Reading the Wind

My local library has no books. I stopped by the other day, with suitably low expectations, perchance to pick up a travel book for my upcoming leave.

But that day, something was different. Maybe as I walked through the glass doors leading into the library, I had walked through a glass wall of an alternate universe, like a sheep man in an elevator, walking through the walls of the Dauphin. The foyer looked similar to how it always did, but jarringly different, as foyers are wont to do in surrealist fiction. For one thing, the walls were lined with decorated bras. The archway of books that framed the library gantry looked slightly tilted to the left.

The walls were lined with bras. This is not me.

It was in such a parallel universe, that my library, the one with no conceivable books of interest, happened to contain the latest Murakami publication. Wind/Pinball was there, lined up in the new collection/recommended reading section of the library, even while it was still being sold in the front part of bookstores where all the new stock and best sellers are. Within a month of the New York Times review of the book. I had no choice but to pick it up.

The latest in Murakami's English repertoire is also his first. And second. At the time of writing, I have only read Wind. In it, he unabashedly breaks the fourth wall. He discusses writing about novels whilst he writes a novel (or more accurately, a novella). He discusses his writing influences directly. He deconstructs the act of writing a novel.

It is quite possibly the finest example of meta-fiction I have ever come across. It is also clearly an etude. A study in writing, of writing, whilst attempting to write a novel. But he does not really complete it, as far as a novel goes in what we recognise by it. The plot is sketchy. The character development is sketchy. Even the characters themselves are sketchy, in a dodgy sense of the word. Is this really a novel? Are these ideas by which we define a novel really what defines a good novel?

People looking for a satisfying read in a traditional sense of the word, or first-time readers of Murakami, may not find it up to expectations. But those with an interest in reading writing for the sake of writing, or those who already love and know Murakami might just find it satisfyingly unstatisfying.

He writes in first person. But his best friend and foil, the Rat, is the one who picks up reading, who eventually decides to write a novel, and then novels, and sends photocopies to the protagonist every Christmas. Who is the truer representation of the author? Is it the first-person narrative? Or is it a narration within a narrative created by the foil?

Girls have no names in this book. Instead, they are identified by part of their bodies, or by the chronology of his sexual encounters. The first girl he slept with, the second girl he slept with. He talks about four, I think. But then again, because there are no names, I am not completely certain. They have been objectified. A safe distance from him. From us. A mystery.

Even so, one of the best parts of the book is where he describes a brief conversation with one of the girls in a series of exchanges culminating in the girl calling him a liar. She was wrong, he writes (and rights). He only lied about one thing. As you read the series of exchanges again, you feel force of feeling behind the minimalist prose. In the brevity, even the paucity, of interaction leading up to this exchange between the girl who has no name and the author, I found it hard to be convinced of the authenticity of this level of emotion coming from the character. But even so, I could not fail to be convinced of the power of his writing:

We curled up together and watched an old movie on TV as we munched on the sandwiches.
It was The Bridge on the River Kwai.
She was moved by the scene at the end, where they blow up the bridge.
"Then why did they work so hard to build it?" she sighed, pointing at Alec Guinness, who was standing transfixed by the sight.
"Out of pride."
"Mmph," she responded, her cheeks stuffed with bread, as she contemplated the nature of human pride. Then, as always, I had no idea at all what was going on inside her head.
"Do you love me?"
"Sure I do."
"Enough to marry me?"
"Right away?"
"Someday. In the future."
"Sure I want to marry you."
"But you never said anything until I asked."
"It slipped my mind."
"How many kids do you want?"
"Three."
"Boys? Girls?"
"Two girls and a boy".
She took a swallow of coffee to wash down the rest of the bread, and looked me square in the eye.
"LIAR!" she said.
But she was wrong. I had lied only once.

He tentatively tries his hand at writing about hearing voices (if I were writing up medical documentation, that would be query schizophrenia). The attempt does not last longer than a page. In another chapter, a girl kills herself. In another chapter, a letter is read about a girl with a neurological disease that keeps her from getting out of bed. In this first attempt at dealing with these kinds of events, he fails to capture the immensity of such events the way he does in later works. But these references will gratify fans who would appreciate a retrospective to his beginnings and who have read similar events fleshed out in his other works.

Emotive writing is kept to a minimum, and the focus is on symbols. An American reviewer reading the work of a Japanese author, will invariably comment in an almost racist way, on the use of Western culture - music by the Beach Boys, Mickey Mouse, quotes from Kennedy, and Americanised vernacular. There is an almost insinuation there that he is not being true to the American perception of who a Japanese person should be. But as an Asian trans-continental, I am less surprised or bemused by this, or by his use of 'blew my mind'. That's just how I've grown up myself.

He closes the books with the objects in his room, each possible sources of inspiration for plot and character- a California Girls LP, the cud from a cow's stomach, referenced earlier in the book as something that had originally belonged to another character, is now admitted to be something which he, the first person narrator, took from the cow's stomach himself. A now-lost photograph of the French literature major who died. He closes the book as if he, the narrator, is admitting to weaving the fiction, but in doing so, blurs the lines between fiction and reality.