Reading Murakami's Norwegian Wood

When I read Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore (2002), I wondered about the falling fishes, talking cats and mysterious men and women. When I read South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992), I wondered about the mysterious woman and how a person can seem like a figment of imagination when s/he leaves no physical proof of existing. When I read Norwegian Wood (1987), I wondered about how there is nothing in particular to wonder about. The translator’s note in Norwegian Wood states how some readers call it ‘just’ a love story. The translator, Jay Rubin, goes on to show how it’s ‘not’ just a love story. I agree with him.

I had put a lot of effort in figuring out why fishes fell from the sky when I read Kafka. I assumed that I needed to read more of Franz Kafka and Japanese culture. However, I ceased to wonder about it when in his interview with The Guardian last year Murakami stated that it was the job of the ‘intelligent people’ to figure out what fishes falling from the sky might mean. As for him, he simply felt that something should fall from the sky and fishes seemed about right. He acknowledged the power of subconscious brain but denied making a concrete analysis of this image. I assumed after reading the interview that the same holds true for everything else in the book as well.

[Wanna-be bookstagrammer attempts! :P]

I told a few people about my experience of reading Kafka on the Shore. I told them it made no sense and complete sense simultaneously. At least one thing was clear, Murakami shows the utter meaninglessness of life, hopelessness, the journey through darkness, the ones who fail to survive the journey and the ones who survive begin to move towards light. Murakami, without any doubt, shows getting back to life after experiencing death by narrating ‘split(s)’ in the world as well as within individuals. This  story that’s weaved with surrealist images, ambiguous descriptions, and multiple meanings is over simplified and narrated in terms of relatable human experience in Norwegian Wood. Or so I feel.

The one lesson that comes with reading Murakami is that we’re always waiting for Godot in his stories. The end doesn’t make sense. The story ends abruptly. It ends when we want to know what happens next. We know that the last paragraph won’t satisfy our thirst, yet we keep reading. It leaves the readers with an overwhelming frustration. One cannot not read Murakami once s/he has read him, given his words have made a connection with his/her subconscious. I am yet to meet or know a person who has been indifferent towards Murakami.

When I completed reading Norwegian Wood, the only question that I had was, “Why did he mention Germany in the beginning?” While reading the story, I was waiting for a time when the plot would return to the present. I slept and woke up with the question. A few hours later I realized the futility of my question. The story often returned to the present time of narration, it began in that present time, but it wasn’t Germany. Once I gathered this, it wasn’t difficult to understand what happens after the end. I read the last paragraph of the story twice; I was expecting the narrator to move towards his future, now that he was sure that the past was taken care of. Eventually it did happen, for the narrator is using his memory to not only talk about the first love, but also to narrate the moment that triggers this story of his teenage and the sense of growing up. A lot can be inferred about the future by the curious reader, given cats or Johnny Walker are not prophesying anything here.

The most interesting thing about Norwegian Wood was that each character had a void that could be understood in a go. These voids, oddly enough began seeming like everything that I had experienced in last one year. Had I read it a couple of months ago, I would have taken pride in finding myself in a narrative like this. I would have found a sense of belonging. Someone had written about me – meaning, I am not the only one suffering from it, I am not alone (as I had felt reading the passages about depression in Adichie’s Americannah).

This time I was surprised how these deformities that I had experienced one after another and some at the same time with far less intensity, are experienced by different characters  ̶  Nagasawa  is internally detached from normalcy and takes pride in not being like ‘normal folk’; Naoko tries her best but cannot reconnect with the 'normal' world and ultimately commits suicide; Reiko physically detaches herself, after three mental breakdowns, for self-healing and eventually risks getting back to the ‘real’ world; Midori has no filter because she believes that her madness is a consequence, and a part of normalcy and hence remains put in the ‘sane’ world. The one who saw all these splits in people, tried to understand and help while battling on the frontiers of two worlds, is the narrator – Toru.

When I read these characters, I could also relate them to people around me based on the experiences they had confided in me. I wanted to message a few people, ‘If you find the book and time, and can make yourself read, then read Murakami’s Norwegian Wood.’ I didn’t. I couldn’t predict their states of mind to be able to suggest this, I couldn’t take the risk. This story would have infinite meanings for infinite people. It would have made me cry endlessly a month ago when I was trying to find my ground, in people, in things, in myself. Or, it would have meant nothing as a result of my indifference a few months ago. So, I didn’t talk about the book to anyone. I felt my throat drying up when Nagasawa’s words hit me with examples from my life - “Person A understands Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A.”

One of the many hard hitting takeaways from the story is the description of loss - "... no truth can cure the sadness we feel from the loss of a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be of no help in facing that next sadness that comes to us without warning." 

I was amused when I read that this book was read as ‘just’ a love story. Almost immediately I told myself that not everyone comes across their deformities and voids or that not everyone sees the split within and outside them. Further, to stay on the '(in/)sane' side might or might not be a choice for individuals, the ones who try often become the bridge that splits the deformities from normalcy. To be honest, I think Toru in the story is that bridge, the one who connects both worlds and has his own battles in balancing them.

       

           As a layperson, this is how I see Norwegian Wood, a Murakami book that I dared to write about. The cherry on the top: Murakami writes, “In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.”

I knew it while reading Kafka on the Shore, but I didn’t want to share the pedestal that I have already assigned to Rushdie. Now, with the power invested in me by my meditation on death, I have declared Murakami as the author I love after Rushdie in my head. These Scheherazade-like storytellers will one day be the death of me.