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Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. HTML:NATIONAL BESTSELLER In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels�Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973�that launched the career of one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age�the unnamed narrator and his friend the Rat�are stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism. They bear all the hallmarks of Murakami�s later books, and form the first two-thirds, with A Wild Sheep Chase, of the trilogy of the Rat. Widely available in English for the first time ever, newly translated, and featuring a new introduction by Murakami himself, Wind/Pinball gives us a fascinating insight into a great writer�s beginnings.… (more)
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This description of how he began writing his first novel may help explain why Murakami's books connect so well with Western readers. Murakami's introduction to this book is fascinating, giving much more detail than before about the improbable events that led him to be an internationally successful author. Out of college he "hated the idea of working for a company", and he and his wife instead started a jazz bar, where they worked long hours but got to play their favorite music. (Murakami readers know the importance of music in his novels). His calling as an author came out of the sky at a baseball game (beautifully described). Other events of "synchronicity or some sort of divine intervention" contributed.
It has taken a long, long time for these first two short novels of his to be translated into English (by Ted Goosen) and receive mainstream publication in English-speaking countries. (Apparently there was a small, difficult to obtain English version many years ago). Up until now, Murakami reportedly thought their quality didn't warrant Western publication. As he says in the introduction, while these two early books are "irreplaceable, like friends from long ago", he considered A Wild Sheep Chase to be "the true beginning of his career as a novelist." For the reader, it's somewhat hard to understand his previous resistance; Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973, combined in Wind/Pinball, are definitely worthy and enjoyable novels, and even provide a good entry point to his body of work.
The protagonist of both is unnamed, and his friend is called the Rat. Readers of A Wild Sheep Chase will recall the Rat, and AWSC actually is the third (after these two) of what has been called "The Rat Trilogy."
In "Wind" the music-loving protagonist hangs out at J's Bar and talks with the Rat about past romances, while developing a relationship with a nine-fingered woman who at first mistakes him for a criminal. Not a lot happens, but Murakami's "free movement" in his writing, as described in the introduction, is combined with his characteristic digressions into strange trivia and a haunting tone of isolation. Pinball is more developed. The same protagonist has started a translation company with a friend, and is shacked up with a pair of amiable twins who have moved into his apartment. While at J's Bar, he is extremely successful playing a pinball game called Spaceship, with the relationship becoming almost romantic. When the bar is sold and the game (one of only 3 in Japan) disappears, he becomes obsessed with finding it. What's so important about pinball?
"{P}inball leads nowhere. . . . Replay, replay, replay - it makes you think the whole aim of the game is to achieve a form of eternity.
We know very little about eternity, although we can infer its existence.
The goal of pinball is self-transformation, not self-expression. It involves not the expansion of the ego, but its diminution. Not analysis but all-embracing acceptance.
If it's self-expression, ego expansion, or analysis you're after, the tilt light will exact its unsparing revenge.
Have a nice game!"
There are classic Murakami interweavings of the surreal, including at one point a realistic conversation with the Spaceship game, odd details like the nine fingers and the cheerful twins, and familiar weighted images that will bring a smile to readers of his other books, e.g. "Nothing is more soothing than hearing that small splash rising from the bottom of a deep well." Fans and newbies alike should enjoy these short works, and I'm glad they finally got published here.
Would I recommend this as a starting point for people who've never read Murakami? Definitely not. But for those who've already fallen in love with him, it's like looking back at your beau's high school portrait and seeing him for the little naive, innocent, dork he was but through the blur of already loving the man he is today. It's sweet and lovely and endearing. At least it was for me.
One practice Murakami described which I thought a fascinating idea was his writing a first draft in English, a language foreign to him, and then translating it into his native Japanese. His logic for doing this was that he would be writing with a limited vocabulary so that when he translated his words back into Japanese the resultant text would be free of any extraneous detours or embellishments that one might be prone to include when writing in one’s own language. He claimed this practice helped him develop his precise style of writing.
These two books work well together with Pinball being a sequel to Hear the Wind Sing.
Taking the two books as one entity the common theme is growing up, moving on, and the temporary nature of our world, the relationships, places and situations. There are two main characters who spend much time together drinking and smoking. One heads off to college and the other stays in the home town. The novels follow the life, thoughts, feelings and experiences of both.
I found the way characters in the story related to one another quite emotionless in many cases. There was an almost stoic, if not totally unemotional, acceptance of change and a reluctance, or should I say, no tendency, to become close to people, even people with whom one is spending a lot of time, even in very intimate circumstances. I find this different from my own environment, but perhaps it is a trait found in societies with a greater population density and level of mobility than one finds where I live.
These early works of Murakami’s contain many of the topics, themes and attributes found in his later stories. To name just a few one finds, wells, cats, and Japanese everyday life. The only straying into the surreal that I can recall from these two books was a reference to the perception one character had, while a passenger in a car, of the three dimensional world fading into a two dimensional world and back again. This is an illusion I have experienced myself and I believe is more to do with one’s level of tiredness rather than any dimensional shift.
I enjoyed reading these books and would recommend them to other Murakami fans, not that such a recommendation is necessary. Would I recommend them to someone who is not familiar with this author’s works? I don’t know. I like his style and his writing carries me along at a steady pace and I can relate to his digressions and detours while getting the overall sense of his message. The books are short so do not require much time commitment, but not a lot happens in them and someone new to Murakami may not be encouraged to read more of his novels on the basis of reading these two. Having said that, Hear the Wind Sing, won Murakami his first writing competition and it was his winning this competition that spurred him on to continue writing. For that, I am glad he won.
Surreal and poignant. Sensitive and charming.
I read Norwegian Wood several years ago and was left with a similar satisfaction.
Haruki Murakami is a voice that transcends generations and sex.
The two are pretty bland things, and there isn't really much I can think to say about them. Familiar elements that we see put together much better in later novels by the author. Reading these I would never have expected anything great to come later from the author. I expected to find it interesting to read these first efforts by Murakami, but when I began "Hear The Wind Sing" I thought it pretty dreadful. In fact I wasn't even sure for a number of pages that I had even started the story. It read like Murakami ruminating on writing a novel. I persisted because I wanted to read these early works, but it took more than half the story before it gained any traction, and then when it seemed to get going it was over. I wouldn't blame anyone for having bailed out on this story. It all seemed rather a pointless, a slice of time in someone's life.
Pinball started off like a pinball, banging around here and there with a bunch of nameless people and not going anywhere. It gets a little surreal and again we find the familiar elements of a Murakami story. I almost started skimming because I was bored, but I stuck with it because there are odd moments here and there that I liked. This story might have been marginally better than the first, thanks to the extra weirdness. Recommended for people who like to read about characters whose lives revolve around smoking cigs and drinking beer. To me these two stories read like a parody of Murakami. Every writer has to start somewhere. They have "Write like Bad Hemingway" contests. These would get my vote in a "Write Bad Murakami" one. I feel like I'm being very generous rating this two stars.
The forward is wonderful. In the authors own words, he
Both stories revolve around an unnamed narrator who frequents a small bar run by a Chinese man. His friend and former roommate Rat also plays a role in each story. More in the first than the second. The setting is Tokyo circa 1970's. The more intimate settings take place in the bar and the narrators home.
"Wind" was the weaker of the two stories. It was disjointed and at times difficult to follow. There didn't seem to be any clear purpose except getting pen to paper. There were glimpses of interest - a paragraph here, a sentence there and just the beauty of language which translated well from Japanese to English.
On the other hand, I loved "Pinball." The story contained better writing and there was a recognizable beginning, middle and end. The narrator lives in a small apartment with a set of twins that he is sleeping with. They provide a little comic relief throughout the book. He works with a partner translating books, essays and other written works into Japanese.
In the bar, mentioned previously, the narrator becomes enthralled with a pinball game. He gets on a kick where he plays the machine repeatedly upping his score. Mysteriously one day, the pinball machine is removed from the shop. It turns out that the Chinese man merely had the machine on a lease.
The narrator becomes almost obsessed with tracking down the machine. He goes to arcades all around Tokyo. Eventually he is introduced to an academic who is also obsessed with pinball and pinball machines. He directs the narrator to a large warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo where a collector is housing all manner of pinball machines including the one from the bar.
The writing in both is less story motivated and more about the big themes in life: loneliness, obsession, anomie and evoking emotions from the reader. I enjoyed this book but am looking forward to reading some of his more finished work.
Both stories revolve around an unnamed young man and his friend, the Rat. Both are narrated by the nameless man in the first person, but the sections about the Rat are written in third person- the two are never even in the same scene in “Pinball”. There is little plot in either tale; they are simple strings of events. In “Wind”, the narrator is home from college for the summer and hanging out with the Rat in a bar run by J; in “Pinball” the narrator has graduated and set up a translating business with a partner. He is living with a pair of mysterious twin women who just sort of show up one day, and searching for a pinball machine he played obsessively in college. “Pinball” has that touch of surrealism that Murakami does so well. The characters are drifting through life, unattached to family, mostly content to let life happen to them- even if they are unhappy with it. I don’t think these stories would be good introductions to Murakami’s work, but for a fan, they are important to read.
*”In the bottom of the first inning, Hilton slammed Sotokoba’s first pitch into left field for a clean double. The satisfying crack when the bat met the ball resounded throughout Jingu Stadium. Scattered applause rose around me. In that instant, for no reason and based on no grounds whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.” - from the introduction
This volume is
These are the first two novels/novellas written by the author, and they were supposedly penned as he sat at his kitchen table pondering the great effort it is to write one. Although separated by several
Our friend is even-tempered as he encounters and interacts with an odd assortment of characters that flit in and out of the narrative, through a revolving door which is often one way and does not return them. Only a few are recurrent and then only barely. Nothing of major import seems to ever get resolved. It is as if there is little meaning, in the end, to their lives or their interactions. Our friend has a mentor, Derek Hartfield, an author who jumped to his death from The Empire State Building, holding an umbrella in one hand and a picture of Adolph Hitler in the other. It is an unusual choice of mentor and an unusual image for the reader which foreshadows the rather inane narrative of both novellas.
In conversations between Rat and our friend, Rat talks about his fear of death. If everyone dies, eventually, he seems to feel that everything, in its own way, is futile, perhaps purposeless. Since most do not leave a permanent mark and do disappear from view, vanish not only from sight but from the memory of others, might we not all ask, “what then, is our ultimate purpose”?
Our friend, remains true to character, stays fairly quiet and neutral, emotionally, throughout both novellas, simply listening to his friends and acquaintances while neither condemning nor judging them. We learn that our friend has a brother, and both of them routinely are required to shine their father’s shoes out of respect for him, and yet, at certain times, he casually dismisses his obligation. True to form, nothing has major import as characters meander in and out of the narrative. Our friend tells about many of the unusual characters he meets. One is a young woman who has a twin. She has only 9 fingers, and that meaningless, missing body part is the only distinguishing feature that separates her from her sister. He speaks of a one time girlfriend who took her own life. Another friend died from alcohol poisoning. There is a teenage girl who speaks of being confined to a bed for the last three years, hoping for a cure for her debilitating neurological disease. Then there is the uncle who survives the war only to ironically die, after it ends, when he steps on a landmine he himself had planted. We are privy to a conversation on the radio. The MC calls our friend and informs him that a young lady wanted them to play a song for him. He remembers that he once borrowed that record from this girl, lost it and thus never returned it. He sets about trying to return a new copy to her, but even after a broad search, he is unsuccessful. This is another unfruitful moment.
There are a series of conversations which bounce around and essentially go nowhere. Profound subjects are introduced but they are all, in the end, treated in a mundane manner. Subjects like life and death, truth and deception, trust and love are introduced but barely developed. Nothing is explored very deeply. Both novellas skirt around on the surface of life and sometimes I wondered if I was missing the author’s meaning, and then I wondered if there actually was a meaning other than the ultimate meaninglessness of everything we do, especially if we have no way to leave a permanent mark.
The reader, Kirby Heyborne, reads the novellas in a deadpan voice which perfectly conveys the author’s meaning and intent, but I am afraid, much of it may have been lost on me.
But all of these pieces wouldn’t really add up to something worth anyone’s time if it were not for Murakami’s style – one that is not quite like anyone else’s. Here’s a paragraph that opens the 13th chapter of Pinball, 1973, the second novel in this collection.
“On any given day, something can come along and steal our hearts. It may be any old thing: a rosebud, a lost cap, a favorite sweater from childhood, an old Gene Pitney record. A miscellany of trivia with no home to call their own. Lingering for two or three days, that something soon disappears, returning to the darkness. There are wells, deep wells, dug in our hearts. Birds fly over them.
In the introduction to this book, Murakami describes how he wrote these two novels – his first. His initial attempt did not work, so he began writing in English. He knew the language, but did not have as robust a knowledge as one would expect necessary for writing a novel. This forced him in to a more simple style. He then translated this back to Japanese. And, with that, he found his style. He never again needed to write in English and then translate back, but he had his style– the one that captivates so many readers today.
So, one might expect that these first two novels (maybe closer to novellas, but let’s keep moving) would show the growing pains of a new author – one discovering his voice but still struggling with how to use it. (in fact, Murakami has not pushed for their release into English translations for just that reason.)
Not the case. It is all here – the voice, the characters, hints of surrealism, the style. In fact, I found these two pieces stronger than one or two of his later ones. Maybe the subsequent longer pieces allowed him to be more self-indulgent? Whatever the case, these are both very good.
Both novels cover periods in the lives of the narrator and his friend, the Rat. In the first novel, the narrator finds a girl passed out and takes her back to her room. The relationship starts poorly as she assumes he has taken advantage of her. But a few chance meetings result in a growing relationship. In Pinball, 1973, the narrator has started his own successful translation business and is now living with twins – two girls who just appeared in his life. He finds himself suddenly fascinated with one pinball machine (the basis for the quote above).
There are more plot points and “things going on” in both novels, but these are not really important. Yes, the narrative drives the stories and, without them, we might not be compelled read on. But what really makes these novels worth reading is the discussion about culture and life that surround those plots, and the revelations those discussions provide about the characters. These are people that are continually sorting out their place in life. And, while such discussions can be quickly self-indulgent and boring, that doesn’t happen. Murakami’s craftsmanship and skills bring these people to life in a way that makes the reader care for them.
There are stronger Murakami novels, but these are very good. And, if they happen to be the first you read, I don’t think you will be disappointed. They can serve as short introductions to the author or, if you are like me, they are nice pieces to add to the collection.
These are the stories of Rat and possibly of Rat's friend. I was never very sure if it wasn't just an alter ego. But in this Marukami is consistent because, as in his other books, he makes you think and pulls you in as part of the story.
Don't not read Marukami based on these two books because he has much better stories.
3 stars, as the first story Wind, isn’t too bad.
One practice Murakami described which I thought a fascinating idea was his writing a first draft in English, a language foreign to him, and then translating it into his native Japanese. His logic for doing this was that he would be writing with a limited vocabulary so that when he translated his words back into Japanese the resultant text would be free of any extraneous detours or embellishments that one might be prone to include when writing in one’s own language. He claimed this practice helped him develop his precise style of writing.
These two books work well together with Pinball being a sequel to Hear the Wind Sing.
Taking the two books as one entity the common theme is growing up, moving on, and the temporary nature of our world, the relationships, places and situations. There are two main characters who spend much time together drinking and smoking. One heads off to college and the other stays in the home town. The novels follow the life, thoughts, feelings and experiences of both.
I found the way characters in the story related to one another quite emotionless in many cases. There was an almost stoic, if not totally unemotional, acceptance of change and a reluctance, or should I say, no tendency, to become close to people, even people with whom one is spending a lot of time, even in very intimate circumstances. I find this different from my own environment, but perhaps it is a trait found in societies with a greater population density and level of mobility than one finds where I live.
These early works of Murakami’s contain many of the topics, themes and attributes found in his later stories. To name just a few one finds, wells, cats, and Japanese everyday life. The only straying into the surreal that I can recall from these two books was a reference to the perception one character had, while a passenger in a car, of the three dimensional world fading into a two dimensional world and back again. This is an illusion I have experienced myself and I believe is more to do with one’s level of tiredness rather than any dimensional shift.
I enjoyed reading these books and would recommend them to other Murakami fans, not that such a recommendation is necessary. Would I recommend them to someone who is not familiar with this author’s works? I don’t know. He is so legendary that a first work at this point may not be the best entry point. But its a strong debut and follow-up so yeah. Read it first timers.
If you are not really into Murakami, I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but if you interesting in seeing his progression as a writer, it is definitely something to consider reading.