Pulp Poem of the Week

Yamsaki Asami undid his belt,

then

plucked gently at his zipper

and

slowly pulled it down,

like

a surgeon opening an incision.

Ryu Murakami

Audition

1997

(translated by Ralph McCarthy)

Pulp Poem of the Week

Whenever the gray fog lifts for a second,

there they are:

the wall,

the tower.

They scare you stiff,

they make you mad,

but there's less than nothing

you can do about them;

and when you can't stand it any more

and the fear and rage get you moving,

get you started doing something,

there they are again, waiting for you:

the prison,

the nuthouse,

the lead box for your bones.

Ryu Murakami

Coin Locker Babies

1980

(trans. Stephen Snyder)

Book Review: Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies (1984)

Noirish psychological realism + surrealistic whimsy = tedium.
Grade: D+

Book Review: Ryu Murakami, Audition (1997)

Aoyama is a widower whose teenage son suggests that it might be time for him to remarry. When Aoyama mentions this possibility to a friend who works in in the film industry, the friend hatches a scheme to find Aoyama an attractive young wife quickly: They will launch a phony film production and will interview aspiring actresses for the nonexistent lead role. Despite his initial reservations, Ayoama goes along with this plan, succumbing to the fantasy of "himself surrounded by ten or twelve lovely, intelligent, refined young ladies." As in a traditional American noir of the 1950s, in which an ordinary guy in dire financial straits cannot resist the temptation of easy money, Aoyama has cast his lot and will face unpleasant consequences. While these American noirs are sometimes read as commentaries on the American Dream (promised to all, attainable to some), Audition seems a commentary on the situation of young women in Japan and the willingness of a decent man such as Aoyama to treat them like fruit in a supermarket. Grade: B

Book Review Revisited: Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup (1997)

I recently reread Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup, which I reviewed here in October 2008. Here is what I said in that review:

In the Miso Soup reminded me quite a bit of Gil Brewer's classic A Killer Is Loose (1954). Both books are narrated by an Ordinary Guy whose fate becomes entangled with that of a Roaming Homicidal Maniac. Both Brewer and Ryu Murkami invite readers to partcipate in Ordinary Guy's attempts to make sense of Roaming Homicidal Maniac, though in the case of Murakami, there is just as much time spent with Roaming Homicidal Maniac trying to make sense of himself. And this leads to my major complaint about In the Miso Soup: I have no problem in theory with books that become increasingly ponderous as they progress, but in this case that pondorousness comes at the expense of nearly everything else. The climax of the novel, such as it is, consists of Roaming Homicidal Maniac blathering on about his life story for 25 pages or so. And that's not much of a climax. Grade: C+

The occasion for my second reading was teaching the novel in a class on American and Japanese noir. Though I think this novel is far from perfect (obviously, given my original review), it nevertheless did seem perfect for this course, which is, in part, an examination of the congruences and differences between American and Japanese cultures, as seen through the lens of noir. In the Miso Soup seemed ideal for this purpose because the novel's Roaming Homicidal Maniac is an American who is (literally) cutting a swath through Tokyo, and the cultural issues raised by an American serial killer in Japan are never far from the forefront of the narrative.

On the whole, my second reading of the novel deepened my appreciation of Murakami's work, as sometimes happens when I have to reread a novel and think about it for the first time as a teacher. Ironically, this is the opposite experience from that which students have traditionally reported in English classes down through the ages: "I liked reading the book, but then when we had to sit in class and analyze it, that just ruined it for me." Responses like this tend to be driven by two factors: (1) bad teachers and (2) students who prefer not to think about what they read. Regarding the second, such students tend to resent even more strongly being made to think about movies, which to them can be sacrosanct to the point that analysis seems a betrayal of the spirit and purpose of filmmaking. ("Why are we trying to find things in movies that aren't really there? Movies are just made for entertainment!") In any case, I hope that I'm managing at least not to ruin anything for my students. In the case of Murakami, Japanese culture is just alien enough to them that the act of analysis perhaps seems worthwhile. Whether I ruined Charles Williams for them, though, is another matter entirely. . . .

Book Review: Ryu Murakami, Piercing (1997)

Spoiler alert: The following review does not tell how Piercing ends, but it may tell more about the set-up for the ending than you want to know.

Kawashima Masayuki is, without a doubt, mentally ill. He stands above the crib of his baby girl each night brandishing an ice pick, telling himself that no, of course not, he would never stab her with it. But he soon realizes that he must stab someone with an ice pick, and, as long as he's at it, he really wants to know what it sounds like when you cut someone's Achilles tendons. Thus, he sets out to find someone to torture and kill. To this point, Piercing is engrossing and disturbing. Once Masayuki finds his victim, however, the book falls apart for the simple reason that she turns out to be mentally ill, too. In the context of his family, Masayuki was an interesting and frightening character: Will he stab his daughter? Is his wife any danger? Why can his wife not see that Masayuki is deeply disturbed? But when Masayuki's wife and daughter are replaced by a woman who may be as disturbed as he is, the situation becomes oddly boring. We might as well be watching two asylum inmates in a padded room together, as their actions no longer seem to have any relationship to the real world. Grade C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

The ghosts

of sad, cheap souls

live on

in sad, cheap furniture.

Ryu Murakami

In the Miso Soup

1997

(translated by Ralph McCarthy)

Book Review: Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup (1997)

In the Miso Soup reminded me quite a bit of Gil Brewer's classic A Killer Is Loose (1954). Both books are narrated by an Ordinary Guy whose fate becomes entangled with that of a Roaming Homicidal Maniac. Both Brewer and Ryu Murkami invite readers to partcipate in Ordinary Guy's attempts to make sense of Roaming Homicidal Maniac, though in the case of Murakami, there is just as much time spent with Roaming Homicidal Maniac trying to make sense of himself. And this leads to my major complaint about In the Miso Soup: I have no problem in theory with books that become increasingly ponderous as they progress, but in this case that pondorousness comes at the expense of nearly everything else. The climax of the novel, such as it is, consists of Roaming Homicidal Maniac blathering on about his life story for 25 pages or so. And that's not much of a climax. Grade: C+