Image by wakari­m­a­sita, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In her New York Times review of Haru­ki Murakami’s lat­est, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age, Pat­ti Smith writes that the nov­el­ist has two modes, “the sur­re­al, intra-dimen­sion­al side” and the “more min­i­mal­ist, real­ist side.” These two Murakamis often coex­ist with­in the same work of fic­tion, as the fan­tas­tic or the super­nat­ur­al invades the real, or the oth­er way around. Like one of his lit­er­ary heroes, Franz Kaf­ka, Murakami’s work doesn’t so much cre­ate alter­nate real­i­ties as it alters real­i­ty, with all its mun­dane details and hum­drum dai­ly rou­tines. As Ted Gioia put it in a review of Murakami’s Kaf­ka on the Shore, “this abil­i­ty to cap­ture the phan­tas­magor­i­cal in the thick of com­muter traf­fic, broad­band Inter­net con­nec­tions and high-rise archi­tec­ture is the dis­tinc­tive call­ing card of Murakami”—he “mes­mer­izes us by work­ing his leg­erde­main in places where real­i­ty would seem to be rock sol­id.”

In Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki Muraka­mi works this same mag­ic, as you can see in this excerpt pub­lished in Slate last month. Tex­tured with gran­u­lar real­ist details and straight­for­ward nar­ra­tion, the scene slow­ly builds into a cap­ti­vat­ing super­nat­ur­al tale that slides just as eas­i­ly back into the weft and warp of wak­ing life. In one piece of dia­logue, Muraka­mi sums up one way we might read all of his “sur­re­al, intra-dimen­sion­al” flights: “It wasn’t an issue of whether or not he believed it. I think he total­ly accept­ed it as the weird tale it was. Like the way a snake will swal­low its prey and not chew it, but instead let it slow­ly digest.” Giv­en the jit­tery, dis­tract­ed state of most mod­ern read­ers in a tech­no­log­i­cal land­scape that push­es us to make hasty judg­ments and snap­py, ill-con­sid­ered replies, it is sur­pris­ing how many of Murakami’s fans are will­ing to take the time. And it is no sub­set of clois­tered devo­tees either, but, in Pat­ti Smith’s words, “the alien­at­ed, the ath­let­ic, the dis­en­chant­ed and the buoy­ant.”

Muraka­mi finds read­ers across this broad spec­trum for many rea­sons; his prose is acces­si­ble even when his nar­ra­tives are baf­fling. (Gioia notes that “when the Japan­ese pub­lish­er of Kaf­ka on the Shore set up a web­site allow­ing read­ers to ask ques­tions of the author, some 8,000 were sub­mit­ted.”) His peren­ni­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with, and immer­sion in, the worlds of jazz, rock, and clas­si­cal music, base­ball, and run­ning, draw in those who might nor­mal­ly avoid the Kaf­ka-esque. But when we come to Muraka­mi, Kaf­ka-esque is very often what we find, as well as Salinger-esque, Von­negut-esque, Pyn­chon-esque, even Philip K. Dick-esque, as well as the –esque of real­ist mas­ters like Ray­mond Carv­er. Whether you’re new to Muraka­mi or a long­time fan of his work, you’ll find all of these ten­den­cies, and much more to love, in the four short sto­ries we present below, all free to read at The New York­er for a lim­it­ed time (the mag­a­zine will go behind a pay­wall in the fall).

Take advan­tage of this brief reprieve and enjoy the many rich­es of Haru­ki Murakami’s fic­tive worlds, which so decep­tive­ly imper­son­ate the one most of us live in that we feel right at home in his work until it jolts us out of the famil­iar and into a “weird tale.” Whether you believe them or not, they’re sure to stay with you awhile.

“Kino” (Feb­ru­ary 23, 2015)

“A Walk to Kobe” (August 6, 2013)

“Sam­sa in Love” (Octo­ber 28, 2013)

“Yes­ter­day” (June 9, 2014)

“Scheherazade” (Octo­ber 13, 2014)

“Town of Cats,” trans­lat­ed from the Japan­ese by Jay Rubin (Sep­tem­ber 5, 2011)

“U.F.O. in Kushi­ro” (March 28, 2011; orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished March 19, 2001)

“Cream” (Jan­u­ary 28, 2019)

“With the Bea­t­les” (Feb­ru­ary 10, 2020)

“Con­fes­sions of a Shi­na­gawa Mon­key” (June 1, 2020)

“The King­dom That Failed” (August 13, 2020)

And last but sure­ly not least, we bring you “The Folk­lore of Our Times” from The Guardian (pub­lished August 1, 2003), one of Murakami’s involved real­ist com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tives notable for the mature, almost world-weary insights he draws from the seem­ing­ly unex­cep­tion­al fab­ric of ordi­nary expe­ri­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image by Marie Maye, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In a pre­vi­ous post, we brought you the voice of Ital­ian fan­ta­sist Ita­lo Calvi­no, read­ing from his Invis­i­ble Cities and Mr. Palo­mar. Both of those works, as with all of Calvino’s fic­tion, make oblique ref­er­ences to wide swaths of clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture, but Calvi­no is no show-off, drop­ping in allu­sions for their own sake, nor is it real­ly nec­es­sary to have read as wide­ly as the author to tru­ly appre­ci­ate his work, as in the case of cer­tain mod­ernist mas­ters. Instead, Calvino’s fic­tion tends to cast a spell on read­ers, inspir­ing them to seek out far-flung ancient romances and strange folk­tales, to immerse them­selves in oth­er worlds con­tained with­in the cov­ers of oth­er books. Not the least bit pedan­tic, Calvi­no pos­sess­es that rare gift of the best of teach­ers: the abil­i­ty to make Lit­er­a­ture cap­i­tal “L”—an intim­i­dat­ing domain for many—become won­drous and approach­able all over again, as in our ear­ly years when books were mag­i­cal por­tals to be entered, not oner­ous tasks to be checked off a list.

Calvino’s short essay, “Why Read the Clas­sics?” (pub­lished in The New York Review of Books in 1986), resounds with this sense of won­der, as well as with the author’s friend­ly, unpre­ten­tious atti­tude.

He lays out his rea­son­ing in 14 points—slightly abridged below—beginning with the frank admis­sion that all of us feel some sense of shame for the gaps in our read­ing, and thus often claim to be “re-read­ing” when in fact we’re read­ing, for exam­ple, Moby Dick, Anna Karen­i­na, or King Lear, for the first time. Calvi­no states plain­ly the nature of the case;

The reit­er­a­tive pre­fix before the verb “read” may be a small hypocrisy on the part of peo­ple ashamed to admit they have not read a famous book. To reas­sure them, we need only observe that, how­ev­er vast any person’s basic read­ing may be, there still remain an enor­mous num­ber of fun­da­men­tal works that he has not read.

Point one, then, goes on to argue for reading—for the first time—classic works of lit­er­a­ture we may have only pre­tend­ed to in the past. The remain­der of Calvino’s case fol­lows log­i­cal­ly:

1)  ….to read a great book for the first time in one’s matu­ri­ty is an extra­or­di­nary plea­sure, dif­fer­ent from (though one can­not say greater or less­er than) the plea­sure of hav­ing read it in one’s youth.

2) We use the word “clas­sics” for those books that are trea­sured by those who have read and loved them; but they are trea­sured no less by those who have the luck to read them for the first time in the best con­di­tions to enjoy them.

3) There should there­fore be a time in adult life devot­ed to revis­it­ing the most impor­tant books of our youth.

4) Every reread­ing of a clas­sic is as much a voy­age of dis­cov­ery as the first read­ing.

5) Every read­ing of a clas­sic is in fact a reread­ing.

6) A clas­sic is a book that has nev­er fin­ished say­ing what it has to say.

7) The clas­sics are the books that come down to us bear­ing upon them the traces of read­ings pre­vi­ous to ours, and bring­ing in their wake the traces they them­selves have left on the cul­ture or cul­tures they have passed through.

Calvi­no intro­duces his last 7 points with the obser­va­tion that any for­mal lit­er­ary edu­ca­tion we receive often does more to obscure our appre­ci­a­tion of clas­sic works than to enhance it. “Schools and uni­ver­si­ties,” he writes, “ought to help us to under­stand that no book that talks about a book says more than the book in ques­tion, but instead they do their lev­el best to make us think the oppo­site.”

Part of the rea­son many peo­ple come to lit­er­ary works with trep­i­da­tion has as much to do with their per­ceived dif­fi­cul­ty as with the schol­ar­ly voice of author­i­ty that speaks from on high through “crit­i­cal biogra­phies, com­men­taries, and inter­pre­ta­tions” as well as “the intro­duc­tion, crit­i­cal appa­ra­tus, and bib­li­og­ra­phy.” Though use­ful tools for schol­ars, these can serve as means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing that cer­tain pro­fes­sion­al read­ers will always know more than you do. Calvi­no rec­om­mends leav­ing such things aside, since they “are used as a smoke screen to hide what the text has to say.” He then con­cludes:

8) A clas­sic does not nec­es­sar­i­ly teach us any­thing we did not know before.

9) The clas­sics are books that we find all the more new, fresh, and unex­pect­ed upon read­ing, the more we thought we knew them from hear­ing them talked about.

10) We use the word “clas­sic” of a book that takes the form of an equiv­a­lent to the uni­verse, on a lev­el with the ancient tal­is­mans.

11) Your clas­sic author is the one you can­not feel indif­fer­ent to, who helps you to define your­self in rela­tion to him, even in dis­pute with him.

12) A clas­sic is a book that comes before oth­er clas­sics; but any­one who has read the oth­ers first, and then reads this one, instant­ly rec­og­nizes its place in the fam­i­ly tree.

Final­ly, Calvi­no adds two points to explain why he thinks we should read old books, when we are so con­stant­ly over­whelmed “by the avalanche of cur­rent events.” To this ques­tion he says:

13) A clas­sic is some­thing that tends to rel­e­gate the con­cerns of the moment to the sta­tus of back­ground noise […]

14) A clas­sic is some­thing that per­sists as a back­ground noise even when the most incom­pat­i­ble momen­tary con­cerns are in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion.

In oth­er words, clas­sic lit­er­a­ture can have the salu­tary effect of tem­per­ing our high sen­si­tiv­i­ty to every break­ing piece of news and dis­tract­ing piece of triv­ia, giv­ing us the bal­last of his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive. In our cur­rent cul­ture, in which we live per­pet­u­al­ly plugged into infor­ma­tion machines that ampli­fy every sig­nal and every bit of noise, such a rem­e­dy seems indis­pens­able.

via The New York Review of Books

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ita­lo Calvi­no Read Selec­tions From Invis­i­ble Cities, Mr. Palo­mar & Oth­er Enchant­i­ng Fic­tions

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness