Category: books

I actually finished reading 1Q84 a few weeks ago. I could have sat down to write my third and final piece on on the book (you can read the previous two here and here) the day I finished, because there was certainly enough in that final volume to discuss, but for some reason I didn’t. I laid down. I let it gestate. I’d spent about a month with the book and 1,100 pages or so…another few weeks couldn’t hurt.

And they didn’t hurt, but neither did they clarify. I’m not complaining. 1Q84 is a masterpiece of indefinite postponement. It raises questions and funnels you toward answers, but never actually reaches them and constantly raises more along the way. 1Q84 initiates a kind of game between the reader and the book…the reader wants to keep composure and locate solutions, and the book wants to baffle continuously without ever making that bafflement felt. That’s 1Q84‘s real achievement; you never know just how lost you truly are.

This game escalates in the final volume with the addition of a third focal character to the rotation. While the first two volumes alternated chapters centered on the mercenary Aomame and the writer Tengo, volume three promotes a minor character to center stage, and slots his own chapters right between them. This is Ushikawa, and it’s no coincidence that in a long novel full of twisting questions and evasive answers that the final volume gives Uskikawa a chance to shine; after all, he is a private detective.

By opening the volume with Ushikawa and allowing us to follow him along on his investigation, it feels as though this is where the plot threads will be tied up. It makes sense. Two volumes of meandering, compulsive setup that results in a brilliantly unsolveable mess…followed by our introduction to the one man who can clear all of this up, solve the connections, and pace around the room on the final page delivering a long monologue that explains for us everything we just saw.

I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that doesn’t happen.

The third volume, though, does contain my only two genuine complaints about the book…and one might be tied into the other, though it’s impossible for me to know. For starters, it’s the translation.

There was something “off” about volume three that I couldn’t place for about a hundred pages. Then I took a look at the end notes — coincidentally — and found what is probably my answer: one person translated the first two volumes into English, and another translated the third. This was disappointing, because the trade-off was a noticeable step down. The sentences felt clunkier and more padded. The atmosphere was smothered with unnecessary words and clumsy metaphors. The book, all of a sudden, felt like it was being written by a different writer. It wasn’t…but it was being translated by a different translator.

And that’s the problem. While reading 1Q84 and enjoying it, I was always thinking about how much of the story I wasn’t getting. I don’t mean “understanding,” but actually receiving. Certain words and turns of phrase wouldn’t survive a direct translation, so we need to trust our middleman to provide the closest possible approximation of Murakami’s meaning, and no matter how close you get, it won’t be the same. That’s okay…that’s simply the price I have to pay for not being able to read the novel in the original Japanese. I know I’ll be getting a lesser shade, but I trust that it will be a shade worth getting on its own.

Then volume three kicks in, and with the introduction of a new character — in a line of work and with a point of view very different from our previous two protagonists — I have no way of knowing if the perceivable difference in the narrative is due to the substitution in translator or a deliberate choice on Murakami’s part; a shift in tone meant to evoke more clumsily written detective stories, or to comment on how different the world looks and feels when all of a sudden we’re experiencing it through someone else’s perspective.

I don’t know. And that’s bothersome. Because there’s a big difference between recalibrating your distance from that source text and being in the hands of a single author who deliberately dims the light and removes your level of comfort.

My second issue is more a structural one, as in the previous volumes all of Aomame’s chapters centered — front to back — on Aomame. All of Tengo’s likewise centered on Tengo. In this volume, one chapter deviates from its central character to present a scene from somebody else’s point of view, and I personally don’t believe it either worked or was necessary. Again, perhaps this is a translation issue. Maybe it didn’t happen in the original text, or maybe it did happen but was handled much better. Either way, in my edition, it felt like an unfortunate, too-visible blemish on what had for so long been a sleek, perfect surface.

Volume three is absolutely Ushikawa’s story, as much as volume one was Tengo’s (in which he rewrote the manuscript that set the entire plot into motion) and volume two was Aomame’s (in which she murders a cult leader). It takes a while before it becomes clear why Ushikawa is important to the overall story, as opposed to why he’s investigating it, or what he might be able to tell us, but it weaves together beautifully, with some surprisingly deep emotions running along the way.

One thing that worried me earlier on about 1Q84 was that its supernatural elements might outweigh the human drama. It wouldn’t be a problem in itself if they did, but the fact that the human drama felt so sincere made it a little frightening that we’d lose it in favor of razzle-dazzle. When Tengo’s father, for instance, hints that there’s something he can’t tell his son, Tengo assumes that they are not really related. It’s a fair assumption, but the text doesn’t buy into that explanation, which led me to believe that we’d be provided some other-worldly solution that would detract from the pathos of their tormented relationship.

In the end, however — I’m again avoiding spoilers — it doesn’t matter whether the answer was human or superhuman, because whatever the reason, these are two people, hurt and damaged by their relationship to each other, and the details of that relationship become less important in the face of the palpable emotional fallout. Tengo might be at the bedside of his dying father for one reason, but what’s important is what goes through their minds — both of their minds — while he’s there. The incredible gives way to the agonizingly credible, rather than the other way around.

And there’s a scene in which one character, in his final moments, finds his thoughts turning to a dog he once had. He didn’t like the dog. There were no feelings of affection between them at all. And as his consciousness spirals away forever, this is what he remembers. He doesn’t know why. He’ll never have a chance to make sense of it. The question is raised, but as it is raised it’s already too late to answer it. The moment ends, as they all do.

I mentioned in my first post that a few folks tried to get me to read something other than 1Q84 as my introduction to Murakami. I’ll never know if this was the best first experience of the man, because it’s the only first experience I will have.

But I will say this: 1Q84 was alternately thought-provoking, challenging, warming and horrifying. What it left inside of me will be gestating for a long time. Perhaps forever. I may never know what’s growing in there, what it looks like, or even what it’s for. Who cares?

I love the feeling of setting a novel down and realizing that it’s probably always going to rank as one of my favorites. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you know it. As sure as there are two moons in the sky, you know it.

Toward the beginning of this month, I posted something about 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I’d hesitate to call it a review. I’d also hesitate to call it a collection of thoughts. If anything, it’s a loose assortment of unconnected observations. Of course, at that time, I had only read the first volume.

I’ve now read the second, and I’m no closer to having my thoughts collected.

1Q84 is a deliberately confounding work. There’s nothing unique about that fact, but there is something unique in just how playfully it manages to find new ways to confound. To be frank, I’m impressed by just how consistently baffled it manages to make me when barely any passing time is unaccounted for. It doesn’t take a very skilled magician to pull off an illusion as long as he keeps you from looking in the right place. That’s basic sleight of hand, and on its own it doesn’t qualify as art. It qualifies as technique.

But keep the reader focused on every detail and still manage to pull off the same trick? That takes a master.

Murakami has every opportunity to cut away from the action when it’s time to obscure, to obfuscate. He has dual protagonists. When it’s time to confuse us about Tengo, he need simply cut to Aomame. And, of course, vice versa. And while there would be nothing wrong with that, he doesn’t do it. When our perspective shifts back we are either meticulously caught up on everything that’s passed since we last saw this character, or we repeat the last few lines of that character’s tale to fix the scene precisely as it was before we left.

That takes some guts, and the fact that it works says a lot about the trust it’s worth investing in our author.

All of this, in case you couldn’t guess, is just my way of explaining the fact that I still couldn’t tell you what 1Q84 is about. In many cases I could barely tell you what’s happening…and for a book that never leaves a detail untold, that’s incredible.

The only other book coming to mind that relates minor advancements of plot so meticulously is Ulysses, which follows two main characters as they work their way around Dublin over the course of a single day. Yet Ulysses doesn’t quite remain grounded…it flits away on overt narrative trickery, weaving dreams and fantasies and formats together into a deliberately disorienting whirl. Joyce’s arms flail as he performs his trick. He gets away with it because there’s so much you’re trying to focus on. Murakami barely moves a muscle. He lets you take your time and study anything as deeply as you like. The intense focus becomes a kind of disorientation that we’re not used to experiencing…and that’s a hell of a feat.

It’s also thematically appropriate for 1Q84, which takes for one of its themes the concept of subtle, imperceptible changes having large impacts that you only can only measure in retrospect. There’s no preparing yourself for what’s to come any more than the characters are able to prepare themselves. That’s not the way this world works.

Throughout the course of the second volume, the major event seems to be Aomame’s assassination of a man who presides spiritually over a mysterious cult. The first part of the volume builds up to the murder, the middle of the volume takes its sweet time describing that murder, and the wind-down of the novel considers thoroughly the implications of that murder.

One gets the sense by the end of volume two that it almost doesn’t matter what happens next…at least, no more than it mattered what happened last. Or what might happen a thousand years from now.

Events, however closely we study them, are pearls on a string. They are there. They are side by side. Any importance we assign to them comes from us. One day we will be gone. By default, they will all be equally important: not important at all. Aomame’s murder of a child-raping guru is described with exactly as much detail and exactly as little empathy as the breakfast she makes in the morning. One sounds more important than the other. We assign different levels of importance to each of them. But, one day, we will be gone. From enough distance to allow detachment, they are of equal importance.

1Q84 doesn’t have to work very hard to get us on Aomame’s side. We want her to kill him, and we want her to get away with it. After all, the accounts of what he’s done to a very young girl named Tsubasa — and the knowledge that there are other girls whom he abuses in the same way — are repulsive. Murakami doesn’t describe it with any more significance than he does any other kind of sex, though. In fact, in terms of narrative he assigns it less significance, as we only hear about it second-hand, through dialogue.

It’s unspeakably awful…and it remains unspoken, by the narrator at least.

Yet by the time we enter the volume’s final third, we’re not thinking of this spiritual Leader the same way. Neither is Aomame. To give it away wouldn’t spoil anything so much as it would needlessly complicate the observation. Suffice it to say that subtle changes make a world of a difference. In retrospect, anyway. After the wheels have already been set in motion. When the momentum that pulls you forward is no longer your own. When you have the knowledge you wish you had at the start, now that it’s too late to use it.

There are a lot of shifts of this kind, many of which involve the slippery concept of fiction itself. Tengo consciously conflating a visit to his dying father with a story he reads about a town of cats. The world around these characters seeming to integrate details from two fictional novels…one of which is still in the process of being written. The lyrics to “Paper Moon.” It’s not a question of how fiction manages to influence the real world, but of how deeply, how naturally, how irresistibly.

It’s tempting to read 1Q84 as a novel about itself. It’s more than tempting, actually; it’s seductive. But doing so — or doing so exclusively — robs the tale of its terrifyingly playful approach to internal resonance. The overlapping details, the historical layering, the cycling in and out of important characters, the substitution of raw emotion for uncomplicated sci-fi and then back again…a human you knew being replaced by a chrysalis that eventually opens to reveal the same human it replaced.

It’s brilliant. It’s scary. It’s unnerving. Moments of violence are weighted the same as moments of calm. Characters read Chekhov to each other at night or chain police women to beds in love hotels and strangle them. Those that seem innocent have the most dangerous motives…the creepiest ones just want to help. Cause and effect get scrambled. The good guys do awful things. They might not realize it. We might not realize it. Not until it’s too late to stop it, anyway.

Everybody’s got good intentions…it just depends upon your perspective. Subtle shifts and changes result in completely different worlds that could never be mistaken for one another.

Not that either one could possibly be more important. One day we will no longer be here.

Like the song says, it’s “just as phony as it can be.” It also says that it “wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me.” Which sounds very nice.

The darker, unsung shadow of that line reveals that without belief, without buy-in, without the conscious decision to assign something significance, it’s nothing.

Whatever it is…or whatever it could have been…is nothing.

We don’t decide that anything is meaningless…we decide what’s meaningful. And then there’s…everything else.

1Q84 has me thinking a lot about everything else. Because all it takes is a subtle shift in perspective to reveal that it’s only a paper moon. And once you know that, there’s no way of shifting back.

…at least, not by the end of the second volume.

Something strange happens to me every so often: a piece of art starts following me around.

Not literally. Or probably not literally, anyway. But it feels like something’s calling my name…and the more I ignore it, the harder it tries to get my attention. One my most vivid memories of this happening was with the film Ghost World.

I was with some friends at the video store (remember those?) deciding what to rent (remember that?) and I saw the box. Something about it captured my attention. I couldn’t have explained it then and I still can’t explain it now. It was just two girls on a white background with a vague title. The back of the box didn’t make it sound any different than any other teenage misfit film, and the images from the movie didn’t help differentiate it either.

But, somehow, I realized — knew — that there was something here. I didn’t suggest renting it, because if my intuition proved wrong I would have felt pretty embarrassed. Later on I was in a different store with a different friend and saw it for sale. I asked if he’d ever seen it, and he looked at me like I was joking. “Why would I have seen that?” he asked.

Fair question.

But something was pulling at me. Telling me I needed to see that film. I don’t know what it was. But I went back and I rented it, and watched it alone. (That was a thematically appropriate context for what I was about to see.)

I loved it. I still love it. I don’t know that it would make my top 10…though it might. It would surely make my top 20. It was a deeper, richer, more profound film than most of what I had seen up to that point, and it was certainly deeper, richer and more profound than the box — which had been my only experience with it — suggested. So why was I so strongly compelled to watch it? How did it get its hooks in me? Something had called out from behind a wall…but what was it?

I relate this story because recently, last month actually, I had a similar experience with a three-volume novel. 1Q84 caught my eye because of its handsome packaging…it was a nice boxed-set, and the title made me think it was some kind of special edition of 1984, another one of my unrivaled favorites.

So I picked up the book and realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t that. The cover art (seen above) told me nothing. There was no description whatsoever on the box. It was sealed so I couldn’t flip through the pages and see whether or not it was the kind of writing I’d enjoy. It was just a title and an author I’d never heard of.

And yet…I kind of wanted it. Not enough to buy it on impulse, I guess. Or maybe I was just worried that I’d be dropping $35 on an extremely long unknown quantity. (Not an unreasonable fear.)

The next time I went to the book store, I saw it again. The same copy. I know, because there was only one. I took a photo of it and posted it to Facebook. I could have researched the novel online, but in case I ended up reading it at some point I didn’t want to risk spoiling something, so instead I just asked my friends if they’d read it.

Several of them had, but the consensus seemed to be that I should pick up a different Murakami book. This one was padded, not quite his best, not a good starting place, etc. I appreciated their input.

…but I wanted this book. Even though I still knew nothing about it, and the other books would be both shorter and cheaper. Every time I passed it, it would make eye contact. I woke up one morning and drove right to the book store to buy it and read it that day. Something had called out to me from behind a wall. I couldn’t tell you what.

And, again, it’s great. 1Q84 is a fantastic read. I finished the first volume a couple of nights ago, and maybe I’ll post when I finish each of the three. I’m about 390 pages into a tale that I couldn’t begin to explain. When I posted on Facebook that I was reading it, another friend asked me what it was about. I said, “Perspective?” I honestly didn’t know. I still don’t know. I think he thought my response was dickish, because he said, “Fine, I’ll Google it myself.”

I wasn’t being dickish. I really wasn’t. I have no idea what it’s about…but perspective seems like a decent guess. Granted, that’s more of a theme than a plot. But I don’t know what the plot is.

I could tell you things that happen…but I don’t think the things that happen are what’s important here. I think it’s the way in which they happen, and the reason that they happen. It’s literary fiction, after all. That’s the way this stuff works.

But, typically, there’s still a discernable narrative thrust. Maybe there will be here, as well. I am like one of the characters, staring into a very cloudy night waiting for the sky to clear so that I’ll finally be able to see what’s up there and get my bearings.

For now, though, I can find solace only in how the story is told, unaware of where it’s headed, or even where it begins. There’s an almost frightening warmth to the text, which describes some truly horrifying things in such a way that it feels like you’re listening to a gentle voice reading to you from beside the bed. Yes, it’s a translation…but it’s a warm, friendly, soft translation that doesn’t hit you with corners and jagged edges. The translation must be a piece of art in itself, because very rarely do I find myself wondering if something was lost in the transition between two languages. Instead I marvel at how much is still there.

The chapters alternate between two central characters: Aomame, a skilled but damaged assassin, and Tengo, a math teacher who harbors dreams of being a fictionist. Their stories do not directly overlap — at least they don’t directly overlap by the end of volume one — but similar imagery occurs. Characters hear the same song. Two little girls speak of the same mythical creatures. There’s a lot that happens on one side that informs our reading of the other, and which braces us for a danger that may not come, and which certainly won’t come in the way we expect it. Perspective.

Aomame befriends a police officer who does not know what she does for a living, and draws nearer her newest target: the powerful, cruel, unseen leader of a mysterious cult. Tengo befriends an emotionally distant young writer and re-writes her promising manuscript…which is published to great acclaim and the young writer’s unexplained disappearance.

These are the things that happen. And these are not the things that are important. If they were, I would be disappointed that almost 400 pages have passed and I couldn’t tell you much more than that. Instead, I’m 400 pages into an only vaguely familiar forest, and while it’s dark, and it’s frightening, and I’ve heard rumors of what lurks inside, I want to take my time. I want to remember it. I want to be challenged by it, and to challenge it in return.

1Q84 might not be Murakami’s best work. I wouldn’t know. But it’s a powerful piece of writing that manages to move as it repulses, and manages to be both direct and oblique. It rewards you for paying attention and it punishes you for caring.

It’s a gorgeous nightmare from which you don’t want to awake. And while I still don’t know what it is that calls out to me from behind walls, I hope I have the chance to thank it some day.