Sipped Ink vol 2 issue 5

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle pp281-350

Phew. As I write this it’s raining, which is my strong preference over long days of oppressive heat. The price, however, was a storm on Friday night that woke me up with the loudest crash of thunder I’ve ever witnessed and simultaneously fried my internet.

It’s weird not having internet. It’s kind of like being sat at the bottom of a well, and all you can see of the world is a half-moon of sky. You can get some thinking done, maybe, but it’s not good for writing newsletters. For instance, all that stuff where I usually tell you all about some funny tweets that members of our little community did, or photos they posted… I can’t do any of that. I could give it a shot, but it would probably turn out like this:

• If I remember correctly Michael & Simon were building some kind of playlist for the novel, which seems like a good idea, and as and when I have access to the web again maybe I’ll even make a version to listen to, though I vaguely recall that one of the songs was by some terrible 80s pop outfit like Wham or something. Why would that be the case? Perhaps it’s a figment of my imagination.

• I also vaguely remember Alison wondering aloud whether Crete was a good choice of destination to which to flee given the current economic situation. That led to me considering for a while what time period the novel is set in, and scanning back through it in my mind remembering no mention of the internet and also remembering that Toru plays music from tape, and then recalling that the novel was published in 1997 so of course there’s no mention of the internet you idiot and also each section literally states the dates in which the novel takes place between 1984 and 1985.

This week it felt to me that Murakami took the themes he’d been building and tangled them all up like so much spaghetti. The through-line, perhaps, is the concept of duality, which has been central to the novel for some time now. We’ve seen the author emphasise the expanse of sky from the bottom of a well, describe the way in which burning light moves into total darkness, and also interrogate the line between reality and unreality and how it becomes blurred.

Let’s start there. After his experience in the well Toru comes away with a mark on his face, which he comes to think of as a way of the world proving that his dream-like experience down there was real (287). As we reach the heart of the novel, Toru makes some very apposite statements, equally applicable to both his lived experience and our reading experience:

The wall separating the two regions has begun to melt. In my memory, at least, the real and the unreal seemed to be residing together with equal weight and vividness. (293)

[R]eality was changing its direction somewhat, the way a huge passenger ship lumbers into a new course. (309)

These, in a way, can be read as defining statements of Murakami’s oeuvre; it is the author’s specialism to overlay reality and unreality. It is often said of Stephen King and Stephen Spielberg both that their modus operandi is the placing of normal people in extraordinary circumstances. Certainly Murakami derives some of the same sort of pleasure from watching his characters react to the altered world in which they find themselves. It feels to me, however, that the starting point is a little different. Is the fact that when we first meet him Toru Okada is a man making spaghetti and who has lost his cat, enough to convince us of his baseline normality?

When May describes Toru to himself as “such a supernormal guy, but you do such unnormal things” (324), do we agree with her? To what extent is Toru Okada defined by his actions, and if they are ‘unnormal’ is that not also true of him? Is Toru Okada a Spielbergian everyman trapped in odd circumstances, or does some of the unreality flow from him as well as to him?

In either case, he deserves some credit for the adaptation he has shown to his increasingly odd circumstances. We have known Toru from the outset to be a methodical man led primarily by reason, and yet on page 296 we find him in conversation with Creta Kano stating that a line of reasoning “may be logically consistent but it’s not getting us anywhere”. Toru has opened himself enough to allow for the possibility of other modes of thinking and being, or else he has come to understand himself and his world in a new way. He has perhaps heeded Malta Kano’s advice that it is no good thing to simply fall into believing that a mirror contains a true depiction of the self or the world. ”To know one’s own state is not a simple matter”, she tells him on page 282, stating another of the novel’s primary threads.

The variations on this theme, uttered by different characters, have become almost too numerous to list, but one example from Creta Kano this week I found particularly poetically stated: ‘My unfeeling flesh was not my flesh.’ (298)

And perhaps Creta’s elucidation of her experience with Noboru Wataya gives us one key to understanding the novel’s conception of self/ves. Her description of undergoing an intense physical experience, during which she encounters some heretofore unknown but seemingly core element of herself, echoes Mamiya’s experience at the bottom of his well. Both are entirely changed by their experiences. Creta describes feeling almost entirely removed from the world:

I could not longer connect my body’s movements or sensations with my own self. They were functioning as they wished, without reference to my will, without order or direction. (303)

Eventually she describes the development (or discovery?) of a ‘new self’ which she finds to be entirely ‘empty’ (305). The explanation for how Creta was able to survive her experience with Wataya hinges upon the fact that Wataya encountered Creta when she was not her true self:

“Fortunately the state of your being just happened not to be the real, original you.” (307)

What he does to her has the consequence—intended or otherwise—of freeing her from a false self and allowing her to give a kind of birth to her true, real, or original self. However, when she enters this state she does so with a seemingly blank slate. (One well is dry; another well has water.) The cure, Malta Kano believes, is to pass others’ personalities and personhoods through Creta so that she can accrue ‘a kind of vicarious experience of what it feels like to have an ego’ (310). This is a kind of extreme form of the empathy thematic that we saw arise last week, and another form of duality in the novel that Murakami is playing with and complicating.

Toru too experiences something similar. His encounter with the singer and then the dream replay of the same feels like a real turning point: a kind of hinge upon which Toru’s sense of self, and our sense of Toru, swing around.

I had split in two, but this me had lost the power to stop the other me. (336)

That the unreal version ends with Toru entirely covered in a new skin, is telling. The sense of self, like the sense of reality, is skewed and obscured.

Speaking of reality being obscured, did I mention my internet was out? If you’re reading this on Sunday it must have reached you via osmosis or something, I don’t know - who do I look like, Mr Honda?

In the week ahead please do keep throwing your tweets, images, and thoughts my way and I’ll do my best to incorporate them properly in the next newsletter. Some of you, I know, are enjoying the book. Some of you, I know, aren’t - let’s hear why in either case. Or if you’re undecided what’s got you on the fence?

Right, got to go. I’m off to do all sorts of analog things like play cassette tapes and make a sandwich. I may even go sit at the bottom of a well for a bit or go just sit on a bench and stare at people’s faces like a perfectly normal, well-adjusted person would for days on end.