Norwegian Wood

11 Nov 2022, 1249 Words

This contains spoilers - don’t read further if you have not read the book. Also, this post is more of a rumination than a review.

Introduction

I have been interested in Murakami for awhile now, and this was my second read. A year ago, I came across several videos in which japanese translators got together and talked about the genius that he was. I guess I was intrigued to pick this after watching that video. I did read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running some time back, and I liked his style of writing — which was surprisingly simple and elegant. Also it seemed that Norwegian Wood was one of his famous works that gave him his greatest audience. I felt that I had to read it.

2/11/22: Day of completion.

This story was more of a tradegy than a love story. Well, all love stories are somewhat of a tradegy, but this was more so of it.

I knew I was in the final few pages of the book and so I put in a great deal of effort to finish it today. I read on the train, on the way to work, read in the washroom, read at lunchtime, read all the way back home, and finally, sat at the LRT platform to finish it before returning back home.

It is weird or rather shameful to say that I did forget about a few scenes from the initial pages of the book. I am not sure if it is because scenes were actually forgettable or because I just took a really long time to complete this. By the end of the book, I could not really remember the prologue. I had to go back to read that again.

I can’t really come to conclusions about the book. And I don’t really understand why I am having difficulty coming up with some sort of a structured response to this. I might have to give some time before I can form an opinion. But this was an intense read for sure. Back-to-back suicides are not something that is very digestable. However, I felt the sadness Toru felt is something anyone can understand and emphathise with. There were a lot of beautiful moments in the book where Murakami was trying to suspend me in some sort of a frozen state. And I loved that. I loved the sadness, I loved the sexuality of the characters, I loved the mundaneness of everyday life that Toru had to endure. I loved the slowness of the world and I loved to have existed in time, between the pages, with the characters keeping me alive. Ah, this was a beautiful book indeed.

I don’t think many would love it, mainly because there was no actual story per se. It was more off a zoom-in and zoom-out sort of screenplay where I abruptly jumped into someone’s life for a prolonged period of time before jumping out. I just followed along till the author decided that I should get out, and that’s what happened. It gave a lot of Manchester By the Sea vibes - a movie with similar taste, vibe and setting.

I think I loved the weirdness of it. The things Midori did were so horrifyingly weird that I loved it so much. It was perplexing that Toru did not go “wtf” throughout the book. But that sort of went to show the depth in characters Murakami envisioned. People in real life are definitely much weirder, so this to me was a reflection of that - or at least a muddy one at that.

I need to ponder about this a little more.

5/11/22: Three days later.

Okay, it has been a few days, and I have let my thoughts percolate a little. I think the story was mostly a little window to understand depression a little better. There were many who had it and just took their lives away - but they spoke and behaved like normal people. On hindsight, I should have slowed down during the conversations to understand the depth of the depressed characters better. I guess that’s why the deaths were so surprising to me. I am pretty sure Toru was depressed as well, but there was a fight in him. A fight to not take the easy way out, a fight to continue staying in this world. Nearing the end of the book, he imploded and was in his worst shape. He let his body and mind wander, but somehow stayed on. I think that was inspiring. People who fight on to stay alive are always inspiring.

I think I liked Naoko the most. I believe it was because she was the most broken - beyond repair. There was beauty in her fight. She had difficulty writing letters to Toru and I sensed it was the worsening of her condition - the beginning of her downfall. I wonder if fighting inner demons would impair someone to write or even speak much. Physically, I think she looked beautiful too, at least from how Murakami describes her and from Toru’s observations.

Oh, and I think it is easy to forget that this story was set in the 1960s and 1970s. So people HAD to write to each other, since making calls over the phone was not that common. I think there was this month - April/May - where Toru would just keep writing and writing to many people. That sounded beautiful to me. The whole act of putting in effort to write physical letters and then posting them out. Something so soothing and satisfying about a slow-paced world.

Something about Midori was a little off though. It is difficult for me to put into words but it seemed that the character was forced. Forced into imagination. Either I have not come across someone whose attributes are alike hers or Murakami just forced this character out of him. But the character was indeed a breath of fresh air for Toru. Someone like that would light up anyone’s day. She certainly did mine - I would have loved it if someone just came over while I’m having a coffee, to talk to me or pull me away for a walk somewhere.

I think Murakami’s descriptions of places were really easy to take in. Some authors have this habit of painting descriptions for the sake of painting them. But Murakami held back on this front - which I loved. He only sprinkled what was necessary and those bits stayed with me till the very end.

The ending was a little weird. A whole lot weirder than I anticipated. But I understood the reasoning and it felt natural for the events to take place that way. There was a little surrealism I believe - but I don’t think I caught that too well.

After reading the ending, the prologue seemed to have a much greater weight. The book begins with him reminiscing about the past, some 20 years later. Reading the prolouge again made me feel so heavy and I initially did not know why. But that’s when it hit me - the dead remain dead while the living contain them within themselves, and give them life over the years. However many years. Toru had to bear that. So do we.

I read this for three or four months but I really enjoyed the slow read. The slowness of pain, death, love and the overcoming of it all.

Everything passes.