What I Read about when I Read Murakami 4 comments

Do you have an author who, when you read their words, makes you feel as if you were the only one they were writing for all along? Someone who reminds you that books, no matter how big the print run, are an incredibly intimate medium? Haruki Murakami is such an author for me.

I was introduced to Murakami at a very formative time under very swoony circumstances. Even if the book didn’t connect with me directly, I’d still remember it for that reason. But while the passions that accompanied Norwegian Wood on first reading will forever be confined to a time and a place, my love of Murakami endures. In fact, I would credit Murakami with rekindling my actual love of reading when a film degree and career in comics distracted me from novels.

When I read Murakami, I relish the honesty. Murakami’s characters, and his voice as narrator, are disarmingly frank. The way his characters talk is definitely reminiscent of Raymonds Carver and Chandler, Fitzgerald and Salinger—as well it should as he translates the lot of them into Japanese—but for me, the author I’m reminded most of is Lewis Carrol. Murakami makes the real and the surreal equally mundane—and frightening—while keeping the “adult world” distant. His stories tend to take place in a vacuum within our reality—they are modern characters (in a very nostalgic way) but they behave according to fairy tale logic. Even though Murakami’s works can be quite erotic, it always has an aura of childlike innocence about it.

When I read Murakami, I savor the minutiae. Perhaps no other author has spent as much time describing the process of scrounging up meals from whatever’s in the fridge, consuming that meal, then washing the dishes. Murakami’s meals are never extravagant—they’re comfort food. Reading his descriptions of simple food stirs the same sense of contentment as eating a bowl of mac and cheese on a chilly fall evening.

When I read Murakami, I lose myself in the puzzle and couldn’t care less about the solution. Murakami is a master of the literary mystery. His books are filled with clues and red herrings, and joining the protagonists on literal or psychological goose chases makes for an amazing experience. My boyish brain often falls into the trap of trying to rationalize what defies explanation, but Murakami has helped me to accept that sometimes the unexplained is okay.

A couple weeks ago I read Murakami’s latest release—What I Talk About when I Talk About Running. At a slim 190 pages, it’s one of his breeziest works in both word count and substance. Murakami—who am I fooling, after reading this book I feel like we’re on a first name basis!—Haruki goes into great detail about his running regime, with his usual frank and conversational tone. I don’t know if it’s the translation, or the informalness of the essays collected here, but something about the style feels a little…off. It’s still 100% Haruki, but it’s almost as if he’s picked up some of the false-modesty that his characters are so refreshingly oblivious too. (Haruki’s blithe dismissal of global warming, in particular, really irks).

Still, even mediocre Murakami is top-shelf reading for me. The fact that the subject matter serendipitously coincided with my own renewed pursuit of running made it a much more engaging read than it would have been at any other time. Murakami writes about how he first took to running, when he was 32 years old and at the very start of his writing career. I try not to fall into the writer’s trap of comparing my own professional timeline with those of others (Fitzgerald had already written Gatsby by the time he was my age!), but I confess to feeling some hope when reading that Murakami didn’t even consider writing (or running!) until he was the age I was now. So what if I’ve only written licensed tie-ins so far – that’s more than Haruki had! It’s a stupid reaction to have, but I’m sure Haruki would understand.

Now when I go out to run I can’t help but think about Haruki. I might not run a marathon a year like he does, but we’ve got a little something in common, and should we ever run into each other in a Tokyo jazz bar, maybe we could talk about it over a cold beer.