanderMeer

Authority

by Jeff VanderMeer

The trilogy of The Southern Reach continues with Authority. It tells the story of Area X from another perspective, from a government agent who likes to be called ‘Control’. The newly appointed director’s mission is to replace the former one who volunteered to enter Area X and vanished without ever returning to the Southern Reach facility.

I have to be honest, the book wasn’t as striking and suspense-filled and frightening as Annihilation was. It was a drag. The narrative was bland, stretched out, and conveyed little to nothing about what the hell is going on… even predictable at some point. Imagine Franz Kafka without the very essence of Franz Kafka, or Don Delillo without the thing that makes him Don Delillo… or the video game Control without its bizarre, moody, and horrifying aspects, with only its humdrum bureaucratic nonsense. That’s how I felt about two-thirds of the book. Perhaps, it’s the point of Authority to feel like it’s a husk, a shallow exterior of Annihilation, which, in a way, it reflects what happened to the returnees… but what do I know?

Anyway, it started out with interrogations (with no revelations because, of course, we knew what happened to the Biologist) and musings and flashbacks (which I found inconsequential and unamusing) and very, very detailed descriptions of the settings.

Yes, I get it, they’re part of a snail-paced buildup, but the question is… is the looong wait worth it? Does the ending justify the wait? Personally, no.

Now, I heard some readers claim that the third book holds many answers to what triggered Area X. They’re absolutely right. I had to watch youtube videos just to confirm that, and guess what, the story is indeed interesting. But, as a reader, I think it’s VanderMeer’s fault for driving me away with a 341-page-long book that should’ve been summarized into 100 pages to serve as a threshold for Acceptance.

I give it one star... two stars for effort. I'm terribly sorry, but the change of POV and mood between Annihilation and Authority felt jarring and inconsistent as if the two books didn't belong to the same series, something a professional writer wouldn't do.

"Annihilation" by Jeff VanderMeer

Annihilation 

by Jeff VanderMeer

Annihilation was a short read. It isn’t because of its 195 pages, but the fact that it’s a true page-turner. From the very first page, you begin to be slowly integrated into a Lovecraftian narrative that doesn’t promise to reveal anything. That’s why this book might not be everyone’s cup of coffee. It’s eerie, poetic, and equally terrifying.

Maybe that’s the point of this “pointless knowledge”, of the psychological minute detailing of the protagonist’s inner thoughts.

Maybe Area X should remain Area X, immune to interpretation and “compartmentalization”. Maybe that’s why the Biologist was the only one—however unreliable a narrator as she is—who could show us what is Area X without answering questions of whys—why is it there? Why is it terraforming earth? Why did the entity come to our planet?

The book, the first of a trilogy, was an enjoyable experience, even thought-provoking about the nature of ‘I’ and ‘the others’, of individualism versus collectivism, of objectivity versus subjectivism.

It wasn’t action-packed as Garland’s interpretation in the movie. It was more like an LSD ride straight into madness, which forced me to stop at times to absorb the dreamlike hypnotizing passages.

I give three stars, which, in my estimation, isn’t bad at all. Perhaps, I’ll re-rate it later once I’m finished with the trilogy.