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Haruki Murakami: Kafka On The Shore
- Thread starter jct07042
- Start date
beer good
Well-Known Member
A teenager, a little too caught up in himself as teenagers tend to be, runs away from home. A confused old man commits a murder (maybe). An aging woman writes down her memoirs in a library where time seems to stand still.
Kafka on the Shore is a fascinating book that's difficult to pin down; like the cats that keep appearing throughout, it doesn't seem to have a fixed structure (ever try to hold on to a cat that doesn't want to be held?) and doesn't give up all its secrets. This is the sort of story I keep hoping for and so far have never gotten out of Canongate's myth project; while it's heavily intertextual, referencing and building on both ancient myths (Theseus, Orpheus, Oedipus), newer literature (Kafka, Conrad, Eliot, Salinger), music, corporate logos... it's often so overtly metaphorical that it even has the characters point out that life is just a metaphor. It mixes in ingredients from fantasy and science fiction (UFOs, gateways to alternate realities, interspecies communication) and, come to think of it, pretty much follow's Campbell's The Hero's Journey almost perfectly. It's built on myths, on things that have come before, on things that have been proven to have universal relevance.
And yet at the same time, it's such a unique and beautifully told story. It takes a handful of outsider characters and makes them come alive when they run into each other. Kafka, the 15-year-old runaway; Oshima, the hermaphrodite forever trapped in between; Nakata, the old and slightly backwards man who cannot read or even remember his own past; Hoshino, the young lorry driver with no fixed point in life; and Saeki, the middle-age woman who might just be the central character here. Their stories slowly weave together while at the same time unravelling... not their pasts as much as what MAKES a past, the experiences and memories that make us human and make us relate to others. Having only read one of Murakami's fictional works before - Norwegian Wood - I get the feeling that this is sort of a central pillar of his storytelling; we are the result of what we experience, but also of what we make of those experiences.
There's one conversation in the book where one of the characters talks about a piece of music by Schubert, saying that the problem with it is that the piece as it's written is flawed - or rather, quite simply boring. And being a finished composition, the structure is already there and can't be ignored if you want to play it. The challenge to the musician playing it, therefore, is to put his or her own spin on it and MAKE it interesting. Somehow I don't think he's just talking about music.
It's lyrical, enigmatic, and still somehow strikingly straight-forward at times. This is only the third Murakami I've read, but the first two have remained with me for years and I've no doubt this one will as well. 4.5/5.
Kafka on the Shore is a fascinating book that's difficult to pin down; like the cats that keep appearing throughout, it doesn't seem to have a fixed structure (ever try to hold on to a cat that doesn't want to be held?) and doesn't give up all its secrets. This is the sort of story I keep hoping for and so far have never gotten out of Canongate's myth project; while it's heavily intertextual, referencing and building on both ancient myths (Theseus, Orpheus, Oedipus), newer literature (Kafka, Conrad, Eliot, Salinger), music, corporate logos... it's often so overtly metaphorical that it even has the characters point out that life is just a metaphor. It mixes in ingredients from fantasy and science fiction (UFOs, gateways to alternate realities, interspecies communication) and, come to think of it, pretty much follow's Campbell's The Hero's Journey almost perfectly. It's built on myths, on things that have come before, on things that have been proven to have universal relevance.
And yet at the same time, it's such a unique and beautifully told story. It takes a handful of outsider characters and makes them come alive when they run into each other. Kafka, the 15-year-old runaway; Oshima, the hermaphrodite forever trapped in between; Nakata, the old and slightly backwards man who cannot read or even remember his own past; Hoshino, the young lorry driver with no fixed point in life; and Saeki, the middle-age woman who might just be the central character here. Their stories slowly weave together while at the same time unravelling... not their pasts as much as what MAKES a past, the experiences and memories that make us human and make us relate to others. Having only read one of Murakami's fictional works before - Norwegian Wood - I get the feeling that this is sort of a central pillar of his storytelling; we are the result of what we experience, but also of what we make of those experiences.
There's one conversation in the book where one of the characters talks about a piece of music by Schubert, saying that the problem with it is that the piece as it's written is flawed - or rather, quite simply boring. And being a finished composition, the structure is already there and can't be ignored if you want to play it. The challenge to the musician playing it, therefore, is to put his or her own spin on it and MAKE it interesting. Somehow I don't think he's just talking about music.
It's lyrical, enigmatic, and still somehow strikingly straight-forward at times. This is only the third Murakami I've read, but the first two have remained with me for years and I've no doubt this one will as well. 4.5/5.
The waveguide
Member
Beer Good,
I always like to read your book reviews! Till now, I read some of the books that you have reviewed here, and it hadn't been a mistake.
Thanks a lot!
I always like to read your book reviews! Till now, I read some of the books that you have reviewed here, and it hadn't been a mistake.
Thanks a lot!
beer good
Well-Known Member
I've read Norwegian Wood and Underground. I'm planning to pick up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle pretty soon too.
tjaa
New Member
I read Kafka on the Shore in German and I loved it. That was my second book by Haruki Murakami and he became my favorite author. It's hard to describe what happens in the book, you just have to read it.
Books by Murakmi I've read are Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, Sputnik Sweetheart, Gefährliche Geliebte (don't know the exact title in English) and short stories ("Wie ich eines schönen Morgens im April das 100%ige Mädchen sah") and I liked them all really much.
Books by Murakmi I've read are Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, Sputnik Sweetheart, Gefährliche Geliebte (don't know the exact title in English) and short stories ("Wie ich eines schönen Morgens im April das 100%ige Mädchen sah") and I liked them all really much.
Westofthesun43
New Member
Murakami is one of my all-time favorite writers. Kafka on the Shore is the first book I ever read by him, and I became hooked on his writing style. I've read KotS three times, and I've also read Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, South of the Border West of the Sun, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by him. Anyone debating whether or not to read KotS, I suggest that you do...he's an absolute genius.
My take on it – hopefully not too repetitive of Beer Good's excellent review:
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
When 15-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from his Tokyo home, he’s not only running away from his father, but from his own doubts and self loathing.
Not only has the father cursed the son, but Kafka retains the nagging belief that his mother, in leaving with his sister when he was just four, didn't love him and abandoned him.
Nakata is an elderly man who was turned from a bright pupil to a simple-minded illiterate by an inexplicable childhood incident during WWII. But he has a special talent – the ability to talk to cats. However, when he loses that ability, Nakata – like Kafka – has to start a journey.
Two central protagonists, two odysseys and an array of fantastical events and subsidiary characters fill Haruki Murakami's novel. This is magical realism with dollops of philosophy (a Hegel-explaining prostitute is just one memorable invention) and cultural references creating an intertextural maze.
But for all that, it's a remarkably easy book to read – even a light read. Or at least it feels that way. Murakami tells a cracking story, which drives you on, only later leaving you tinking about the countless unanswered questions and ideas that the idea throws out.
The nature of memory is explored here – is it negative or positive? The nature of love, of relationships; the link between emotional pain and pleasure. Connections are important – and a sense of yin and yang (to borrow from Chinese philosophy); you need both the pain and the pleasure, both the negative and the positive to attain completeness.
There's sex, there's violence and the very nature of what makes us human.
Murakami himself has said of the book: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction, the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader."
In other words, it becomes a mirror held up to the life of the reader: what it divulges depends, in part at least, on the experiences of the individual holding the book.
There are unanswered questions in the novel that don't feel answerable in this way – not least the entire issue surrounding the Johnnie Walker character: why?
But I can't remember a book that has driven me to finish it in such a way. And I cannot remember such an intensely emotional response to characters and their respective fates as with this book. Extraordinary.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
When 15-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from his Tokyo home, he’s not only running away from his father, but from his own doubts and self loathing.
Not only has the father cursed the son, but Kafka retains the nagging belief that his mother, in leaving with his sister when he was just four, didn't love him and abandoned him.
Nakata is an elderly man who was turned from a bright pupil to a simple-minded illiterate by an inexplicable childhood incident during WWII. But he has a special talent – the ability to talk to cats. However, when he loses that ability, Nakata – like Kafka – has to start a journey.
Two central protagonists, two odysseys and an array of fantastical events and subsidiary characters fill Haruki Murakami's novel. This is magical realism with dollops of philosophy (a Hegel-explaining prostitute is just one memorable invention) and cultural references creating an intertextural maze.
But for all that, it's a remarkably easy book to read – even a light read. Or at least it feels that way. Murakami tells a cracking story, which drives you on, only later leaving you tinking about the countless unanswered questions and ideas that the idea throws out.
The nature of memory is explored here – is it negative or positive? The nature of love, of relationships; the link between emotional pain and pleasure. Connections are important – and a sense of yin and yang (to borrow from Chinese philosophy); you need both the pain and the pleasure, both the negative and the positive to attain completeness.
There's sex, there's violence and the very nature of what makes us human.
Murakami himself has said of the book: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction, the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader."
In other words, it becomes a mirror held up to the life of the reader: what it divulges depends, in part at least, on the experiences of the individual holding the book.
There are unanswered questions in the novel that don't feel answerable in this way – not least the entire issue surrounding the Johnnie Walker character: why?
But I can't remember a book that has driven me to finish it in such a way. And I cannot remember such an intensely emotional response to characters and their respective fates as with this book. Extraordinary.
Aicha
New Member
Though The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was my introduction to Murakami, I found it a little stiff and left me feeling lonely. I didn't like the characters in Wind up especially the Kano sisters, nutmeg, that old guy with the long-ass letter, or even the kidnapped wife. The mood was melancholic in Wind up. But I found Kafka on the Shore not so, it's a lot more vibrant and the adventure of Kafka running away and doing what he can to not become confused about his feelings and that kind of 'destiny' that was set for him. The other characters thrown in the mix like Nakata and his cats are absolutely adorable and endearing, though their story might be a bit dark and scary when Johnnie Walker came into the picture. I like how the riddles there have no answers, and as of now I'm confused to the relationship between Kafka and Nakata. But it's a happy kind of confused, morelike a mild puzzlement.
I've read A Wild Sheep Chase as well and I find it funny and engrossing. The twist there made me go "hwaaat??" and I had mixed feelings about it. But the characters were again, awesome and the storytelling was superb. I got a list of quotes from the book that I scribbled in a notebook somewhere.
I'm reading Norwegian Wood right now, and so far, it might top the other Murakami that I've read. It's so dear to read about Midori.
I've read A Wild Sheep Chase as well and I find it funny and engrossing. The twist there made me go "hwaaat??" and I had mixed feelings about it. But the characters were again, awesome and the storytelling was superb. I got a list of quotes from the book that I scribbled in a notebook somewhere.
I'm reading Norwegian Wood right now, and so far, it might top the other Murakami that I've read. It's so dear to read about Midori.