Kafka on the Shore | Haruki Murakami | Weird is what you pay for...

Kafka on the Shore | Haruki Murakami | hypnotic

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Kafka on the Shore

	Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami Vintage, 2006 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 181 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.

As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder. Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world?s great storytellers at the peak of his powers.

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Weird is what you pay for...

... and weird is what you get, with Haruki Murakami. But this novel is not merely full-blown weird; it' s about the meaning of Weird, not just in the modern sense of 'bizarre' but in the root sense also. 'Weird' is an Old Norse word meaning something like "the uncanny ability to influence Fate." The root of the word "will" has the opposite meaning: "the canny ability to resist Fate." While I doubt that Murakami had any reference to old Norse cosmogony in mind, this novel Kafka on the Shore can be read as a contest between Weird and Will, as they relate to Fate.

But don't think it's not 'weird' in the contemporary sense also! Any novel where cats talk, ghosts co-exist with their living personae, and Colonel Sanders and Johnny Walker make appearances in odd corners of Japan has to be accepted as bona fide weird. What saves Kafka on the Shore from mere literary contrivance is the sense one has that all this weirdness is integral to Murakami's mentality, that he's not just trying to diddle the reader's weirdness tastebuds but that he has genuinely weird but pertinent perceptions to report.

Murakami fits into a tradition of phantasmagorical writing in Japanese. His obvious literary forefather is Soseki Natsume, author of "I Am a Cat." In fact, Kafka spends several afternoons reading Soseki Natsume, as well as Tanizaki and Lady Murasaki, during the course of the novel. I suppose this notion of Murakami as part of a specifically Japanese literary tradition is utterly insignificant to English readers, but it does matter to anyone who wants to get to the core of Murakami's sensibilities. Like Yukio Mishima, Muarakami seems curiously unskillful at elements of Japanese literary style; his vocabulary of kanji (Chinese pictographic characters) seems spotty, while his inclusion of 'outside' words will strike Japanese readers as impure. The English translation conveys some of this stylistic awkwardness by its choice of odd American slang to express items that are squarely Japanese.

In the end, I read novels chiefly for diversion. For enjoyment. Don't you? I found this freakish novel quite diverting. Engrossing. I could hardly put it down to fall asleep at night. Whatever you might make of its content, you'll find yourself dragged into its weird unreality.

[Postscript, two days later: If you are the kind of reader that judges a book by its ending, you'd better knock two stars off my rating of Kafka on the Shore. The last 30 pages of the book are utterly unworthy of the imagination that created the earlier scenes. But you might say the same thing about the endings of almost every Dickens novel.]

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hypnotic

Kafka on the Shore is a dream voyage to another land that is nevertheless familiar. It is gentle, violent, abrupt and entrancing. Murakami's worlds take you through the Looking Glass. Sometimes, the world you enter seems strange, disconnected and totally unrelated. But at other times, you feel like you've been offered a glimpse of your personal space of awareness that is typically hidden, but now, suddenly revealed. This novel feels like an invitation to revelation and the unknown. It is brisk, awakening, and warm. Totally unique.

Great fiction from a master of the surreal

'Kafka on the Shore' is yet another great Murakami novel. I'd say people will either love it or find it annoying depending on what's their take on Murakami's highly recognizable style: first of all, Murakami writes surreal fiction, being often tagged as the literary equivalent of David Lynch. Not everyhting makes senses, many things are left unexplained and there are always passages that are more 'atmospheric' than related to an actual plot.
Secondly, there is always a great deal of (quintessentially japanese) orderileness in the way most characters behave. The way they prepare their lunch, pack their goods before leaving to somewhere...it is always described in a very methodical way which I find profoundly soothing. So you get this contrast between the surreal vibe of the narration and the extremely composed way most characters go through their daily routines. In this novel, this is best exemplified by Nakata, an old man who can prophesy the future and do extraordinary things but leads an otherwise simple and unassuming life.

'Kafka on the shore' presents two main storylines, narrated in alternating chapters and somehow joining around the end: one chronicles the oedipal quest of a 15-years old runaway, who might have killed his father and slept with both his mother and sister. All of this is left unclear. Is it real? is it a make-believ fantasy? Is 'the boy named Crow' Kafka's superego or something else entirely? Don't look for answers because you won't find any, just like in a Lynch's movie, everyhting is alternatively dreamy or eerie with the contours always blurry.
The second storyline follows Mr. Nakata (actually everything begins with some X-files from the Second World War...), victim of a mysterious accident who left him 'not really bright'. This man, accompanied in his odissey by a drop-out trucker, doesn't know much about what he's doing, but is pushed forward in his travels by a mysterious force, amidst magic entrance stones, entities who take the form of several famous advertising characters, talking cats and leeches raining from the sky.

All in all, Murakami is an acquired taste and, as such, may well polarize judgments but if you care for imaginative fiction and can accept a storyline that doesn't explain everyhting, then this novel is definitely a must.

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yes to Kafka

Many thought provoking references and as much symbology. A little transparent but exciting and enjoyable.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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