The Book Club discussion

Please add your comments here as you read, especially those you would like to share before our July meeting.

I guess I had better get ahold of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle if I am going to get it re-read before our meeting. I have mixed feelings about a re-read, given all the other things on my TBR.

I am glad to have read his 1Q84 , although I just had to go back and review to reconstruct the story and characters. It was one of those books that I could immerse myself in at the time I read it, but clearly it was not memorable in the sense of having a plot line that I tucked away for future reference.

I wonder if that is true for his other books as well? I retain more "impressions" than memories.

I ended up being glad for the re-read. Here are our hostess's review comments from her follow-up of our meeting, as well as on-going planning:

At yesterday's meeting we had an interesting discussion of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Suggested reading for those wishing to further explore the question 'How well do we really know others?' is the recently-published This Close by Jessica Francis Kane.

D. distributed library copies of After This (the August selection) by Alice McDermott....

Selection for September is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro to be paired with the movie of the same name, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in award-winning roles.

Too new for now but slated for the future:
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandburg
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Enjoy the rest of the summer, and here's hoping we'll see you in September!

(Selection of underlined books should take you to the Goodreads description and reviews.)

Could you post a short summary of the discussion? I would love to hear the reactions. Just a few sentences would be appreciated.

Janet

1/2/2014

NYT ON THIS DAY
"On Jan. 2, 1905, Gen. Nogi of Japan received from Gen. Stoessel of Russia at 9 p.m. a letter formally offering to surrender, ending the Russo-Japanese War."

Janet wrote: "Could you post a short summary of the discussion? I would love to hear the reactions. Just a few sentences would be appreciated."

Don't know how to do that, Janet. It has been awhile now, and I guess I must have set aside your question back in August. C was the one who encouraged us to read Murakami, which I am glad we did. I have been doing so (this was at least partially a reread for me, although it felt much like a first read) since I had been introduced to him by an aficionado of his work a number of years ago.

Among the things that were noted was the struggle for self understanding as well as understanding of others. We commented on the inclusion of information about the Japanese-Russian-Chinese wars, which were largely outside the familiarity of most of us. C. and C.B. had used a guide for reading the book, which they had found useful, especially in considering some of the symbolism Murakami used.

A discussion is just completing here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Murakami was one of the finalists for the Neustadt award this year.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/...

http://neustadtprize.org/ -- For more on the prize.

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t...

The essay here by Ilana Simons is the one that introduced me to the work of Murakami.

A Review from Amazon.com that may be of interest:

Unity Masquerades as a Kaleidoscope September 24, 2006
By Kevin Salfen
Format:Paperback

"Another reviewer has mentioned that far from being a scattered collection of independent incidents strung together by the coincidence of the central character's involvement, Murakami's "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is unified by means of its insistence on the problem of evil and what to do about it. Surely this is moving towards a clear understanding of the novel.

(view spoiler)["Evil, though, is a such a culturally grounded concept. Is evil sin? Maybe in monotheistic cultures, but I think in Murakami's novelistic universe--and this is a recurring feature of many discussions of Japanese religion, culture, and art--a more insightful way of comprehending evil is as "defilement," and this is the term Jay Rubin uses in his translation time and again. Defilement is what ties every character together: some inner filth that each character is trying to purge in some way. May Kasahara's idea of the physical manifestation of death as an oozy gray thing is the clearest picture we have of that unrelenting ghost that haunts everyone intersecting with Toru Okada's life. It is not regret or guilt. It is not emotional scarring. It is a sickening tangible object poisoning a person's life and threatening to overwhelm it. It must be washed off, or it will destroy whatever it comes in contact with.

Because defilement is such a defining feature of the work, it functions to create two broad sets of characters: the defilers and the defiled, where Kumiko's brother (Noboru Wataya) is the archetype of the defiler and Kumiko herself the archetype of the defiled. Confusion arises and the border between the two sets becomes blurred because the nature of defilement is to spread, and once Kumiko herself becomes defiled, she spreads that to those around her, principally to the central character, her husband Toru.

"The third character type is found in Toru, whose beautiful quality is to absorb all the defilement, find a way to stop the spread of it, and then to wash it away, to expunge it in the final defeat of Noboru Wataya. Toru's beautiful quality is not easily won, though. The whole of "Wind-up Bird" tells of the immensely difficult quest for it, an encountering of many different faces of defiler and defiled, a repeated tasting of others' defilements, in order to learn the method of purification.

"In a sense, then, "Wind-up Bird" is a classic love triangle, but it has been made archetypal: the defiled is fought over between the defiler and the purifier. Because of its reduction to the archetypal, all defiled characters are functionally the same, and all defilers are functionally the same. Malta Kano and Creta Kano, May Kasahara and Lieutenant Mamiya are all defiled; Noboru Wataya and the Russian intelligence officer, the woman on the phone and the man with the baseball bat are all defilers. Faces shift; functions remain the same. In every story, Toru is fighting for Kumiko, trying to wash out the defilement she is letting herself be destroyed by. In every story, Noboru Wataya is reaching out in every direction, to taint everything with his evil (defiling) intelligence.

"Once the flimsy physical borders between these characters are down, the focus of the novel takes on a focused, white-hot intensity. It is almost as if the fire of it is so scorching that Murakami had to cloak it in an array of different facades. Also, by giving so many faces to the defiler and defiled, he insures that the reader will respond to one of them. One of the defilements will connect and lead to self-identification, and in this lies the great humanity of the novel, the thing that makes it so very intriguing for so many readers, the thing that makes it more than just a good yarn.

"In the end, Toru is no closer to Kumiko. But he has fully become himself. He has merged with his unshakable purpose. Water flows unhindered in the long-dry well."
(hide spoiler)]

http://www.amazon.com/Wind-Up-Bird-Ch...

A couple of resources:

(Bookrags, available in Kindle format): http://www.amazon.com/Wind-up-Chronic...

Available (only?) in paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Haruki-Murakami...

Did not find either in local library system.