06-11-2013, 06:17 PM | #16 |
Wizard
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I have finished the set and the fifth story, "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" didn't work for me at all but the final piece--"Honey-Pie"--is a very leisurely piece with two parts which is rather Joycean in its psychological intensity but has a gentler, less cynical quality than we find in the Irish writer. It would be my runner-up story in the collection.
I'm very glad that I read this author but I'm not sure that I would be tempted to read his longer works. |
06-12-2013, 02:04 AM | #17 |
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I'm with you again, fantasyfan. I couldn't suspend disbelief for a second concerning the Frog. But I did find "Honey Pie" believable and quite tender. I definitely liked "Thailand" best in the collection, because I found I could empathise with the central character in a way that I couldn't do when reading the first three stories.
And thanks for the link to the story about the elephants in Bangkok, desertblues. Such a sad and undignified life for these wonderful creatures. There are times when you wonder how things would have gone if the Neanderthals had come out on top instead of us. (Sorry: ) I'm interested to know if others who have read a number of Murakami's books find these stories typical of him, or if you think fantasyfan and I should try something else by him before crossing him off the list altogether? |
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06-12-2013, 08:40 AM | #18 | |
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Quote:
On the other hand, there are certainly going to be those who just will never warm up to Murakami's style and content. Different people have different tastes in literature. I read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen when it was the selection August of last year, but it left me with no desire to read anymore of Austen's works. Given the enduring appeal to so many I can't say that makes her overrated, she just doesn't appeal to me. |
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06-12-2013, 02:46 PM | #19 |
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Well, I finished all the stories. In almost all of them there are surreal elements, as is usual in Murakami’s books. Also most people in it are lonely; estranged from their family, hopelessly in love, divorced, fatherless or left their home. Some of the stories have a hopefull ending though. Some thoughts on the stories.
UFO in Kushiro left me with a shiver: ““But really,” she said, “you’re just at the beginning.”… Landscape with flatiron is a bleak story about death. There is this forlorn artist who can only paint if he uses something else to stand for it, and a young girl that thinks about death. A sad ending. All God’s children can dance has a funny side. The boy who’s mother tells her child Yoshia that he’s the son of God. Yoshia has the gift of dancing; dancing to be one with the universe. Thailand is my favorite story. Satsuki and Nimit are sympathetic characters. The allusion to jazz: I’ve read that Murikami used to have a jazz-café. Spoiler:
Superfrog saves Tokyo is a curious story. The protagonist lives in two worlds: his normal world and the world of the Frog where a mystical battle with a Worm is fought. BTW, I found a link to an article about the death of earthworms in Japan, just before an earthquake.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpre...2-north-japan/ Spoiler:
In Honey Pie there’s a little girl who has nightmares and a writer......could there be aspects of Murakami himself here?
Spoiler:
@Bookpossum:I started reading Murakami with IQ84. A few impressions while reading
Spoiler:
After this I read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the end of the world, which I can recommend. A quote from the book
Spoiler:
And of course Norwegian Wood, which Hamlet53 recommends is very good.
Last edited by desertblues; 06-12-2013 at 03:41 PM. Reason: oh,oh, excuse my sloppy grammar..... |
06-12-2013, 07:10 PM | #20 |
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Thanks to both of you - very helpful!
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06-13-2013, 04:16 AM | #21 |
Wizard
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I might look into Norwegian Wood. It seems fairly easy to get and I could always try a sample first.
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06-14-2013, 02:13 PM | #22 |
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I've only read UFO in Kushiro so far. Fairly typical themes of loss, loneliness and a general sense of not being certain wny one is where they are with other books I've read (Sputnick Sweetheart; The Windup Chronicle; and South of the Border, West of the Sun).
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06-14-2013, 03:10 PM | #23 |
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I've finished it, too. I found the first story somewhat blunt, not really flowing. The last one, honey pie left me, too, a little bit cold, and is probably the one I liked least, while Frog saves Tokio sent a shiver down my spine, perhaps because it got me thinking of mental illness.
But more in general the stories seemed to me a musing over the meaning of life: Komura wonders about it in the first story, in the second one there is a thread that the answer may be in the negative (Junko is only naive and young and learning, while Miyake is so scared of death that he just wants to get it over with), and so on until we get to the last story, which I found "out of character" in the sense that it was the soppiest of them all, while offering a positive outlook on life. |
06-14-2013, 03:40 PM | #24 |
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I have read almost all Murakami; sometimes beginning in the middle of a trilogy (not deliberately, but it didn't matter much, somehow). I recently read Underground, which describes the events around the Tokyo gas attacks in 1995; a documentary.
Mixed together, the stories in After the quake reflect the writing of Murakami nicely, although I 'missed' (well, not really of course) the cruelty he shows in some books. I remember when reading Kafka on the shore, I was confronted with this cruelty. My impressions while reading: Spoiler:
My favorite book is Hardboiled wonderland and the end of the world.
Last edited by desertblues; 06-14-2013 at 03:42 PM. Reason: grammar, grammar, grammar |
06-18-2013, 09:54 AM | #25 |
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^Nice, Hardboiled is sitting on my shelf to read.
I liked all the stories, but UFO and Superfrog definitely were my favourites. Spoiler:
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06-18-2013, 10:32 AM | #26 |
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I guess, with Murakami, it's not only about living, but also living in a world...which world? And the sense that essentially one is on its own in life, without knowing what is on the other side.....is there an other side? Is one perhaps already living on that other side, without realizing?
Being a fan of both fantasy/scifi and literature; this writer works for me. |
06-18-2013, 04:04 PM | #27 |
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I'm glad I've read this collection. Until now, I had only read "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Murakami and it didn't work for me. So I had some reservations when this book was chosen but I really liked these short stories, best the last three.
I don't know if any one of you has such a category for yourself, but for me Murakami is a "male writer". In my mind, his male characters are much better painted and more interesting than his female characters. |
06-21-2013, 10:39 PM | #28 | ||
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I liked this book and in particular really like thailand as I see others did too, and after that I also really liked landscape with flatiron, and generally liked all of the first four stories. I thought the weakest was honey pie, and though I think I understand what he was trying to do with super-frog saves tokyo, I didn't particularly care for it.
ufo in kushiro - This was the first Murakami writing I've read, so I wasn't expecting the abrupt, vague ending. I liked the story though, the atmosphere, and the mysterious elements of it (that were never explained). I'd even say that this was the most unresolved of all the stories as so much was left unclear. Since the title is all lower-case, one funny tidbit is that I thought that the story was going to be about someone named "Ufo" in Kushiro. landscape with flatiron - I found the "roommate" Keisuke's dialogue a little much - it felt like the cursing and "cool" language were a little forced (though that easily could be the translator's fault) - but I really enjoyed this story and its melancholy. I really enjoyed the short Jack London "To Build a Fire" digression about Junko's against-the-grain assertion that the character wanted death - "Otherwise, how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful?" all god's children can dance - While I was expecting an unclear ending by this point, I still found it frustrating not to find out who the man was he was following, or where the man had disappeared to, though I liked the story. thailand - The strongest story of the collection. I highlighted a few places in the story, but I'll share one of my favourites from the end of the story: Quote:
Quote:
Besides the obvious one of each character being tangentially affected by the Kobe earthquake, as others have mentioned these stories all seem connected by loneliness and melancholy. These are all people missing something from life and all seeming a bit empty. And as has been said, they're all dealing with their own personal little earthquakes. I noticed a theme of bears throughout the collection. It's most obvious in the bookend stories - the story about bears in ufo in kushiro and the, well, story about bears in honey pie - but also the polar bear musing in thailand and the company the frog takes care of in super-frog saves tokyo being named "Big Bear Trading". I found it ironic that in honey pie, Murakami mentions that the writer Junpei released a short story collection where one of the stories had been turned into a movie, and in real life years later one of these short stories (all god's children can dance) was turned into a movie, so it's another ironic mirroring of Murakami to the story that he couldn't have even predicted (although, since I'm not very familiar with Murakami, it's possible the same situation could've already happened with one of his earlier short story collections and he was purposely mirroring himself). It's been interesting reading everyone's thoughts on this collection. Last edited by sun surfer; 06-21-2013 at 10:49 PM. |
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06-22-2013, 07:52 AM | #29 |
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Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful post, sun surfer - it has made me think some more about the stories and the themes running through the book.
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06-22-2013, 09:45 AM | #30 |
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As with some others, I'm glad I read these, but Murakami doesn't make it to my short list of authors whom I'd like to pursue. I thought the stories rather slight in themselves, yet had much more heft collectively. But while they resonated, some ten days after finishing the book I find them rather evanescent.
One reason I've delayed in posting (aside from busyness and general sloth) is that I still haven't decided whether my reaction is valid or puerile. What surprised me most was that I felt bludgeoned by the Western cultural and even culinary references. A few paragraphs into the first story, Komura breakfasts on toast and coffee, which sounds like the breakfast of an American secretary from the 1950s to me. I read once that breakfasts were the most resistant of meals to outside influences and that made sense to me, but ok, so Komura likes toast and coffee. But then the cultural references came thick and fast: the Beatles, Pearl Jam, Jack London, Tolstoy, Erroll Garner, John Updike, Schubert and more. Culture is global these days, but in the absence of similar references to Japanese writers and musicians, this world seemed off kilter to me. I wondered if the earthquake was merely the physical manifestation of other seismic shifts, and if a loss of culture was a cause (or possibly an effect) of the hollowness or death inside the characters. By the last meal, with spaghetti and tomato sauce for dinner, and red wine for the adults and OJ for the child (gack!), it felt to me that the stories could have been set anywhere at all. It required a conscious effort on my part to hold the thought that these stories were set in Japan and peopled with Japanese. But, since I have no familiarity with Murakami's other works, I have no idea if this Western orientation is typical of him or whether it was supposed to mean something in particular in the context of these stories. Last edited by issybird; 06-22-2013 at 09:47 AM. |
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