What do you think?
Rate this book
Монологи о наслаждении, апатии и смерти
"""Ekstaz"", ""Melankholiia"", ""Tanatos"" - eto trilogiia, predstavliaiuschaia soboi po zamyslu avtora ""Monologi o naslazhdenii, apatii i smerti"". Eto razmyshleniia o lichnosti, seksual'nosti, strasti i dushevnykh mucheniiakh. No nastoiaschie stradaniia, kak, vprochem, i blazhenstvo, vozmozhny lish' v sobstvennom voobrazhenii… ... .. "
- GenresJapan
565 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2007
About the author
Ryū Murakami
247 books3,875 followersRyū Murakami (村上 龍) is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is not related to Haruki Murakami or Takashi Murakami.
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.
Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.
Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.
Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.
Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 21, 2026
What happens when a society offers endless consumption but little meaning? Monologues on Pleasure, Apathy, and Death is about how people numb themselves with pleasure, drift into emotional emptiness, and become fascinated by destruction or death when life feels meaningless.
Pleasure (Ecstasy)- Pleasure becomes anesthesia rather than joy.
Apathy (Melancholy)- Characters feel detached, bored, unable to connect deeply. They are alive physically but spiritually disengaged.
Death (Thanatos) - Death is not only literal death—it symbolizes decay, self-destruction, collapse of values, and the quiet death of meaning. Sometimes characters flirt with danger because feeling fear is better than feeling nothing.
Ryu Murakami often writes in a way that forces readers to sit with parts of humanity most fiction politely avoids: degradation, vanity, cruelty, addiction, emptiness, performative desire, and the bizarre ways people justify themselves. At times it made me so uncomfortable I had to take breaks and read something lighter between stories. This book only exists in (beside Japanese) in russian and French. Reading it in russian amplified the bleakness
Although these stories take place in 1990s New York, they still feel strikingly relevant today. The setting may be older, but the emptiness, excess, and moral decay it explores remain timeless.
Pleasure (Ecstasy)- Pleasure becomes anesthesia rather than joy.
Apathy (Melancholy)- Characters feel detached, bored, unable to connect deeply. They are alive physically but spiritually disengaged.
Death (Thanatos) - Death is not only literal death—it symbolizes decay, self-destruction, collapse of values, and the quiet death of meaning. Sometimes characters flirt with danger because feeling fear is better than feeling nothing.
Ryu Murakami often writes in a way that forces readers to sit with parts of humanity most fiction politely avoids: degradation, vanity, cruelty, addiction, emptiness, performative desire, and the bizarre ways people justify themselves. At times it made me so uncomfortable I had to take breaks and read something lighter between stories. This book only exists in (beside Japanese) in russian and French. Reading it in russian amplified the bleakness
Although these stories take place in 1990s New York, they still feel strikingly relevant today. The setting may be older, but the emptiness, excess, and moral decay it explores remain timeless.
March 5, 2021
Если собрать вместе те строки, которые от Фрейда до Жижека и от Камю до Делеза писали про садизм и мазохизм, лишить эти строки любой игры, двусмысленности и юмора, то получится Мураками. Садо-мазо для него математическая модель любой формы современных отношений. От тех, которые касаются только двоих, до тех, что распространяются на страны. И здесь он находится в опасной близости от Фромма, но выкручивает руль в другую сторону. Потом на его пути оказывается Брюкнер и с ним он тоже, к счастью, не сталкивается.
Вся трилогия - это почти пелевинские истории перехода от сознания непросветленного к просветленному. Просветление заключается в открытии, что любая коммуникация имеет в своей основе логику s/m. А сухость, математичность и отсутствие какой-то двусмысленности не позволяет ничего с этим открытием сделать. Ни автору, ни его героям. Поэтому и концовки здесь пелевинские, где герои просто растворяются в этом открытии. Стоп-слово уже не работает, ведь оно не прекращает игру, а тасует её уровни.
Алиса, включи песню "Садо-Мазо" Агаты Кристи.
Вся трилогия - это почти пелевинские истории перехода от сознания непросветленного к просветленному. Просветление заключается в открытии, что любая коммуникация имеет в своей основе логику s/m. А сухость, математичность и отсутствие какой-то двусмысленности не позволяет ничего с этим открытием сделать. Ни автору, ни его героям. Поэтому и концовки здесь пелевинские, где герои просто растворяются в этом открытии. Стоп-слово уже не работает, ведь оно не прекращает игру, а тасует её уровни.
Алиса, включи песню "Садо-Мазо" Агаты Кристи.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews