Book Review - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami

The next time you visit an art gallery, try visiting the abstract arts section. Or, much easier, perform a Google search for the works of painters like Markus Rothko or Jackson Pollock. You will then be gazing at paintings that will be in stark contrast to those of Raphael, Michelangelo or Da Vinci. While the Renaissance masters garnered glory by creating works that were more lifelike, the kinds of Rothko and Pollock shunned realistic representation in favour of abstraction. In other words, they didn’t show you what they wanted to ‘show’, choosing instead to make you ‘feel’ whatever it was that they felt while they created their works of art. For a mind that is capable of correctly discerning and absorbing those ideas, the paintings feel like sheer genius. For the lesser mortals, however, their paintings will appear to be mere lozenges of colours and dribbles of paint.

It is the same with the authors too. Some of them portray an idea, in the usual flow of a beginning, middle and the end, whereas some others merely let their brushes - or pens, in our case - dab a line here, smear some colour there and make a few random streaks across the canvas. It is for the discerning readers to identify the ideas and plot lines to relish the story. However, not all of us emerge successful in reading such books and not all the authors create such works of mastery.

I have quite often come across the name of Haruki Murakami in the bookshops and the web. What really kindled my interest in his works was how he was recommended to me as an author capable of portraying surreal experiences and mystical experiences. So, when the book arrived, I held and opened it with almost a sense of reverence. However, like every high expectation, mine fell flat on its face too.

Of course, I am not here to completely write him off as a merely hyped up author. I liked the stories - some of them - for their ability to penetrate deep into the reader’s hearts, tug some of their strings, stir up a sense of nostalgia and leave some sharp pangs as they ended. Stories like ‘Birthday Girl’, ‘The Mirror’, ‘Nausea 1979’, ‘Hanalei Bay’, add a sense of mystery, while tales like ‘’The Seventh Man’, ‘Tony Takitani’, ‘Firefly’ wring the heart with poignant depictions of love and loss. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories. On the other hand, there were stories like ‘Dabchick’, ‘Crabs’ and ‘A Perfect Day for Kangaroos’ which made me wonder as to why did even bother picking this book in the first place. From start to end, these tales made little or no sense whatsoever. In fact, they made reading a drab.

I picked this book also hoping that I would be able to have a peek at the Japanese culture. Apart from haikus, I have no acquaintance whatsoever with the Japanese literary world. But there was next to nothing that could have made me feel that if I was reading anything unique. The routine references to drinking, unapologetic portrayals of adultery, constant references to the Jazz circle, all made me feel as if I was stuck with the work of a Paulo Coelho or even one of those wannabe’ NRI writers. May be I am not doing justice to the author by expecting too much, but reading all these stories at once, I felt as if the writing had a kind of dull, routine style.

I am not trying to brush this book off as a complete loss though. I really liked a lot of those stories for the sense of magical aura, their deep emotional quotient, a sense of nostalgia that they stoke within and the flowing style. However, some of them really made no sense and sounded more like garble. And, that leaves me with mixed emotions. Should I be reading more Murakami? I am not sure. May be Murakami isn’t for me!