Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Discussion Thread - There's always only one reality.

[techwizard]

finished!

i have extremely mixed feelings about this book. it did have moments that felt quite beautiful, but those were mixed in among many more that felt very forced. it felt like Murakami was actively trying to be "literary" without actually nailing it. it didn't come across as well as someone who just sets out to write a novel and their writing naturally becomes literary.

that said, i did enjoy it enough to finish it relatively quickly, it was definitely extremely interesting and a real page-turner. on the whole i don't think i would recommend this to anyone though. length alone doesn't make a book bad, but this book felt like it really had no need to be long. so many segments felt like they were just repeats of earlier segments in slightly different words, but not the good sort of repetition like you would find in the Iliad or the Odyssey.

my opinion on this story definitely leans more towards disliking it but it did interest me in murakami and japanese literature enough to go out and buy another Murakami book (A Wild Sheep Chase), and a collection of japanese classics by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (which coincidentally happens to have an introduction written by Murakami).

edit: Grayghost81 and I discussed it and we'd like to do this again sometime, but both of us (especially him) are pretty busy right now so we'll probably start up another thread around mid-june. Expect us to be reading The Sea by John Banville this time around, a much shorter novel

[techwizard]

this feels fitting after finishing this book.

[techwizard]

really good review on 1Q84 from the NYT here: http://www.nytimes.com/20...s&emc=booksupdateema1

it sums up a lot of my feelings on this book, but in better ways and more specific examples than i could.

[GrayGhost81]

Jaime, my man, thank you for reading this book with me. I will treasure it deeply forever.

I am alone in New Jersey drinking red wine and thinking about days past and future and how this book will stay with me forever and how I'm so happy you and I finished it.

I will take the time to elaborate on the novel and we will read more books in the future but I just want to say that it was really important to me that I would have this waiting for me when I arrive in Austin next week:

[img width=700 height=766]http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/OTg2WDkwMQ==/z/ckcAAOSw-7RVCZsa/$_57.JPG[/img]

I have a lot of the same feelings as you and again, when I have the time to elaborate on them I will, but suffice it to to say, damn, what a book. Like, I was going to give away my copy to a friend of mine tomorrow, but if he isn't there...

[techwizard]

that Esso token is awesome, and i wish i had thought of looking up the sinfonietta earlier so i could have had an idea what sort of music it was. listening now, it's a lot more dramatic than i expected.

[singlebanana]

Well, time to rattle the dust off of this thread....

I know it sounds odd, but one of my issues with 1Q84 initially was the combined pressing. The book was so cumbersome and heavy and the imbalance of pages on each side just made it really difficult for me to concentrate on reading it. However, just before Christmas, I went out and bought the three volume set.  This was the perfect way for me to approach this book. I started sometime around Christmas and I'm already DONE!

What a fantastic book and at the top of my favorites from this author (Wind-Up Bird still being tops)!  I agree with a lot of what Jamie is saying about the book, especially in the third section.  Much like the Cat Town, the chapters don't really go anywhere. Everyone is "holed up" and has little movement.  I'm not a big fan of the Ushikawa chapters added to the third part and his investigation only seems to regurgitate everything we already know about Tengo and Aomame. However, about 2/3 through the 3rd book, things pick back up and move toward an exciting climax. Side note: Ushikawa also shows up in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Murakami puts characters in other books sometimes, and I love this subtle technique.

Shawn, I can only imagine how you felt in your past situation when you read the part of the "slide" scene.  It was the one part in the story that I had to reread a few times because it was well written and captivating.  

I'm sure this has been widely written about, but there are several allusions to other works of literature beside 1984. Two of the most prominent in my reading were Macbeth and more under the radar, Grimm's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.  Wondering if you guys caught these and what your thoughts are?  Ah hell, no one will probably ever read this anyway ha ha, but I wanted to share.

I may talk about the book in our next podcast, but it will probably be rather brief.