Sipped Ink vol 2 issue 2

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle pp71-140

First order of business: an apology. Last week’s newsletter was late arriving with you despite being sent on time on Sunday morning. As I hit send I immediately got a message saying TinyLetter (the service I’m using to send these things) had flagged the newsletter for possible abuse, and that it would be reviewed. I became pretty much convinced this was because it contained a reference to rape, and that that word had triggered alarm bells at TinyLetter HQ. As it turned out the delay was caused by the fact it contained a link that TinyLetter considered a little sketchy; this was to a Murakami-themed haiku generator - hardly important stuff, and I’ve since reposted the link on Twitter if you’re interested. Anyway, sorry for the delay and I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

So, we’re two weeks in, and just getting into the swing of things. Which means everyone still has plenty of energy and is still enjoying this whole project that they voluntarily signed up for. I mean, generally speaking - there are always outliers, such as this message I received from Sarah:

“One week and 68 pages in, I wish he’d hurry up and find that bloody cat.”

Getting that one day and the next day reading Creta Kano saying “To tell you the truth, my sister says this will be a longer story than it seemed at first” (85) really made me smile. Strap in people, we’re just getting started.

How do you like it so far? Particularly after the week just passed I’m thinking maybe I should have put a trigger warning or two in front of this thing: themes of sexual abuse, graphic wartime violence, rampant baldness, familial post-mortem garment onanism… Would you like to have been warned? Would I be speaking to fewer of you now if you’d known what you were in for? Hold on tight - as I’ve been mentioning to certain of you this week there’s a notoriously harrowing passage somewhere in the dark heart of this thing. But we’ll all make it through as long as we stick together. I’d love to be able to warn you when it’s coming up, but I last read this novel more than 15 years ago and though that part left a scar I don’t remember whether it’s on the horizon this week or a month from now. Sorry.

Following Michael’s lead from last week I gulped down an Akutagawa short story on a train journey: not ‘The Life of a Stupid Man’ (though that’s next) but the supremely odd and very entertaining ‘In a Bamboo Grove’ - a murder mystery told via the separate testimonies of witnesses, police, relatives, the alleged killer, and even the ghost of the victim. It’s smart, funny, and laced with a couple of Murakami-ish details. I’m excited to take a look at some more this week. (Thanks Michael for the tip!)

OK, what’s been going on:

• Helene recently posted my favourite of her photo series so far, keep those coming.

• Simon wrote me with some thoughts on how affecting Murakami’s writing can be:

My interest in Japan predated Murakami, but Murakami turned it into something more obsessive, resulting in a three week visit last autumn. I’ve always loved the more “mundane” aspects of his novels — food preparation being a particular favourite — I was pretty tempted at 10.00pm last night to get up and recreate that sandwich on page 32. And, I don’t know if this says something about me, or the writing, but everytime, without fail, his narrator describes drinking a beer, I want one! I also love the descriptions of his day to day surroundings… one of the pleasures of a few days in Tokyo was walking around some of the type of neighbourhoods Toru Okada inhabits, and they felt SO familiar.

• Michael sent another postcard, which has an apt front image, and some thoughts on the back that echo my own and maybe most of ours’(?).

Though Michael is feeling more charitable I’m still not convinced Toru isn’t a weak-willed sort. Compare Michael’s conception of Toru as ‘[a man who] for the best part allows life to happen to him’ with Toru’s criticism of Noburu Wataya:

[I]f you paid close attention to what he was saying, or what he had written, you knew that his words lacked consistency. They reflected no single worldview based on profound conviction. His was a world that he had fabricated by combining several one-dimensional systems of thought. (75)

In the latter the lack of conviction is a criticism, in the former perhaps a redeeming feature. That’s quite possible, of course, since Wataya’s motivations are seemingly more sinister than Toru’s comparative haplessness. There’s room for both, as there’s room for us to be wrong about both.

Perhaps the most prominent recurrent element that I’ve noticed this week has been relationships between space and emotional wellbeing. Take May’s pondering what it would be like to die in a confined space:

You’re trapped in the dark all alone, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and little by little you die… (113)

And also Creta Kano talking about her freedom from pain, and her experience of sex work, in terms of depth and distance:

I was enveloped in numbness, an absence of feeling so deep the bottom was lost from view. (97)

between myself and the body I saw [in the mirror], I felt a long, terrible distance. (99)

What are we to make of these two ruminations? That the mind and the being needs space, but that too much distance can be damaging? Perhaps there’s a kind of Goldilocks optimal zone where things are in balance. There’s maybe a hint of this too in terms of what maybe counts as the novel’s inciting incident (or at least its essential circumstance): Toru Okada having too much time on his hands (too much space) and not knowing how to fill it.

If we wanted to make this argument it’s also supported by a passage from Mamiya’s recollection, which more or less ends the week’s reading:

Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly becoming unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one’s own being. […] The mind swells out to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. (138-9)

Your thoughts on this and everything else to me by whatever means you so choose. Do you think Noboru Wataya has a bad rap? Which is your favourite Kano sister? Have you categorised all of your nearest and dearest into hair-loss categories? Also, someone has to make that sandwich from page 32 and send me a photo.

I’ll finish with just a little note on the weird world of this novel. I chuckled at the moment (on page 116-7) when Toru is discussing the abandoned house with his uncle:

‘I looked into that house when I bought mine. There’s something wrong with it.’

‘You mean like ghosts?’

Only in a certain kind of novel does the protagonist assume his uncle’s talking about spirits rather than asbestos or dry-rot. That’s the novel we’re walking through friends, keep your wits about you.

There we go. Week 2 is in the books. Enjoy the week that lies ahead and remember to try and go up when you’re supposed to, down when you’re supposed to, and stay still when you’re not supposed to do either.

Peace.