"Joan Mellen - A haunting walk in Murakami's ephemeral world" - читать интересную книгу автора (Essays about Haruki Murakami)
Joan Mellen - A haunting walk in Murakami's ephemeral world
Joan
Mellen
A
haunting walk in Murakami’s ephemeral world
February 21 1997, The Daily
Yomiuri (special for The Baltimore Sun)
SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN
(Kokkyo no Minami, Taiyo no Nishi) By Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip
Gabriel, Knopf, 205pp.
Hajime, a Japanese
everyman, recounts his romantic life. South of the Border, West of the
Sun seems light-years from the historical inevitabilities of The Wind-Up
Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel, not to mention the
intrigues of the unconscious of his masterpiece Hard-Boiled Wonderland and
the End of the World.
Yet this new mesmerizing
example of Murakami’s deeply original fiction is equally allegorical. Hajime
grows up and marries; he runs two jazz bars and enjoys the material bounty of
Japan’s postwar economic boom. Then everything collapses. The reader is thrust
into Murakami-land where the story is as much about a culture and its ethos as
it is about individuals, either Hajime, or his women Shimamoto, Izumi and
Yukiko.
Hajime is an “only
child,” for his generation of Japanese a handicap setting him apart from his
classmates. Shimamoto is not only another only child, but drags her leg, a
legacy of polio. Doubly different, she is forever excluded in Japan from normal
feelings, a normal life. Hajime goes on to abandon Shimamoto and betray his high
school girlfriend, Izumi – acts he will forever regret. He discovers “that a
person can just by living damage another human being beyond
repair.”
At college, he
participates in student demonstrations. Later his father-in-law, a real-state
developer, tries to lure him into stock manipulations. Living the history of
Japan of the last half-century, Hajime is thrust into ethical ambiguities, his
fate paralleling the uneasy edifice of Japan’s fleeting
prosperity.
Murakami mourns the fact
that time moves in only one direction, perpetually out of human reach.
Despairing, Hajime concludes that “things that have form will all disappear, but
certain feelings stay with us forever.” Being “an ordinary guy living an
ordinary life” has protected him neither from the corruption of Japanese society
nor from losing all sense of himself. “I just can’t understand who I am
anymore,” Hajime laments, speaking both for himself and his culture. Murakami
once more enlists the metaphor of the shadow. Hajime’s shadow goes one way, and
he goes another. Identity is as ephemeral as politics.
Yet Murakami’s fiction
simultaneously flows gracefully onto a universal moral landscape. People cannot
help themselves, the author reveals. The fragility of their bruised egos causes
them to sacrifice heedlessly what they love most. A lifetime is not long enough
to reconcile oneself to the guilt of having betrayed other people, even as
Hajime acknowledges that he would do the same thing again.
Reality is forever
elusive, and this novel trails loose ends never reconciled by an uncompromising
author. Shimamoto returns only to disappear forever. Izumi walks through life in
emotional paralysis, a zombie who frightens neighborhood children. The mysteries
of another’s heart are never revealed, while the death of the soul is always a
heartbeat away.
Murakami’s characters
are overwhelmingly lonely, forever on the verge of annihilation. Salvation
beckons through self-invention, continuous self-renewal. But Hajime admits that
“until someone came and lightly rested a hand on my shoulder, my thoughts were
of the sea.”
By the end, Hajime has
transcended the saccharin sentimentality of Nat King Cole’s ditty, “South of the
Border” and the madness of those Siberian farmers who, suddenly drained of
purpose, toss aside their plows and head suicidally “west of the sun.” This is a
harrowing, a disturbing, a hauntingly brilliant tale.
Joan Mellen - A haunting walk in Murakami's ephemeral world
Joan
Mellen
A
haunting walk in Murakami’s ephemeral world
February 21 1997, The Daily
Yomiuri (special for The Baltimore Sun)
SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN
(Kokkyo no Minami, Taiyo no Nishi) By Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip
Gabriel, Knopf, 205pp.
Hajime, a Japanese
everyman, recounts his romantic life. South of the Border, West of the
Sun seems light-years from the historical inevitabilities of The Wind-Up
Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel, not to mention the
intrigues of the unconscious of his masterpiece Hard-Boiled Wonderland and
the End of the World.
Yet this new mesmerizing
example of Murakami’s deeply original fiction is equally allegorical. Hajime
grows up and marries; he runs two jazz bars and enjoys the material bounty of
Japan’s postwar economic boom. Then everything collapses. The reader is thrust
into Murakami-land where the story is as much about a culture and its ethos as
it is about individuals, either Hajime, or his women Shimamoto, Izumi and
Yukiko.
Hajime is an “only
child,” for his generation of Japanese a handicap setting him apart from his
classmates. Shimamoto is not only another only child, but drags her leg, a
legacy of polio. Doubly different, she is forever excluded in Japan from normal
feelings, a normal life. Hajime goes on to abandon Shimamoto and betray his high
school girlfriend, Izumi – acts he will forever regret. He discovers “that a
person can just by living damage another human being beyond
repair.”
At college, he
participates in student demonstrations. Later his father-in-law, a real-state
developer, tries to lure him into stock manipulations. Living the history of
Japan of the last half-century, Hajime is thrust into ethical ambiguities, his
fate paralleling the uneasy edifice of Japan’s fleeting
prosperity.
Murakami mourns the fact
that time moves in only one direction, perpetually out of human reach.
Despairing, Hajime concludes that “things that have form will all disappear, but
certain feelings stay with us forever.” Being “an ordinary guy living an
ordinary life” has protected him neither from the corruption of Japanese society
nor from losing all sense of himself. “I just can’t understand who I am
anymore,” Hajime laments, speaking both for himself and his culture. Murakami
once more enlists the metaphor of the shadow. Hajime’s shadow goes one way, and
he goes another. Identity is as ephemeral as politics.
Yet Murakami’s fiction
simultaneously flows gracefully onto a universal moral landscape. People cannot
help themselves, the author reveals. The fragility of their bruised egos causes
them to sacrifice heedlessly what they love most. A lifetime is not long enough
to reconcile oneself to the guilt of having betrayed other people, even as
Hajime acknowledges that he would do the same thing again.
Reality is forever
elusive, and this novel trails loose ends never reconciled by an uncompromising
author. Shimamoto returns only to disappear forever. Izumi walks through life in
emotional paralysis, a zombie who frightens neighborhood children. The mysteries
of another’s heart are never revealed, while the death of the soul is always a
heartbeat away.
Murakami’s characters
are overwhelmingly lonely, forever on the verge of annihilation. Salvation
beckons through self-invention, continuous self-renewal. But Hajime admits that
“until someone came and lightly rested a hand on my shoulder, my thoughts were
of the sea.”
By the end, Hajime has
transcended the saccharin sentimentality of Nat King Cole’s ditty, “South of the
Border” and the madness of those Siberian farmers who, suddenly drained of
purpose, toss aside their plows and head suicidally “west of the sun.” This is a
harrowing, a disturbing, a hauntingly brilliant tale.
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