Murakami Comes Through!

While I may have been just a little underwhelmed by A Wild Sheep Chase, I decided to add Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami to my reading list off the cuff.  Apparently this was the book that launched him to worldwide superstardom, and I now understand why.  It’s quite wonderful.  However, it’s different from all the other books by him that I’ve read in that there’s no weird supernatural stuff going on (you know, like sheep possessing people and trying to take over the world, etc.)  It’s just an old fashioned love story:  Boy meets best friend’s girlfriend.  Best friend commits suicide.  Boy and girl fall in love under the specter of best friend’s death.  Girl goes insane.

Man, I totally loved it.  Murakami writes about the dark stuff embedded in the nature of human existence – death, loneliness, alienation from society – and yet it’s so fun to read.  I don’t want to ever to run out of things to read by him.  Better start pacing myself a little better.  Norwegian Wood is now on my Murakami alter of greatness with The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark, and pretty much everything else I’ve ever read by him.

Here’s a snippet:

…I bought a newspaper at the station but when I opened it on the train, I realized I had absolutely no desire to read a paper and in fact couldn’t understand what it said.  All I could do was glare at the incomprehensible page of print and wonder what was going to happen to me from now on, and how the things around me would be changing.  I felt as if the world was pulsating every now and then.  I released a deep sigh and closed my eyes.  With regard to what I had done that day I felt not the slightest regret;  I knew for certain that if I had it to do all over again, I would live this day in exactly the same way again.

Yeah.