Elizabeth’s Comments (group member since Mar 01, 2019)

Elizabeth’s comments from the Lehman book club group.

I'm quite familiar with Yakov Smirnoff; he was very popular when I was young and watching late night TV. I was always curious if his was a stage name since Smirnoff was a famous brand of vodka, and now that I have Google, I find that it is indeed an assumed name. Yakov was VERY funny and I really enjoyed him. I am, however, more like the Soviet government than I like to admit. I don't get this joke. Unless it is referring to the few joys and the many burdens of being a citizen in the USSR?

I agree that the text has more impact when Solzhenitsyn reveals his feelings along with his accounts. Interestingly, when I saw your mention of the first paragraph on page 132, I went back to look and found one of the few passages I have marked: "'Stalin belongs to the world Communist movement!' But in my opinion all he belongs to is the Criminal Code." We finally feel Solzhenitsyn's anger, and it is powerful. Until now, he has told us hellacious things from a variety of sources, but primarily has left us to find our own senses of anger, pain, shame, and outrage. I hope he keeps it up, but I'm rather dubious because it seems he has established a pattern. Perhaps the only way he can summon the strength to tell this history is to remove himself emotionally despite the personal details.
I have still been thinking about having a beer with Solzhenitsyn. It strikes me as a really intriguing prospect, and a great beer-thirty topic for our family book club -- which authors would you most and least like to raise a glass with? Anyway, Alexsandr (if I may be so bold since we are having a virtual beer together), was probably arrogant to the point of unpleasantness, but I find I can forgive him. I can't think of a thing in my life that could possibly interest him after his own experiences and the experiences of his compatriots. How could I talk to him about the things that are important to me? Would I speak to him about the joys and frustrations of raising a family in middle class America? Would I express both my sorrow and satisfaction at my empty nest with my children, all successful and healthy, growing more distant and independent? Would I tell him how to make tortillas? How could I do anything but listen?

The further I read, (middle of Chapter 7 thus far), the more chilling this becomes; I see a system we are creeping toward - an authoritarian world of code violations, eliminating the chance of appeal (like red light cameras), all for the good of the citizenry. I'm truly enjoying this book, which surprises me no end! I almost exclusively read fiction because it engages me so much more. I would like to be more educated about history, but I can't seem to stay awake long enough to learn much.

Regarding Solzhenitsyn's personal perspective, it doesn't bother me at this point, although I found Chapter 5 to be the least compelling so far. After all, he also tells the experiences of dozens (hundreds?) of others. Interestingly, Chapter 6 is completely different. I believe Solzhenitsyn had awareness of the risks he was taking in injecting himself and his own experiences to such an extent, and the little bits and pieces of so many others, perhaps risking the credibility of the historical detail, but he is obviously striving for emotional impact. This is "An Experiment in Literary Investigation," and so far, I think the experiment successful. As Solzhenitsyn says in the 1983 introduction, "Yet I have not given up all hope that human beings and nations may be able, in spite of all, to learn from the experience of other people without having to live through it personally." Could Solzhenitsyn have achieved his goal of altering human action without the emotional impact of personal narrative?

I agree that Solzhenitsyn wouldn't be much fun to have a beer with, but I suspect Faulkner was a jackass who would have talked about himself, or his mythological self, until last call. It's a trickier situation when a work is so autobiographical though, as the Gulag is, because if the reader doesn't like the subject, the work loses impact. Solzhenitsyn hasn't crossed that line for me (yet). I also don't feel that his insertion of himself discredits the historical aspect of the book.

Onward!

Unlike Sarah's erudite introduction, my own initial comments about Solzhenitson's book come in the form of a confession. For all of my adult life, and I am 62, I have labored under the impression that the Gulag Archipelago, in addition to being the title of a seminal literary work, is a physical geographical site. I believed it to be a string of islands at the top Russia in the Arctic Ocean upon which prison camps were located; consulting a map, these penal islands would have been located, in the Laptev or East Siberian seas. Imagine my surprise - and embarrassment - upon picking up a copy of the Gulag Archipelago for the second time (the first being when I carried a copy around for several week in college, hoping to impress a certain young man), and discovering the four page map of Russia marked throughout with nearly two hundred watch towers, each representing a gulag. My slow mind went to work, and discomfited understanding dawned: Russia herself is the sea and the gulags are the islands. Shhh.... don't tell.

Thoughtful into to the book.

And by the way, I like the book much more having had time to absorb it and think about it.

I've slept on it and have some further thoughts. I do see a strong link between 1984 and 1Q84, but as Sarah says, it is a reimagining of that year rather than a retelling of Orwell's world from a different perspective. Nevertheless, I believe their message is the same - collectives are dangerous to the individual. We see Aomame and Tengo both struggle and suffer in silence against the collective as children, and when they break away, they are lost and lonely, not knowing how to interact with others. The repressive weight of their childhoods is the strongest bond between them, a bond that frees them to have a fresh start in a new world.

In Murakami's imagining, the most dangerous collective of all is that of organized religions; Sakigaki is as repressive and destructive to the individual as Orwell's Big Brother, and individual action and thought is forbidden. For instance, even a good soldier like Buzzcut is afraid of the consequences when he acts on his own initiative at the end and goes to Tokyo to try and capture Aomame and Tengo. Another negative aspect of organized religions is that they literally manufacture their church doctrine out of thin air (the Little People constructing and Air Chrysalis from which a perceiver/receiver will emerge, ala Joseph Smith and Jim Jones). I was amused by a link with 1984 when Ushikawa devised a peephole so he could watch/photograph/catch non followers on behalf of Sakigaki, a nod to "Big Brother is watching you." And the way Ushikawa was described - childlike with a large misshapen head - created a visual image of a rather malevolent big brother who is going to follow instructions so he doesn't get in trouble with Maza.

Murakami's message is anti-religion, but certainly not anti-God. (view spoiler)[The most moving part of the novel is at the moment of Ushikawa's death when Tamaru reassures both of them (and the reader) by having Ushikawa repeat, "Cold or Not, God is Present."

Murakami and Orwell both present worlds in which the collective is destructive to the individual through intolerance, rigid nonsensical dogma, and forced adherence, and yet the individual cannot thrive nor even survive on their own. A human connection with another individual or a family is what gives life meaning, providing strength and purpose. Even a strong person like Aomame whose nature requires action is stuck in place, vulnerable to the collective, because she lacks a human connection. Despite her strong nature, Aomame cannot move forward and regain her agency without Tengo. In Orwell's world the couple is captured and forced to submit to the collective, but Murakami's vision is more hopeful as Tengo, Aomame and their Dohta make their way up the ladder to a brave new world. (hide spoiler)]

It is the human connection, love, that provides the individual, 1984, and 1Q84 with strength and meaning.

I just now finished 1Q84, so I haven't processed much, but I agree with Dad's short and sweet analysis - this is an imagined world where two lonely people reconnect. I really don't have much to add except to comment on my frustration with the way the book drags on, leaves things hanging, and lets questions go unanswered. Also, I feel like I don't understand key elements of the 1Q84, but I don't believe this book was big on metaphors and symbolism. For instance, I think the Little People are just a threatening force in this alternate world rather than something more, like followers of socialism, which I had hypothesized earlier.

I like Murikami's secondary characters much better than Tengo, who is incapable of independent action, and Aomame, who seems like a caricature - the tough, sexy assassin with a hidden, tender heart. As I stated in an earlier review, I'm sorry many of them were dropped - and that we don't know their fates. I know that was intentional if Dad's and my interpretation is correct, just as he and I don't know what has happened to many people of our past. Still, I found it frustrating.

I am glad I read 1Q84, but I am even more glad that I finished it.

That is pretty much my take on it too, but I don't know why Murakami took 1157000 pages to get there - wait, do I need to add a couple more zeros?

Your idea of this novel being a reimagining Orwell's 1984 instead of being the same story from a different view makes sense, particularly given how often we are told that Tengo and Aomame's 1Q84 is a different 1984. Seems obvious now that you have pointed it out. Of course, Murakami pointed it out too, but he was too subtle with the two moons and everything.

Early stages of Book 3, and I am still curious about links between 1984 and 1Q84. In Chapter 6, Tengo has a conversation with Komatsu, the editor. Komatsu is different that he was - reticent, introspective and with flat, uninflected speech. I wonder if he has been taken over by the Little People and is now, in effect, one of the masses under the thumb of Big Brother, himself now one of the little people. Perhaps that is what is happening to the other characters as well, the Dowager, for instance. Every time an NKH official comes hounding at the door, I get tense and shout in my mind, "Don't open the door," which, of course, the reader is meant to do. Murakami is very good at building tension. Aomame and Tengo are protected as long as they don't open the door to the NKH people. But protected from what? Thugs bent on revenge or something larger. With the emphasis placed on the fact that neither Aomame nor Tengo watch television, but supposed NKH collectors track them down, there seems to be an anti-technology message here - a link between television and a controlled mind. But, maybe it's just my monkey brain working overtime.

At the beginning of Book 3, I guess Aomame and Tengo have entered their chrysalises, each living in isolation and seclusion (hence, getting rid of the other characters).

I finished Book 2 and have a few thoughts.
1. 1Q84 is easy to read. It is, in fact, almost compulsively readable - once I start reading, I don't want to stop. The problem is that lately (throughout Book 2), I don't want to start. I am finding the book more and more difficult to pick back up. This is quite curious, so I have given it some thought and concluded that while fun, I am not getting much out of it right now. Why?
2. At first, the book really invites speculation, as illustrated by my earlier notes filled with guesses as to meaning, predictions, metaphors, etc. Now, however, the book is not inspiring interaction, and I haven't written my thoughts about it for a while because, frankly, I am having very few to share. I think this is largely due to Murakami's repetition and a lack of moving forward. I'm stuck because the story seems stuck. Yes the plot is moving forward, but as one of Sarah's professors said once, "it's only plot." I am missing the other elements, - the mystery and the literary devices. The book simply isn't engaging my mind at the moment.
3. (Don't read this one, Sarah, if you haven't finished Book 2) I've been disappointed with the abandonment of ALL of the interesting secondary characters - the professor, the dowager and her body guard (my favorite), Tengo's mistress, the editor, Leader, Tengo's father. I miss these people! We are left with only Fuki-Eri, who is intentionally flat as a pancake, and Tengo and Aomame, whose stories we are delving into with an ever smaller fine-toothed comb. And possibly Ushikawa. I am curious to see if any or all of these characters make a comeback in Book 3.
4. I have been wondering if part of my dissatisfaction with Book 2 is that too much is being lost in translation. There might be a very good reason Japanese literature is not widely read in the West - perhaps neither the language nor the concepts make the change in a satisfying manner. Like Japanese, Russian is a totally different language having no commonality with the Romance languages, but look how much Russian literature is read in the West and how highly it is revered. Sarah, do you think there is a cultural disconnect between the Far East and the West which language alone cannot bridge?
5. I have not given up on the book! Which is a good thing since I have 35% to go. First, Murakami may make changes in Book 3 that reel me back into the story as a participant rather than simply an observer. Also, my problems with 1Q84 right now may be (are likely?) reader error. It wouldn't be the first time I have read a work of pure genius and totally missed its value (To the Lighthouse comes to mind).
5. I'm going to get started on Book 3 tonight - first, because I left Aomame in a bad way and want to see how that situation is resolved (but that's just an exciting plot development), and second, because I want to see if Book 3 engages my monkey brain like Book 1 did, in which case, perhaps the lull of Book 2 is intentional - a calm before the storm. Fingers crossed!

Way to pay attention - I overlooked that!

Finishing Week 3 (so what if Dad finished? I am still a week ahead of schedule!) two thoughts occur to me. First, is the second moon the Air Chrysalis? It seems rather obvious, but at this point in the novel, nothing has been said about the Air Chrysalis, and I have learned that I second guess Murakami at the risk of being foolish. Second, now that we know for sure that Tengo and Aomame occupy two different realities (the one with one moon and the one with two moons), are Tengo and Aomame different aspects of the same person, and this is why they long so for each other?

Having just now read to page 313 and completed the scene with the emerging Little People, I read your comments.

First, let me confess that I totally ignored your instructions for how to post a spoiler alert.

I too found the scene disturbing, but also aggravating. I was much more comfortable in Murakame's world without those Little People. On the other hand, I had been quite comfortable with my conclusion that the Little People were just the subjects, cult followers, of the Blind Goat (Big Brother). Now what? He has turned my world on its heals. I could overlook the little green moon as some sort of metaphorical device that I hadn't yet grasped, a symbol for corruption or some such, but now The Little People, magical and malevolent, have unmoored my boat and, frankly, I don't like it. I don't want the book, which up to know has been addictively readable, to become so incomprehensible to me that I become impatient. I almost feel something has been taken from me, so that is the biggest source of my discomfort. And I worry that my ability to suspend disbelief can only be stretched so far (personal failing, not Murakami's). I agree, Sarah, that up to now Murakami has been setting us up, teasing us with slight unease, but making us comfortable, and then he springs The Little People on us, like an angler fish luring in it's prey.

Thoughts - The Little People are still inside Fuka-Eri too. Perhaps they are controlling both of these girls and the story is not of The Little People being discovered/uncovered, but of them in control of revelations about them, dishing out tantalizing bits of information, luring Aomame, Tengo, and the world in before they pounce. Are the Little People behind Fuka-Eri's sudden eloquence at the press conference? Otherwise, she and Tsubasa both are reluctant and halting in their speech; perhaps it's not reluctance, but control by the Little People. Are the girls even present in their own bodies any longer or are they like puppets or programmed AI's? Is the Professor in on it - inhabited by or a tool of The Little People? At this point in the story, Fuka-Eri is going home with Tengo because she says she has no place else to go. He'd better sleep with his mouth shut! And the Dowager -- having slept in a room with The Little People, will she now be under their control? Watch out Aomame and Tengo - the enemy is no longer behind the gates of Sakigake! Until we know more about how they operate, the only two people we can be reasonably sure are not under their influence are these two main characters.

Something occurs as I start this 3rd week segment (not to page 313 yet, so won't read Sarah's comments above until I do): do you think the one person who escaped the shoot-out on the mountain is the Blind Goat?

Sarah wrote: "Mom,
Interesting thoughts. I think an important distinction to make is that neither Aomame, nor Tengo are actual narrators of their own stories, instead we have a limited (meaning focused on one pe..."

Responses to your points, Sarah, in no particular order:

Good instruction about the narrator(s), and your point about balance between Aomame and Tengo rings true..

If Murakami is going to make a link between story telling and socialism, he's got some writin' to do (but still 900 pages to go, so I will grant some leeway).

You convinced me the other day in conversation that it is reasonable for Tengo to have rewritten Air Chrysalis. My point above is about allowing himself to enter into a legal contract after the rewrite and accept money when he doesn't want to, there is nothing in it for him, and there is considerable risk involved. He has already rewritten the story, which was his goal. Why, against his better judgement, go further? But your observations about Tengo's weakness may apply here too; despite his reservations, maybe it is enough that Komatsu tells him to do it. It still feels a little like the author is making it happen rather than letting it happen, but I am willing to be wrong.

I really like your idea about blurring the line between normal and strange, real and unreal, and that the sexual encounters are used to explore this. As with most of your ideas, I wish I had thought of it myself!

I had to laugh out loud when you said that I "may have unknowingly touched on something important." Thanks? But again, your remarks are so spot on regarding Aomame and Tengo's natures. She is demonstrably bad according to societal norms, while Tengo lives within most of society's rules. Yet, the story is shaping up to have Tengo inflict the most harm. This is closely related to your idea regarding the loss of distinction between normal and strange.

Something that strikes me about the sex scenes, in addition to how dehumanizing they are and the (growing) level of discomfort they cause, is how incomplete they are. Any romance other than the Christian ones has more graphic sex scenes than 1Q84 thus far. The scenes here are written with very little detail, but Murakami is obviously not holding back to protect the reader's sensibilities since discomfort seems to be the goal. The sexual passages read like someone who has imagined sex, but never had it, and partly lead to my hypothesis that this is Tengo's story - which you blew up! I am still inclined to think that this is someone's fantasy and is a story about a story about a story (as opposed to novel in the magical realism or fantasy genres), but perhaps because I am reluctant to relinquish my theory, the dramatization of which I thought particularly amusing. I was trying to make a connection between 1984 and 1Q84, a connection I don't yet see. Dad and I watched the 1985 version of 1984 tonight (they were a bit tardy), and neither of us can yet connect those dots. Right now I see more similarity between 1Q84 and Don Quixote - a novel about the necessity of story telling with a dash of metafiction thrown in.

LOL, I imagine I helped you with your interpretation of the book the same way Arthur helps you cook dinner!

Hey, you guys might be reading rabbits, but that doesn't mean you can skip the homework!

WEEK 2: my thoughts

More and more elements of Tengo's and Aomame's stories seem unsettlingly unrealistic - like a dream that seems real when you are in the midst of it, but upon awakening, you recognize the fantastical elements of it. The unrealities of 1Q84 thus far make me evaluate the reliability of both narrators and, not surprisingly, they are both unreliable. Aomame is a femme fatale (literally!) who we are repeatedly told is honest, but she is a paid assassin who hides her deeds and her money. She also lives in a world in which there are two moons; her reality does not jive with our own, so you can take nothing in her storyline at face value. Then there is Tengo, a seemingly nice-ish guy, but he too is dishonest, entering a scheme to dupe readers of Air Chrysalis as well as cuckolding the husband of his lover. There is also Tengo's attitude about fiction: "The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative." And what is Tengo's problem that would make him invent this story? His shitty life. As a child, Tengo discovered escape through reading Dickens and began imaginative journeys about himself: "As he traveled through the world of the stories, he steeped himself in reimagined versions of his own life. The reimagining (or obsessive fantasies) in his head grew ever longer and more complex. They followed a single pattern, but with infinite variations. In all of them, Tengo would tell himself that this was not the place where he belonged. He had been mistakenly locked in a cage. Someday [he would be rescued], then he would have the most beautiful, peaceful, and free Sundays imaginable." Boom. Also of interest, his imaginings which grew longer and more complex, "a single pattern, but with infinite variations" are a lot like the description of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier which both Tengo and Fuki-Eri love: "The Well-Tempered Clavier was truly heavenly music for mathematicians. It was composed of prelude and fugue pairs in major and minor keys using all twelve tones of the scale, twenty-four pieces per book, forty-eight pieces in all, comprising a perfect cycle."
One thing in particular makes me think this whole story is an invention of Tengo as opposed to Aomame or Tengo and Aomame: Aomame's sexual relationships. She and her encounters read like a teenage boy's fantasy. Women do not have sex with strangers just for gratification. It is their biological imperative not to do so. No matter how much a woman might enjoy sex, there are reasons she engages in it - to share love through intimacy, to become pregnant, to seek approval, to get a mate. Murakami seems too thoughtful a writer to have made such a crass misstep in the depiction of Aomame's sexuality.
There are a couple of other things that don't make sense unless 1Q84 is someone's fantasy, the first being Tengo's acquiescence regarding his involvement in a shadow company formed around Air Chrysalis. I can see how his intense response to Fuki-Eri's story overwhelmed him with a desire to make it even better - a Truer representation of her intention, but to enter into a contractual relationship where he takes money? Nope. It doesn't make sense, particularly since Tengo does not want the money. Komatsu's argument that he has come this far so he has too sign a contract and take money is not persuasive. Sometimes characters make mistakes in novels that make sense, but this one doesn't. It just seems like a clumsy device to get Tengo more entwined in an unsettling, deepening mystery, but I keep coming back to Murakami - he just doesn't seem like a careless writer.
Then there is Aomami's developing relationship with Ayumi including one lesbian encounter thus far (male fantasy element again). Aomame is so amazingly self-confident that when she becomes aware that police officers' uniforms have changed and a shoot-out in the mountains escaped her notice, she concludes that reality, not she, is at fault. When she encounters Ayumi, however, her powers of reasoning desert her. Aomame, the assassin in hiding, is approached and enticed by a police officer frustrated in her professional ambitions. Nevertheless, she joins Ayumi in approaching two anonymous guys in a bar. Upon awakening the next morning, Aomami has no memory of the previous night, but discovers that she has been screwed forward, backward, and upside down, and licked like an all-day sucker, yet she doesn't automatically become suspicious (as the reader does) and think "set-up" and "date-rape drug?" Nope. After fending off yet another lesbian encounter, Aomami thinks what we all would, "I'm fond of this girl Ayumi, no doubt about it. I want to be as good to her as I can" - leaving the door open for more scissoring.

This all leads me to my working hypothesis: Tengo is a school boy sitting at the dinner table of his middle class Tokyo home, head in hands, staring down at his aomame (green peas). His brother Komatsu sits nearby, cradling his violin. Tengo has been told that he may not leave the table until he has eaten his peas.
"But I hate green peas."
"Well, you're going to have to eat them anyway because you are not getting up from here until you do."
"This is so unfair!"
"Don't even talk to me about unfair. I'm supposed to meet Fuki-Eri at 7, but Mom says I have to stay here until you eat those damn green peas, so you'd better figure out a way to eat them and like them." Komatsu lifts his violin and plays the first few bars of Janacek's Sinfonietta. Pausing, he looks over at Tengo and cautions, "Remember, big brother is watching you!"
Resigned, Tengo brings a fork full of green peas to his mouth and, as he does when faced with unpleasantries, escapes into his imagination.

Sometimes in a novel with two intersecting storylines, it is jarring when the author switches from one to the other, but so far that doesn't seem the case with 1Q84. Murakami seems like a pretty good technician - he is switching back and forth with such ease, not lingering too long with one character before the switch, that it is no more irritating than watching a tennis match. I don't care for this style of storytelling in general, so I was disappointed when I found we would be changing between Tengo and Aomame, but so far, so good.
About Americans' lack of knowledge about Japanese culture, I think a lot of it has to do with lack of interest or curiosity. American women of means who are my age (who determine where vacations will be taken) are not interested in Japan, China, or Korea. Look at Margaret, for instance; she has been everywhere except the Far East and now she is repeating destinations rather than go to the Orient. Everyone I know has been to Europe, but I am almost the only one I know who has visited Japan or China, and that is thanks to Sarah. In people of Sarah's generation and younger, the Manga fad has given rise to a superficial interest in Japan, but Kessley demonstrates how shallow that interest really is. When she found out that she couldn't actually visit the Village of the Golden Leaf (or whatever that manga quest location was), she no longer wanted to go to Japan. I don't know why cultural curiosity and interest only flows from East to West, but we obviously don't value the Far East as much as we value maximizing gender boxes and Lady Gaga's meat dress.