Hear the wind sing, Haruki Murakami

Murakami

⭐️⭐️

This word should be coined to describe a certain feeling.. like the view from the window of a moving car.. train spotting.. wallflower.. or a fly sitting observing, listening, inspecting in a non consequential way. I have read many of his books that go on and on about dysfunctional people in dysfunctional relationships. Sometimes he is a listener and sometimes a character but mostly a story teller. The characters in his books are depressed and suicidal. Probably it’s his own way of looking at them or simply the kind of characters he gets drawn to. 

This book is one of his first published works, and rightly not as mature as his famous ones. As unbelievable as it sounds, I never thought that I would ever give a Murakami book - 2 stars. It is mostly word to word description of his experiences at a bar seated at a particular corner spot, night after night. I could imagine how he aspires to be a writer and to achieve that he wants to study people and get their stories- of drunk angry men, of lonely intriguing women. The lonely guy in the bar who sits there for hours observing every incoming person and then fixates on one particular character who eventually becomes the subject and part of the conversations and proceeding storyline. Most of them come and go and some leave a small impact. And Murakami continues on his mission telling us every little thing he did, thought or saw. 

As I read or should I say listened to this book in its audiobook format, the focus was not on the words but on the narration (patchy but can’t be choosy) and how it made me feel. The odd narrator and his voice shifted my impressions of the protagonist from an aspiring author, to a harmless creep to a psychotic killer. But no one gets killed in Murakami, they just kill themselves to be free of their miserable lives. The purpose of their life alludes them and they forget to laugh or even live, until Murakami finds them and turns them into surreal subjects that we all start to romanticize. 

I wonder how all his books have people who die, are depressed or terminally ill. They also have classic English songs like California girls or Norwegian wood. And there is definitely sex, suicides and death all over. 

As a well respected author, I would have liked to meet Murakami. But I always wondered if I would then become a subject for him or he would probably just ignore me because I have no crippling sadness in me or that’s what I think and he may still find it. These are the subjects he searches for, feeling their sadness, and feeding it to us through his stories. It’s like a death eater turns author, however unlike the Harry Potter fantasy works these stories are not scary, they are just sad! 

If you wish to read, here is the link 

https://youtu.be/okUvOGXsOx0