Norwegian Wood
Is that a Haruki Murakami in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
On the Jacket
Here are some quotes from the fronts and backs of various editions of Norwegian Wood by lauded surrealist Haruki Murakami:
“Norwegian Wood… not only points to but manifests the author’s genius.”
— Chicago Tribune
This deeply circular comment from the Chicago Tribune means close to, but not quite, nothing, and I must confess I’m impressed. A work of art that points to an artist’s genius must be one that is evidence of their genius. A work of art that manifests the author’s genius is also one that is evidence of their genius. Really, it’s an extraordinary way to say, “the Chicago Tribune thinks Murakami is a genius.”
“A treat…”
— The Baltimore Sun
No notes. I agree. Read this book.
“[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature.”
— Newsday
Is he not in the “topmost rank” already? Is Newsday arguing that when Sportscenter releases its top ten writers of international stature Murakami should be in the list? And what makes him international? Is it that he writes in Japanese? Is it that he wrote Norwegian Wood while living in Greece? By that logic is Hemingway of international stature? What about Virginia Woolf, who lived in England but whose work I have read in America? Or Stephen King, whose books sell in countries other than the United States?
Here’s my favorite:
“Vintage Murakami and easily the most erotic of his novels.”
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
I don’t know how a book can be “vintage” of the writer who has written it. Is that because it is set in Japan, written in the first person and narrated by a young man? Those are hallmarks of Murakami’s work. But all of Murakami’s works are hallmarks of Murakami’s works. Everything Jackson Pollock painted was vintage Pollock, wasn’t it?
But I will agree with Los Angeles: there is a lot of sex in this book.
A Lot of Sex
The narrator Toru has numerous one night stands. For a brief stretch there is a girlfriend whose name we don’t learn. He gets with a girl named Midori, one named Naoko (a lot more on those two coming up) and with an older woman named Reiko. We also get graphic encounters that Reiko has with her husband and with an underage girl. Vintage Murakami!
I’ve only read two novel-length works by Murakami: Norwegian Wood and Killing Commendatore. Both not only point to but manifest Murakami’s genius (whatever that means). However, one common bug-a-boo I have is that—and this particularly irks me because the stories are written by a man and the narrator is a man narrating in first person—in both works of fiction, the protagonist is a bland, emotionally vacant and damaged person (nothing wrong with that by itself) who, for no clear reason, gets all the ass he could ever want—gets so much ass he doesn’t want women bothering him any more.
That’s the primary detraction of this book: the narrator, Toru, has women falling all over him for no clear reason.
But now that I’ve belabored that point, I’m ready to get on with my write up. As I’ve written several dozen times before: I don’t believe that spoilers exist. I will be talking about the entire plot of this book. If you still believe that a book can be spoiled, you may want to stop reading… here. Right here. I mean it. Don’t go a word further. If you do, you’ll read that Naoko dies by the story’s end.
I warned you.
Summary
Here’s an ultra-boiled-down plot summary:
Toru, 37, is on a plane. When the plane lands, the song “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles play. Nostalgia assails Toru so hard that, he writes, “I bent forward in my seat, face in hands to keep my skull from splitting open.”
Needing to write to understand this crushing nostalgia, Toru is composing this book
Toru states several theses for writing this book:
“thinking of what I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.”
“the more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her. I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed.”
I’m going to come back to this second quote in a few bullets
The remainder of the narrative is told from the perspective of a younger Toru, or perhaps the 37 year old Toru writing about the life of 18 year old Toru.
Young Toru is at university in the late 60s, in Japan
He had a best friend named Kizuki. When they were in high school, out of the seeming blue to Toru, Kizuki killed himself
From this Toru learned, eventually, “Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.”
Kizuki had a girlfriend, a girl-next-door-type love with Naoko; after his death, Toru and Naoko became close
The first chapter ends with Toru’s heartbreaking reflection, “Naoko never loved me.” But Toru certainly loved Naoko.
Naoko had a hard time after Kizuki’s death, obviously. Toru did too. Toru more stuffed his emotions down in a stoic, unfeeling, masculine way. Naoko has a breakdown and winds up at a convalescent home deep in the Japanese boondocks.
In the first chapter, before we know essentially anything else about Naoko, before we’ve even read the name Kizuki, Toru reflects to the reader about a conversation he had with Naoko one time when he visited her at this convalescent home. In that conversation, Naoko is preoccupied with “field wells.” They are walking out in a field where she insists lurks one such recess.
“ ‘It’s really, really deep,’ said Naoko… ‘But no one knows where it is…’ ‘[I]t’s a terrible way to die… the best think would be to break your neck, but you’d probably just break your leg and then you couldn’t do a thing. You’d yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody’d hear you, and you couldn’t expect anybody to find you, and you’d have centipedes and spiders crawling all over you, and it’s dark and soggy, and way overhead there’s this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon. You die there in this place, little by little, all by yourself.’ ”
This is the most powerful and devastating part of the book. When the reader thinks back on this moment at the end of the story, after Naoko has killed herself, we understand what Toru has been trying to warn us all along: Naoko knew that day that eventually, when she had devised her plan and summoned her willpower, she was going to kill herself to be with Kizuki. She was deeply selfish. She wanted Toru to remember her. That was how she could justify killing herself; knowing that Toru would remember her.
And that helps the ending make sense.
While Naoko is at this convalescent home, Toru inadvertently falls into a situationship with another woman, Midori—young, bubbly, erratic, and a reflection of the era’s feminist. She’s patiently waiting for Toru to get over Naoko (she has her own boyfriend so she’s not really in a rush) but eventually, after she’s dumped her boyfriend, she tells Toru to pick a damn lane. Then, when Naoko kills herself, Toru needs more time to heal before he can be with Midori.
After some very moving closure—really, Murakami is a fantastic writer of international stature—Toru feels ready to be with Midori. But will she still have him?
“I telephoned Midori. ‘I have to talk to you,’ I said. ‘I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.’
“Midori responded with a long, long silence — the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited. At last, Midori’s quiet voice broke the silence: ‘Where are you now?’
“Where was I now?
“Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.”
Coda
I’ll ask you this: who fell down the field well?
Many call Murakami a ‘surrealist.’ I think that’s semi-justified in Killing Commendatore, when his main character has to travel into the Land of Metaphor to rescue a girl from—can you believe it?—a well. And some might want to interpret this ending as surreal too. Suddenly, our main character is in “the dead center of this place that was no place.” Moments ago he was in Ueno train station
But there’s nothing surreal about that. Toru gave over one of the best, freest years of his life to Naoko. Years later, just hearing the song “Norwegian Wood” literally agonizes him. He gave her pieces of his soul. And she accepted them, knowing that she wasn’t going to be in this world much longer, knowing the pain and rage her suicide would leave Toru with.
Of course he was in no place. There’s nothing surreal about that.
You can buy Norwegian Wood here, but be warned: doing so will mean I get a small commission. With that money, I might: buy more books, records, native plants, or engage in other lascivious activities such as giving to the poor. If you don’t want to contribute to my delinquency, you can certainly find a copy of this great book in your library, or on thriftbooks.com.