The mindbending worlds of Murakami
Great art makes you FEEL. It's what makes Murakami's writing so special to me. It’s not story, the characters, or the prose.
It’s all of it, together. Even nearly ten years after I read Kakfa on the Shore for the first time, I can still remember where I was when I read certain passages. A description of a painting, while riding on an empty carriage of the tube on the way to the office in the morning.
That book really changed how I feel about reading. Before it I was a self-development junkie. I had forgotten how to read for fun.
Here’s some off-the-cuff thoughts on why he had an impact on me.
I love how mundane his characters lives are. It’s a little unsual, but sometimes I get bored reading about how this unexceptional person goes about their day to day. Living life just like I would. This can be tough to get through if you’re expecting some flashbang fireworks to start the story. Going through this, though, makes you closer to the character.
You start to feel what they feel. You think how they think. You slip into their world.
And just as you get used to it, things change.
Not all at once, but unusual things start to happen. You realize that you’re about to go on adventure and have no idea where it’s going to take you, but it’s exciting.
These are my favorite parts, the tension building.
After a while, you forget about the mundane life that you started off. You just roll with it. You went from walking home and grabbing some groceries to speaking to cats and running through underground tunnels.
The magic thing is: it all feels so natural. The world just unfolds in front of you. It doesn’t try, it doesn’t force, it just happens.
I’m reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls right now. It follows a similar pattern except Murakami interleaves the mundane world building with the adventure, a chapter at a time. It works wonderfully.
Switching between innocent highschool love and being stuck in a walled city reading Dreams has kept me wanting more. I don’t even know the characters names.
He’s not for everybody. I don't agree with everything he writes. But Murakami is original.
Today, maybe more than ever, I think that makes him worth reading.