Norwegian Wood: Haruki Murakami
...“I grew increasingly unsure that the events of that night had actually happened. If I told myself they were real, I believed they were real, and if I told myself they were a fantasy, they seemed like a fantasy. They were too clear and detailed to have been real: Naoko’s body and the moonlight.”...
“Norwegian Wood” explores the loneliness of a modern Japanese society. The story is about a young college going kid, Watanabe and his relationships with two very different women - Naoko (beautiful but troubled) and Midori (less elegant but lively, outgoing). In spite of such a sad storyline, the story is about optimism, moving on from your past grief and carrying on with the business of life. The storyline is set in the late 1960s, a decade of historical significance, as it led to the foundation of many themes found in our modern society - weakening of leftism, free spirit hippies, rebellion against the establishment, lack of meaningful anchors in life and advent of new age ideas around freedom and capitalism. Haruki also seems to be a big fan of the Beatles as the title of this book picked from one of their famous songs from the 1960's. This was his first novel that he wrote and brought him his fame and glory which he hated. The book explores nuanced aspects of many shades of love, women, relationships and sexuality. The characters are flawed and troubled. Reflects on modern Japanese society with relatively higher suicide rates driven out of loneliness and depression that the theme attracts many of Japanese contemporary writers.
We live most of our lives with a constant dialog going on in our mind as if two unique individuals talking to each other non stop. Haruki takes this dialog and brings it out in the open through his characters. Haruki talks directly to you through the protagonist in the book. He talks about you through his other characters centered around the protagonist. And then he talks through you to the outside world. He writes what you may have already thought and observed at a random point in your own life. Most of these moments and observations are quite useless. But then he brings them out in the front bare and naked, a bit spooky as it forces you to think about the meaningless of many of your own actions and thoughts. Subtle way of bringing philosophy and the meaningless of life through his books. Most readers of his books identify with this theme. One writer inciting the same thought in millions of his readers, guess such is the power of deep thinking and beautiful writing. Having the ability to speak the same language, spoken or unspoken, that your loved ones talk in.
