I have been an unabashed lover of Haruki Murakami's writing ever since I first picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in 2010. Admittedly, I was late to the game. By 2010, Murakami was already known by millions of readers worldwide and had been translated into probably forty different languages. As a latecomer, I knew I had a lot to catch up on. I still do. There are still a few stories I haven’t yet picked up. However, to hopefully make up for some of my shortcomings, I teach his short story “Samsa in Love” and the novel Norwegian Wood in my World Literature class. At home, I often open up Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, as a sort of inspiration to keep writing (and hopefully, one day, running) every day. Otherwise, 1Q84, Dance Dance Dance, After Dark, Sputnik Sweetheart and Kafka on the Shore line my bookshelf, with the last of these probably my favorite and After Dark collecting dust, still unfinished.
Privately, I read a novel by Murakami in much the same way I read his memoir. I don’t read to learn lessons about the craft of writing or to pick apart his prose. Reading a story by Murakami is more about acquiring a sort of reserve of linguistic or emotional fortitude. One of the characters in Murakami’s latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, says it better: “Not to see what you want to see, but what you must see.”
In this way, I approach the novels I’ve read by Murakami, reading more for what “must” be seen. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, for those familiar with Murakami’s other works, reads like an extension of Norwegian Wood — or maybe better, as a grown up version of Norwegian Wood — in a world where people have jobs and it feels like there are tangible things really at stake. Where Norwegian Wood is largely full of college age, young adults, grappling and coming to term with life, love and sexuality, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a story that happens later in life, the cast of characters largely in the midst of their 30s, and notably still coming to terms with life, love and sexuality.
In a lot of ways, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki does not escape the influence of Norwegian Wood. There is the subtle hint of the surreal, but for the most part, this is a straight-forward narrative that deals with the big question of love and loss with a central protagonist, Tsukuru Tazaki, who is thrust into this position of searching through his past, his first years of college and why he was expelled from his group of friends. For those that have read Norwegian Wood, a lot of this feels like Murakami revisiting those college years from a more nuanced, mature point of view. Not that this is in any way a bad thing. All of this feels natural, like a story that must be told.
Along the course of Tsukuru’s pilgrimage, we are invited to other musings that would not seem out of place in Murakami’s memoir. In a story told by one of Tsukuru’s friends, a mysterious piano player shows up and waxes philosophic on the idea of talent.
“Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes,” he says. “You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money… But talent only functions when it’s supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus.”
And then a little bit later, another one of Tsukuru’s friends says, “Talent is like a container. You can work as hard as you want, but the size will never change. It’ll hold so much water and no more.”
Though these philosophic links back to the memoir are somewhat — at least to me — inevitable to make, this isn’t what is essential. What’s essential about Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is almost impossible to explain without delving into sentiment. Murakami approaches human emotion in a pure, deceivingly natural way that most writers fail to accomplish. There isn’t another living writer I can think where the full weight of an emotion built up through of pages of text, reveals itself in such clear, unadulterated prose. And when this emotion is revealed, there is some greater truth that, for a fleeting second, leaves you quaking, like Tsukuru, somewhere in the deep recesses of your soul.
“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no frigidness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
Perhaps that is the greatness of Murakami — this harmony, this balance between human truth and what “must be seen” and the more mundane, perhaps painful, realities of life. As he reminds us a few times: You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them. Through all this history and sifting through the memories, good and bad, revisiting the things that “must be seen,” we are given this reminder as a sort of hope or, perhaps more aptly, a call to live our lives to the fullest.
Later, Murakami writes: “You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”
This is the thing we must remind ourselves of — to live our lives to the fullest, even if they are imperfect — and perhaps this is the most important reason to read this book. We need to be reminded that our lives are beautiful in their imperfection, but that beyond the commute to work and the 9-5 job, struggling to put dinner on the table and balancing the checkbooks, there is a life beyond our own that we should, occasionally, take a moment to think deeply about.
There are few books we can read to be fully and purely inspired — this is one of them.
Privately, I read a novel by Murakami in much the same way I read his memoir. I don’t read to learn lessons about the craft of writing or to pick apart his prose. Reading a story by Murakami is more about acquiring a sort of reserve of linguistic or emotional fortitude. One of the characters in Murakami’s latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, says it better: “Not to see what you want to see, but what you must see.”
In this way, I approach the novels I’ve read by Murakami, reading more for what “must” be seen. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, for those familiar with Murakami’s other works, reads like an extension of Norwegian Wood — or maybe better, as a grown up version of Norwegian Wood — in a world where people have jobs and it feels like there are tangible things really at stake. Where Norwegian Wood is largely full of college age, young adults, grappling and coming to term with life, love and sexuality, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a story that happens later in life, the cast of characters largely in the midst of their 30s, and notably still coming to terms with life, love and sexuality.
In a lot of ways, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki does not escape the influence of Norwegian Wood. There is the subtle hint of the surreal, but for the most part, this is a straight-forward narrative that deals with the big question of love and loss with a central protagonist, Tsukuru Tazaki, who is thrust into this position of searching through his past, his first years of college and why he was expelled from his group of friends. For those that have read Norwegian Wood, a lot of this feels like Murakami revisiting those college years from a more nuanced, mature point of view. Not that this is in any way a bad thing. All of this feels natural, like a story that must be told.
Along the course of Tsukuru’s pilgrimage, we are invited to other musings that would not seem out of place in Murakami’s memoir. In a story told by one of Tsukuru’s friends, a mysterious piano player shows up and waxes philosophic on the idea of talent.
“Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes,” he says. “You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money… But talent only functions when it’s supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus.”
And then a little bit later, another one of Tsukuru’s friends says, “Talent is like a container. You can work as hard as you want, but the size will never change. It’ll hold so much water and no more.”
Though these philosophic links back to the memoir are somewhat — at least to me — inevitable to make, this isn’t what is essential. What’s essential about Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is almost impossible to explain without delving into sentiment. Murakami approaches human emotion in a pure, deceivingly natural way that most writers fail to accomplish. There isn’t another living writer I can think where the full weight of an emotion built up through of pages of text, reveals itself in such clear, unadulterated prose. And when this emotion is revealed, there is some greater truth that, for a fleeting second, leaves you quaking, like Tsukuru, somewhere in the deep recesses of your soul.
“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no frigidness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
Perhaps that is the greatness of Murakami — this harmony, this balance between human truth and what “must be seen” and the more mundane, perhaps painful, realities of life. As he reminds us a few times: You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them. Through all this history and sifting through the memories, good and bad, revisiting the things that “must be seen,” we are given this reminder as a sort of hope or, perhaps more aptly, a call to live our lives to the fullest.
Later, Murakami writes: “You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”
This is the thing we must remind ourselves of — to live our lives to the fullest, even if they are imperfect — and perhaps this is the most important reason to read this book. We need to be reminded that our lives are beautiful in their imperfection, but that beyond the commute to work and the 9-5 job, struggling to put dinner on the table and balancing the checkbooks, there is a life beyond our own that we should, occasionally, take a moment to think deeply about.
There are few books we can read to be fully and purely inspired — this is one of them.