"Herbert Mitgang - Young and Slangy Mix Of the U_S_ and Japan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Essays about Haruki Murakami)
Herbert Mitgang - Young and Slangy Mix Of the U.S. and Japan
Herbert
Mitgang
Young
and Slangy Mix Of the U.S. and Japan
October 21 1989, The New York
Times Book Review
A Wild Sheep Chase By Haruki
Murakami Translated by Alfred Birnbaum. 299 pages. Kodansha
International.
A Wild Sheep
Chase by Haruki Murakami is a bold new advance in a category of
international fiction that could be called the trans-Pacific novel. Youthful,
slangy, political and allegorical, Mr. Murakami is a writer who seems to be
aware of every current American novel and popular song. Yet with its urban
setting, yuppie characters and subtle feeling of mystery, even menace, his novel
is clearly rooted in modern Japan.
This isn't the
traditional fiction of Kobo Abe (The Woman in the Dunes), Yukio Mishima
(The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea) or Japan's only Nobel
laureate in literature, Yasunari Kawabata (Snow Country). Mr. Murakami's
style and imagination are closer to that of Kurt Vonnegut, Raymond Carver and
John Irving. In fact, the 40-year-old author, one of the most popular novelists
in Japan, has translated the works of several American writers, including Irving
and Carver. His outlook is international; he now lives in
Rome.
There isn't a kimono to
be found in A Wild Sheep Chase. Its main characters, men and women, wear
Levis. They are the children of prosperity, less interested in what Toyota or
Sony have wrought than in having a good time while searching in jazz bars for
self-identity.
They take comfort in
drinking, chain-smoking and casual sex. Listening to their conversation, they
could be right at home on the Berkeley campus in the 1960's. It may help that
the novel is racily translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum, an American
who grew up in Tokyo and who studied at the University of
California.
The unnamed, newly
divorced 30-year-old protagonist of A Wild Sheep Chase has moved on,
somewhat haphazardly, from college life into advertising and public relations.
He and a partner turn out corporate newsletters and display the proper degree of
contempt for their clients - and themselves.
In describing a
right-wing magnate simply named the Boss, who has cornered the advertising
business in Tokyo and extended his power into national politics, the
protagonist's partner could pass for an ad man sounding off at the end of the
day on Madison Avenue or Fleet Street:
''To hold down
advertising is to have nearly the entire publishing and broadcasting industries
under your thumb. There's not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that
doesn't depend in some way on advertising. It'd be like an aquarium without
water. Why, 95 percent of the information that reaches you has already been
preselected and paid for.''
Their own cynical
newsletters, he continues, contribute to corporate concealment: ''Every
company's got a secret it doesn't want exploded right in the middle of the
annual shareholders' meeting. In most cases, they'll listen to the word handed
down. In sum, the Boss sits squarely on top of a trilateral power base of
politicians, information services and the stock market.''
But Mr. Murakami isn't
simply taking a swipe at big business here. As part of his developing plot, he
is setting up the characters of his young people and distancing them from the
godfatherly Boss and his sleazy lieutenant, who has a degree from Stanford
University. As a former war criminal who has escaped trial, possibly with the
collusion of the American occupation leadership, the Boss seeks something more
than to sit on top of a domineering communications empire. Dying, he wants to
gain the spiritual power of a legendary foreign sheep with a star on its back -
the only one of its kind in all of Japan -that dwells somewhere in the lonely
mountainous snow country.
On the surface, A
Wild Sheep Chase is just that: a mystery story with a long chase. A
photograph of the wild sheep has appeared accidentally in a newsletter; like
Dashiell Hammett's Maltese falcon, the singular sheep is pursued by clashing
interests. Is the sheep a symbol of something beyond the reach of an ordinary
man, a devilish temptation? Does this wild sheep represent heroic morality or a
Nietzschean superpower? Nietzsche is mentioned in the novel; so is the obsessive
quest for Moby-Dick. The answer, if any, is left to the reader's
perception.
Along the chase route,
we meet interesting characters. One is called the Sheep Professor, another the
Rat, a rather nice fellow despite his name. The most appealing is the
protagonist's girlfriend, who is plain-looking except for one feature that
arouses him - and reveals the author's offbeat sense of humor and style. Here is
how she is described, with echoes of the hard-boiled California school of
detection:
''She was 21, with an
attractive slender body and a pair of the most bewitching, perfectly formed
ears. She was a part-time proofreader for a small publishing house, a commercial
model specializing in ear shots and a call girl in a discreet
intimate-friends-only club. Which of the three she considered her main
occupation, I had no idea. Neither did she.''
What makes A Wild
Sheep Chase so appealing is the author's ability to strike common chords
between the modern Japanese and American middle classes, especially the younger
generation, and to do so in stylish, swinging language. Mr. Murakami's novel is
a welcome debut by a talented writer who should be discovered by readers on this
end of the Pacific.
Herbert Mitgang - Young and Slangy Mix Of the U.S. and Japan
Herbert
Mitgang
Young
and Slangy Mix Of the U.S. and Japan
October 21 1989, The New York
Times Book Review
A Wild Sheep Chase By Haruki
Murakami Translated by Alfred Birnbaum. 299 pages. Kodansha
International.
A Wild Sheep
Chase by Haruki Murakami is a bold new advance in a category of
international fiction that could be called the trans-Pacific novel. Youthful,
slangy, political and allegorical, Mr. Murakami is a writer who seems to be
aware of every current American novel and popular song. Yet with its urban
setting, yuppie characters and subtle feeling of mystery, even menace, his novel
is clearly rooted in modern Japan.
This isn't the
traditional fiction of Kobo Abe (The Woman in the Dunes), Yukio Mishima
(The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea) or Japan's only Nobel
laureate in literature, Yasunari Kawabata (Snow Country). Mr. Murakami's
style and imagination are closer to that of Kurt Vonnegut, Raymond Carver and
John Irving. In fact, the 40-year-old author, one of the most popular novelists
in Japan, has translated the works of several American writers, including Irving
and Carver. His outlook is international; he now lives in
Rome.
There isn't a kimono to
be found in A Wild Sheep Chase. Its main characters, men and women, wear
Levis. They are the children of prosperity, less interested in what Toyota or
Sony have wrought than in having a good time while searching in jazz bars for
self-identity.
They take comfort in
drinking, chain-smoking and casual sex. Listening to their conversation, they
could be right at home on the Berkeley campus in the 1960's. It may help that
the novel is racily translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum, an American
who grew up in Tokyo and who studied at the University of
California.
The unnamed, newly
divorced 30-year-old protagonist of A Wild Sheep Chase has moved on,
somewhat haphazardly, from college life into advertising and public relations.
He and a partner turn out corporate newsletters and display the proper degree of
contempt for their clients - and themselves.
In describing a
right-wing magnate simply named the Boss, who has cornered the advertising
business in Tokyo and extended his power into national politics, the
protagonist's partner could pass for an ad man sounding off at the end of the
day on Madison Avenue or Fleet Street:
''To hold down
advertising is to have nearly the entire publishing and broadcasting industries
under your thumb. There's not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that
doesn't depend in some way on advertising. It'd be like an aquarium without
water. Why, 95 percent of the information that reaches you has already been
preselected and paid for.''
Their own cynical
newsletters, he continues, contribute to corporate concealment: ''Every
company's got a secret it doesn't want exploded right in the middle of the
annual shareholders' meeting. In most cases, they'll listen to the word handed
down. In sum, the Boss sits squarely on top of a trilateral power base of
politicians, information services and the stock market.''
But Mr. Murakami isn't
simply taking a swipe at big business here. As part of his developing plot, he
is setting up the characters of his young people and distancing them from the
godfatherly Boss and his sleazy lieutenant, who has a degree from Stanford
University. As a former war criminal who has escaped trial, possibly with the
collusion of the American occupation leadership, the Boss seeks something more
than to sit on top of a domineering communications empire. Dying, he wants to
gain the spiritual power of a legendary foreign sheep with a star on its back -
the only one of its kind in all of Japan -that dwells somewhere in the lonely
mountainous snow country.
On the surface, A
Wild Sheep Chase is just that: a mystery story with a long chase. A
photograph of the wild sheep has appeared accidentally in a newsletter; like
Dashiell Hammett's Maltese falcon, the singular sheep is pursued by clashing
interests. Is the sheep a symbol of something beyond the reach of an ordinary
man, a devilish temptation? Does this wild sheep represent heroic morality or a
Nietzschean superpower? Nietzsche is mentioned in the novel; so is the obsessive
quest for Moby-Dick. The answer, if any, is left to the reader's
perception.
Along the chase route,
we meet interesting characters. One is called the Sheep Professor, another the
Rat, a rather nice fellow despite his name. The most appealing is the
protagonist's girlfriend, who is plain-looking except for one feature that
arouses him - and reveals the author's offbeat sense of humor and style. Here is
how she is described, with echoes of the hard-boiled California school of
detection:
''She was 21, with an
attractive slender body and a pair of the most bewitching, perfectly formed
ears. She was a part-time proofreader for a small publishing house, a commercial
model specializing in ear shots and a call girl in a discreet
intimate-friends-only club. Which of the three she considered her main
occupation, I had no idea. Neither did she.''
What makes A Wild
Sheep Chase so appealing is the author's ability to strike common chords
between the modern Japanese and American middle classes, especially the younger
generation, and to do so in stylish, swinging language. Mr. Murakami's novel is
a welcome debut by a talented writer who should be discovered by readers on this
end of the Pacific.
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