It's a Wind-Up, right?

While in Corfu, I ploughed through Murakami's six-hundred pager "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", smashing my fifty pages a day goal in the process.

The great thing about Murakami is how easy he is to read (that's based on only two of his novels, mind, "Dance Dance Dance" and the above. Which perhaps isn't saying much as they're almost identical in tone and structure). He begins with Okada, the first-person protagonist, an unemployed paralegal, cooking pasta to classical music. Somehow, he makes it riveting, and before you know it you've joined Okada in his gentle unease, precipitated by a strange phone call from an anonymous woman telling him if he gives her ten minutes then they'll "understand" one another.

WARNING: SPOLIERS AHEAD

We join this most ordinary of men through such adventures as plodding up and down the bricked-up alley behind his house, spending eleven days staring at the faces of shoppers, and sitting at the bottom of a dry-well. Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? Well, Murakami has a way with words, and actually makes it fascinating. I think the tension and suspense has two sources. First, Okada is your stock everyman. Few words are spared on his description. The effect is that the things in this novel aren't only within the domain of exceptional people. These things can happen to anyone, including yourself. Secondly, Murakami makes you, as a reader, confront everyday reality and realise that the events we take as ordinary are anything but on close inspection. He makes you want to go out to, for example, the dry-cleaners, like Okada, and really study the surroundings.

What is frustrating, however, is the lack of cohesion. Perhaps, the tapestry of very loosely connected stories is a thematic device, but overall the plot suffers as a result. By the last page there are numerous plot threads still hanging and plenty of unexplained happenings. The way I read it undermined my sympathy for Okada. Instead of a being a mystic, channelling latent historical forces and supernatural abilities, Okada is in fact, a fool. Coincidental events taking on cosmic meaning seems to be a strong element of Murakami's fiction, but for me, this doesn't work. There's just too much hand-waving when it comes down to the mechanics of what's going on. To take one example, an old Japanese soldier is given the chance to kill his Russian master in a work camp in Siberia. The Russian gives the soldier a gun and two bullets, and allows him to shoot at point-blank range. He misses. Twice. The explanation? The Russian is evil and fated to live. That's just too much of an intrusion into physicial reality for my liking.

Still, all the individual tales are extremely readable in their own right, so it's always a pleasure to read Murakami at the chapter level. Now, if only he can wrap things together in a more satisfying way...

As regards my own writing, I've finished re-drafting one of my Clarion stories. It's even got a shiny new name thanks to Sean. "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" (is it okay to nick song titles?). Anyone want to read and give me final thoughts? It'll bring you good karma if you do, rest assured.