When I reached the last page of "Norwegian Wood," after reading the
novel's pitch-perfect last line, due to an utter unwillingness, a
near inability, to leave the beautiful world Murakami had created,
I proceeded to immediately flip back to the first page and start
all over again. That was a few years back now. I've read it again
since. More than once.
Because the book hit a place in my soul, a mate to my soul, a heart
to my heart.
The Beatles song Murakami's 1987 novel is named after is on surface
listen a pretty two minute ditty. A pretty, but sad, thing. The
tone of Murakami's novel has something similar gently pulling the
reader through. It is also equally deceptive to the song in how
simple it seems, how easy it reads. Yet, beneath a book that reads
like almost pure autobiography, and a song that listens like
effortless melody, lie layered artful structure, and things
thematically heavier than meet the eye.
The Beatles' song that is so melodically sweet ends with a man
taking revenge on a girl who would not sleep with him, by burning
down the furniture in her room.
Murakami's narrator does no such thing. But his book too juxtaposes
a gentle tone with themes of longing, of loss and of what can and
will never be.
To be somewhat vague and very brief "Norwegian Wood," set in the
Tokyo of the 1960s, is a love story. Basically it is a sad story.
Most all the love in the book is of the unrequited variety, and
there is more than one suicide. The book has much to lend itself to
feeling blue, like Miles Davis on his muted trumpet. But for every
lonely moment, you get a scene with a character like Reiko, a
friend like Reiko, a woman who should be tragic considering her
history but who, by the time we meet her in a sort of sanatorium
for sad or screwed up people, turns out to be that rock solid salt
of the earth type who seems like the mentally healthiest person on
earth. Better still, though no longer the piano virtuoso she once
was, she plays a mean guitar, Beatles song included.
The magic of Murakami's "Norwegian Wood," is that a book so focused
on sad subject manner manages to have what all books need to be
great - a sense of adventure. Not, of course, in the children's
literature sense of the word, but in the 'you've gone off to
another place' sense.
"... the bus plunged into a chilling cedar forest. The trees might
have been old growth the way they towered over the road, blocking
out the sun and covering everything in gloomy shadows. The breeze
flowing into the bus's open windows turned suddenly cold, its
dampness sharp against the skin. The valley road hugged the river
bank, continuing so long through the trees it began to seem as if
the whole world had been buried for ever in cedar forest - at which
point the forest ended, and we came to an open basin surrounded by
mountain peaks. Broad, green farmland spread out in all directions,
and the river by the road looked bright and clear. A single thread
of white smoke rose in the distance..."
Best of all is the poetry is in the book's balance, as alongside
depression and suicide, you also get a character like Midori - one
of my favourite in all modern literature.
"At 5:30 Midori said she had to go home and make dinner. I said I
would take a bus back to my dorm, and saw her as far as the
station.
'Know what I want to do now?' Midori asked me as she was leaving.
'I have absolutely no idea what you could be thinking,' I said.
'I want you and me to be captured by pirates. Then they strip us
and press us together face to face all naked and wind these ropes
around us.'
'Why would they do a thing like that?'
'Perverted pirates,' she said.
'You're the perverted one,' I said."
And really, what else do you need to help you cope with death, and
the kind of love that will never be, but perverted pirates?
-Probably Because I Have To