Haruki Murakami’s new novel uncertain cities and wallsIt presents a world of imagination that is both complex and confusing. A parallel universe consists of a walled city with a library containing orbs containing people’s dreams. Exploring them is an unnamed middle-aged narrator accompanied by a teenage girl whom he met decades ago. Going back and forth between this universe and mundane reality. He begins to wonder which version of himself he really is: the “dream reader” or the bored employee of a Tokyo bookseller. To Murakami’s millions of readers, this confusing premise will sound both familiar and exciting. Especially since the new book shares many elements with his first major novel. Confidently bizarre and exciting A raging wonderland and the end of the world.– Both stories can be used as metaphors for the mesmerizing and feverish experience of reading Murakami’s best novels. As his new commentator puts it: “There are a lot of questions. But there is no clear answer. The meaning of it all completely lost me. Many mysterious doors are in front of me. But there’s no key that fits. What I can understand What is known (or only faintly perceived) is that there are extraordinary powers at work.”
The speaker describes his lonely and searching life. But it also stimulates and brings out the charm of Murakami’s poetry. It is a work that feels both labyrinthine and accessible. In this balance lies the courage that is the peculiar source of Murakami’s popularity. Like Hemingway’s simple sentence, this style is more difficult than it looks. Just like Hemingway Murakami doesn’t always pull it off.
The 75-year-old author’s novels and stories, which blend strange events and mundane feelings, have been translated into more than 50 languages. The new novel is the first to be released in the United States in six years. It became a best-selling book in his native Japan for six months in 2023, “surpassing guides for the latest Pokémon games on Nintendo Switch”. like that Japan Times– at the same time Murakami has received close attention from critics and academics. and mostly in October His name will pop up in Nobel Prize predictions, however, and his new novel rests on a combination of high and far-reaching appeal. without ultimately giving any reason or depth. Only those who have been initiated are allowed to enter the walled city of Murakami’s fantasy. The rest were left to wander around. The casualties of the thing read as much as assumptions. If not self-satisfaction
uncertain cities and walls It begins with hope like a fairy tale. The speaker addresses the girl directly. It evokes the romance of youth with clear lyrics, as Philip Gabriel, long-time Murakami translator, has expressed: “On that summer evening We’re heading down the river. sweet fragrance Grass flutters above us… You stick your red flat sandals in a yellow plastic shoulder bag and walk from one sand dune to the next in front of me. Wet blades of grass are stuck to your wet calves. Excellent green punctuation.” The young woman told him at that time about the distant city: “At TRUE I live there, in that city, surrounded by walls.”
If this were a story from the Middle Ages We will recognize this as an analogy with a message: We reserve our most private and authentic selves for those who prove worthy. They often have to make difficult journeys to reach us. The narrator, as a young man, begins visiting this city where time never passes in a chapter that contrasts with the old school and family life in “The Real World” with appreciation and wonder He was amazed that he and his girlfriend were able to “Create and share our own special secret world” as they say. There are some things both fundamental and profound that separate them. (Though Murakami never really explains this): The Narrator maintains a single identity and consciousness in both worlds. Meanwhile, the unnamed girlfriend splits into two. Which is the real world version. Who knows about this? The city and those who live there do not seem to know another truth.
The narrator’s IRL girlfriend suddenly disappears from his (real) life, depriving him of access to the walled city. Twenty years later, everyone has grown up to be a standard Murakami man—restless, shy, and Contemplating—He worked hard all day in Tokyo. His existence is only alive with memories of the world becoming more vivid. When he died sadly So he left the capital to work as a librarian in a remote village. There he met a talkative old man. With his subtle guidance The narrator finds his way back to the walled city. where he met his girlfriend again who was still a teenager. and have no memory of him at all, that’s all right; He was very pleased to be there. Spend time with her, sip tea, and read the dream orbs in the town’s library.
There are clear parallels between this library and the real world in the village. But what does it mean to read dreams rather than books? The speaker holds the orb for a time. “For about five minutes,” a warm light was felt, and “then the dream began to spin towards me, hesitant at first, like a silkworm releasing a thread. Then there was more enthusiasm. They have something to relate to.” This dream reading expands his life and frees dreams from the shelf. We are once again in the realm of comparison. This is what happens when readers and books come together. Murakami presents this theme in various ways throughout the book. Some readers may be delighted and confirmed by the comparisons censored by Murakami’s poems. Others may wish he had handled the story a bit more, like narratively. Dream more in those libraries. Instead of just talking about the experience of dealing with those dreams.
Some genuine dramas developed in villages. The narrator befriends a quiet, strict boy. which is spent reading books in the library (In the real world) The boy shows the narrator a startlingly accurate map of another location. We learned that he “Found a way to get to the walled city. (Even though I don’t know how)” After the boy disappeared into that world His siblings ask the narrator for help: Does he have the boy’s map? He said no. “This is a lie,” he tells us. “The map is in the back drawer of my house. But I don’t want to show it to them.”
The brothers are eager to recover the boy. However, for the narrator (And perhaps for Murakami as well.) They’re the kind of people whose workdays are repeated. who wanted to trap the boy in reality Where he was treated like an unfit person. The speaker thinks Wouldn’t it be better to let the boy explore his dreams and meet unicorns? And—to stretch an all-too-obvious analogy—it is the brave work of writers to give readers a world of imagination. Especially those who struggle in the rest of their lives? This is an attractive idea. Even if it’s not morally stable. Especially in this novel The speaker is withholding information from families searching for lost children. As for Murakami Suppressing context Without knowing more about the city’s strange dreams, The reader must believe by faith that they prove an abandonment of reality. And the narrator is unreliable or contradictory: you read in vain, hoping not to read much. Murakami doesn’t just answer ethical questions. He lets the missing boy subplot disappear. Nor does it explore what it means to completely surrender to the power of story.
Instead, the novel’s action leans toward more poetic rhetoric in the library of dreams. With pointed shout-outs to Gabriel García Márquez along the way, the narrator calls the author’s work “ordinary” rather than “realistic” because “in this world he inhabits both the real and the unreal. And he just describes the scenes. The way he sees it,” Murakami is clearly describing his own method, if not defending it, of liberating the imagination from the coherence of conventional fiction that reflects and ratifies the closed world as it is.
But even heresy is said about Murakami’s novel. I just wish this story made more sense. In terms of plot, characters, ideas, and world-building. And to do so on its own terms. instead of depending on Support from other works Whether it’s Márquez’s or Murakami’s own, yes, long-time fans will step in to fill in the gaps. Especially when there are so many obvious connections. Tom Yum Wonderland (There is also a dream reader in the mysterious library. (Although it’s a daily job at a data factory.) In addition to the Murakami brand’s Dream Eggs and Easter Eggs, Less dedicated readers will recognize recurring themes in many of his other books, such as parallel worlds and competing realities. Ordinary person on a mission to find the person you love. Mysteries, hints with unclear motives. Library with symbolic significance Object to descriptions of women’s bodies
Perhaps it symbolizes anxieties about the novel’s standalone status. Murakami included the latter in his discussion of the origins of the 1980 short novel from which the novel was derived. Tom Yum Wonderland– its gestation as he evolved from a jazz cafe owner to a world-renowned author, and finally its revival and completion in the pandemic era.
All this is interesting if you are interested in revealing the secrets of creating stories of famous writers at the end of his career. Unfortunately, there’s not much more to it than that. Because what drives most of us to big, difficult novels is our desire to figure out what’s going on. in a higher form Not just on a literal level. To give us ideas about stories, or the world, or ourselves. Or according to the principle All of this has changed. Murakami’s best books beautifully bend these questions into strange and exciting shapes. This new one is boiled until soft.
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