Author: Jean-Michel Serres

Information of the Book

Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami is the second novel by Haruki Murakami, and the second volume of the ‘Trilogy of the Rat’. The narrator and some characters are also appeared ‘Hear the Wind Sing’, ‘Wild Sheep Chase’ and ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’.

Outline and Style

This novel is composed of fragments of descriptions . This fragments are composed of 25 chapters and consisted of 3 separated main episodes. (The current time of this novel, ‘I’ didn’t meet the Rat. Factually ‘I’ don’t know the real situation of the Rat of 1973.)

1. ‘My’ life of 1973
   • ‘My’ daily life with the twins wear the sweartshirts with numbers 208 and 209. They went for a stroll in the golf course near ‘my’ apartment.
   • Running a translation office with a friend and a University of Foreign Languages student girl.
   • Searching for the pinball machine.
2. Descriptions of the Rat’s devastating life of 1973
3. Memories of 1969 to 1970 with Naoko, the Rat and the Spaceship pinball machine
   • ‘My’ college life with Naoko.
   • Encounter to the pinball machine with the Rat at J’s Bar.
   • ‘My’ absorbing in the Spaceship pinball machine in a game arcade in Shinjuku.

This novel is written by ‘I’ (narrator of this novel), and begins in September 1973.

Characters

‘I’

: The narrator and the writer of this novel. A freelance translator runs a small translation company with a friend. 23 years old.

The Rat

: A rich university dropout made the daily commute to J’s Bar. He spent ruined idle life in his home town.

The Twin Sisters Wear the Sweatshirts with the Numbers 208 and 209

: Unnamed twin Sisters live ‘my’ apartment. They are perfect copies, have same faces, voices and hairstyle.

Friend

: A friend of ‘I’, runs a small translation company together with ‘I’. ‘My’ classmate at the University.

Young Woman

: A part-time worker of the small translation company ‘I’ and the friend run. And a student of the University of Foreign Languages. She always ‘Penny Lane’

J

: A Chinese bartender and owner of J’s Bar.

Naoko

: The same person to ‘the third girl I slept with’ in Hear the Wind Sing.

Pinball Enthusiast Spanish Lecturer

Girlfriend of the Rat

Repairman of the Phone Company

Serviceman of the pinball company

Places

‘My’ apartment

The golf course

: In the autumn, like everyday, ‘I’ and twins strolled the golf course near ‘my’ apartment.

The small translation company

J’s Bar

: The Rat still daily commuted to J’s Bar.

All-night doughnut shop

: Doughnut is the important sign or metaphor of Murakami’s works. According to him, ring of doughnut is the entrance to the different-dimension world.

Coffee shop, Game arcade in Shinjuku

Key Elements and Keywords

The three-flipper Spaceship pinball machine

: a symbol of women, Naoko or (memory of) the Rat. The machine should be a woman.

navy-blue sweatshirt with the numbers of 208 and 209

:

old switch panel

: A day of 1973, a repairman of the phone company visit ‘my’ apartment and replaced it with new one. It would be a symbol of mother or woman and ‘my’ past.

prologue

a good ten years ago, great enthusiasm, rumour, stones, dry well, tongue-in-check, off-the-wall, cardboard box, monkeys, laborious task, box of kitchen matches, Saturn, Venus, ideology, water cooler, telephone, hot-water heater, music room, two thousand records, Altec A5 speaker, bicycle racetrack toilet, paradise, long-distance phone call, classical music aficionados, Vivaldi, perfect cloudless November day, Haydn’s Piano Sonata, tottering pile, science labs, lukewarm beer, gravity, planets, bear, hibernation, rhythms, bright sunlight, student lounge, student lounge, bright sunlight, red plastic table, paper cup, cigarette butts, Rubens painting, new shoes, new course catalogs, real town, a railroad track and a station, pathetic two-bit station, cigarette smoke, bus stop, Alice in Wonderland, May 1973, new pair of cordovan shoes, déjà vu, twins, could less Sunday morning, T-shirts, jeans, coffee, toast, butter, golf course, stereo broadcast, headache, names, mailboxes, vacuum cleaners, zoos, salt shakers, mousetraps, peppermint gum, London’s duty-free shops, dark green thicket of trees, blue sky, cuckoo’s sharp cry, giant sleeping cat, Ricky Nelson, Hello Mary Lou, peaceful green valley, crayfish, farmhouses, garish painted advertisement, toilet paper, soap, Western-style two-story house, the Korean War, oil painter, Bobby Vee, Rubber Ball, Fuji snow water, seventeen, policemen, French literary scholar, fallen angels, dissolute priests, bohemian, camera lens, cultured eccentrics, Siberian penal camps, imperial Russia, biography of Leon Trotsky, cockroaches, reindeer, Moscow, wildly idiosyncratic homes, the Tokyo Olympics, urban development, monotonous townscape, commuter trains, dogs, winding river, fisherman, Venus, Venusians, sadness, my apartment

On the Birth of Pinball

Raymond Moloney, first pinball machine, the Atlantic Ocean, Adolf Hitler, the Weimar Republic, Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, smacks of ingratitude, the Ballyhoo, numbers and decimals, Bonus Light, metaphysial concept of ‘sequence’, numerical substitution, act of consumption, Proust, True Grit, nowhere, replay, eternity, existence, self-transformation, ego expansion

1

birthmark, perfect copies

modest apartment, Shibuya, Nampeidai, a small translation company, telephone, three steel desks, the dictionaries, half a dozen bottle of bourbon, metallic signboard engraved with company name, air conditioner, refrigerator, home set bar, Student Office, the University of Foreign Languages, young woman, long legs, sharp mind, melody of Penny Lane, harmonious workplace, eat-in kitchen, Tokyo, bourbon on the rocks, traps for the cockroaches, American Science, ball bearings’ resistance to pressure, All-American Book of Cocktails, William Styron, manual on the proper use and maintenance of safety razors, a finger (well, a thumb, actually) of whiskey, coin, disco, J&B, Santana cover band, money, Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, The Cincinnati Kid, Volkswagen Beetle, days as peaceful, pool of afternoon sunlight, Shibuya Station, the Critique of Pure Reason, Kenneth Tynan, Roman Polanski, Esquire

navy-blue sweatshirt, numbers, 208, 209, nipple, serial numbers, supermarket, stroll, promising place, coffee cream cookies, coffee, golf course, newspaper, Burma, Australia, Vietnam, Nixon, Hanoi, 1.2 million conflicting ideas, Dostoevsky

2

the autumn of 1973, winds of early September, old T-shirt, cutoff jeans, sandals, over chilled beer, cigarettes, watch, autumn gloom, meadows, rivers, new season, message, another season dead and gone, chill of winter, real downer, summer light, autumn sandy soil, warm summer dreams, bucket of potatoes, butterfat, toaster, unfiltered cigarette, Rat’s sense of time, explanation, unbelievable pace, flood of emotion, meaningless old dreams, melon, vegetable, three comfortable rooms, air conditioner, phone, seventeen-inch color television set, bath, shower, Mercedes Triumph, fancy balcony, sunbathing, panoramic view of town and ocean,chirping of birds, fragrance of trees, tranquil afternoon, rattan chair, quiet calm

3

newspaper subscription, gray workman’s uniform, the phone company, backgammon, black notebook, old switch panel, old model, central computer, matching up hardware and software, nuisance, doll cases, monster pianos, repairman, a machine to control the circuits, handkerchief, giggling, jeans, coffee, Danish, breakfast, poor guy, boiled egg, mother dog, puppies, ectoplasm, quiet afternoon light, deserted course, twilight, Mildred Bailey, It’s So Peaceful in the Country, golf ball, handicap golfer

4

unmanned beacon, meandering pier, harbour, fisherman, fishing boats, beautiful sunset, cloak of mist, darkness, supreme, child, flagstones, sky, dark blue, vivid, smell of ocean, his own world, white beach, green pines, cranes, floating docks, boxlike warehouses, freighters, tall buildings

vague memories, childhood, dry sound, fishermen’s huts, reddish brown seawater, South American canna, neat little apartment, Venetian blinds

5

phone, eraser, pink pay phone, caretaker’s office, elephant, late-night, telegrams, motorbike, around four in the morning, loud footstep, Grim Reaper, boom, jungle path, beginning of autumn, end of winter, lonely season, some mysterious internal force, Sunday morning in early March, bright winter sunlight, cabbage field, last snow, final cold snap, cardigan, pajamas, ceiling, bulky white sweater, lifeboat, virtual stranger, political group, construction boots, proper kettle, saucepan, tea bags, green tea, cookies, granulated sugar, two Snoopy glasses, Robinson Crusoe, silence, winter sunlight

cold rain, taxi driver, raincoat, glass had a picture of Snoopy and Woodstock, autumn moonlight, thousands of insects, moonlit golf course, devoid of value, meaning or direction,

6

bathroom, sound of shower, cigarette, match, rattan chairs, tailored mustard-colored dress, tiny watch, mountain side perch, signs of human activity, golfer, top of a downhill course

September, trace of summer radiance, electric typewriter, playpens, linguaphones, tricycles, half a dozen typewriter ribbons, cocktails, local indoor pool, tangible reality of their relationship, kind of perfection in her small world, architecture, architect’s office, Mozart

7

cold, sandpaper, coffee, two rolls, Seven Stars, deadline, red felt pen, photograph of a cat, plaster of Paris, Swiss Army knife, six HB pencils, cassette tape, old Stan Getz album, Al Haig, Jimmy Raney, Teddy Kotick, Tiny Kahn, Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid, lunch of fried fish, orange juice, hamburger stand, pet shop, Abyssinian cat, green tea, autumn bird, drone of the city, Charlie Parker, Just Friends, When Do Migrating Bird Sleep?, umbrella, evening paper, supermarket, black German shepherd, lifeless shells

Handel’s recorder sonatas, my girlfriend, Valentine’s Day, Hans-Martin Linde,  Rubber Soul , the Beatles, the Critique of Pure Reason

8

cemetery, azalea, grazing sheep, mercury lamps, children, carp, music box, Old Black Joe, total silence, make love, 250cc motorbike, broken soda bottle

9

carbon copy, bookmark, smell of autumn, professor, my graduation thesis, object of my search, bottle opener, old letter, receipt, earpick, Kant, neophytes, tennis shoes, chain-link, coffee cream cookies, footprints, backgammon, pampas grass, sunset, switch panel

beer, trout, burst, dust

10

glass of ice water, flashing beacon, endless repetition, can of beer, several distinct layers, Chinese bartender, Chinese national, China, high school soccer team, jukebox, Wayne Newton, MacArthur, “Poor thing.”, cat, strawberry jam, vise, pancake, soul ballad, falsetto, own philosophy, fragrance of cold autumn air, ocean, seaside road, radio, disc jockey’s chatter

11

morning paper, funeral, fine rain, sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle, milk chocolate, bloodstain, roasted corn, Balzac’s story, Buddhist priest, cotton trousers, mountain road, coffee, cookies, buttercream, coffee cream, maple, a Claude Lelouch film, prayer, Kant

12

first sweater of the fall, thick cotton pants, pair of scuffed desert boots, shoe cabinet, six pencils, pet shop, Abyssinian cats, fur, finest cashmere, Auschwitz, twin-seater torpedo planes, a Jan and Dean song, miniskirt, hot tea, three cookies, Hokkaido, annual office trip, bears, hibernating, great lobster restaurant

strange star, lemon soufflé

13

any old thing, rosebud, lost cap, favorite sweater, old Gene Pitney record, miscellany of trivia, darkness

Spaceship, three flippers, peaceful era, solid-state technology, true fanatic, heartwarming snapshot, Kodak pocket camera, Second World War flying ace, 92,500, blood brothers, like a dream, technique, 150,000, 200,000, pride of the ace pilot, pointless dreams of six-digit scores

14

tinkle of ice against glass, laughter, Jackson 5 on the jukebox, clouds of white smoke, comic-strip balloons, catnaps, dentist’s waiting room, whiskey, six empty bottles, thousands of beers, thousands of orders of French fries, thousands of records on the jukebox, twenty-five, cotton pants, eyeliner, morose

15

occult world of pinball, bottom of dark hole, game arcade, bucket of coins, six zeros, cold and rainy early-winter evening, 105,220, my brief love affair, techniques, heavy duffle coat

February, all-night doughnut shop, girls in gingham uniforms, dry doughnuts, high school kids, motorbikes, night cabbies, die-hard hippies, bar girls, tasteless coffee, hideous concoction, cinnamon doughnut

16

balcony window, windbreaker, T-shirt, black pavement, white fog, hilly residential district, river road to the ocean, orange tablecloth, pots of leafy plants, orange juice, newspaper, stainless steel teapot, three ceramic beer mugs, pencils, rulers, drafting pens, erasers, paperweight, ink remover, old receipts, adhesive tape, paper clips of many colors, pencil sharpener, postage stamps, well-used drawing board, desk lamp with a very long neck, small Scandinavian model made of unpainted wood, milky darkness, bookcase, portable stereo, records,chest, two prints by Ben Shahn, travel books, guidebooks, travelogues, maps, a few best-selling novels, biography of Mozart, sheet music, several dictionaries, French dictionary with an inscription of some kind written inside the front cover, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, relics from her girlhood, Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, the Platters, dark sea, beacon’s orange light

17

voice, pinball enthusiast, catalog junkie

quiet coffee shop, NHK’s seven o’clock news, crying baby, a planet and a spaceship on the back cabinet, Chicago company, Gilbert and Sands, university lecturer fresh out of graduate school, machine of misfortune

business cards, university lecturer, Spanish, sprinkling water in the desert, the Secpnd World War, the Korean War, bomb-delivery systems, peace industry, bingo machines, slot machines, jukeboxes, popcorn vending machines, 1952, Billboard magazine, Soviet Women’s Corp, Mexico, other Central American nations, the United States, the Big Four, Gottlieb, Bally, Chicago Coin, Williams, oligopoly, Chrysler automobiles, Vancouver, Waikiki, the Big Wave, Orient Express, Sky Pilot, TransAmerica, extremely orthodox and simple, enigma, misfortune, true beauty, phantom masterpiece, a small game arcade in Shinjuku, Shibuya, Maltese Falcon, 165,000, ‘Really something.’

18

oddly peaceful and quiet mood, mad buzzing of a dying bee in a pool of winter sunlight, autumn deepened, piles of dry leaves, slender plumes of smoke, botanical garden, mushroom and spinach sandwiches, oaks, black-tailed birds, new sport shirts, olive-green turtleneck, beige cardigan, socks, new sneakers, Santa Claus, October rains, fragrance of wet fallen leaves

tapes of classic jazz musicians, Bix Beiderbecke, Woody Herman, Bunny Berigan, a shot of whiskey, cookie, metal buttons, sport coat, pale pink lipstick, thin sweaters, autumn air

19

leaving town, unbearable sense of futility, certain sense of relief, TV, old Robert Taylor western, commercials, weather report, white noise, shower, no destination, real dread, flashing beacon, clear morning sunlight

fingertips were yellow with nicotine, twelve twenty, gloomy basement, Coke, rotting, each individual’s choices, void, change, walk slowly

20

November holidays, spaghetti, shiso, basil, serious discussion about the art of cooking spaghetti, ginger ale, passing glory, rose-colored glass, optimistic fool beats the alternative

coffee shop, taxi, Meiji Avenue, gray suit, blue necktie with three diagonal stripes, gray sweater, jeans, scuffed desert boots, Waseda Avenue, Mejiro Avenue, list of pinball fanatics, serial number 165020, February 3, 1971,, Goldfinger, university lecturer’s business card, autumn dusk, suburbs

21

pitch black, layered black, darkness, odd perspective, giant night bird with outspread wings, groves of trees, nice bath, open a beer, my Kant, my warm bed, dream

five hundred yards off the road in the middle of an empty field, deep breaths, chickens, faint illumination, dim relief, the edge of the world, fragrance of grass, smell of chicken, warehouse, cold storage for chicken carcasses, blanket of chill, fifty pinball machines, fifty wine labels, animal crouching in the dark, gray walls, gloomy, foreboding structure,, ice cold doors

22

(…)

23

(…)

24

(…)

25

(…)

Summary and Memoir

prologue

‘I’s’ looking back on his 1969. ‘I’ described the decayed scene of his university.

• The description and situation of this section resembles the world of Norwegian Wood. They are Murakami’s memories of the Japanese student movement.

Naoko talked about memory of her hometown. ‘I’ went alone to her hometown.

Changed the scene, ‘I’ described current his life with twins .

‘I’ talked about Naoko, her background and her family.

‘I’ told this novel begins in September 1973, that’s the entrance, and ‘Sure hope there’s an exit’.

• But, pinball machine has no exit, so the pinballs became competitive.

On the Birth of Pinball

The history of pinball machine according to Raymond Moloney. In 1934, the first pinball machine invented by Raymond Moloney. The story of his was not dynamic, moved or sad story. But his invented pinball machines had mystical or occultic powers that temper people by numerical exchange for skill and pride.

1

‘I’ tell about the twin sisters stay his apartment, and their characteristics.

Now (1973), ‘I’ and his friend open a small translation company. girl. earn money.

The twins wear the navy blue sweatshirts with the numbers 208 and 209.

2

Descriptions of the Rat’s autumn of 1973, his lonely isolated daily life and situation, and his devastating mind.

3

A morning, a repairman of a phone company visited ‘my’ apartment and changed a switch panel. After his job, ‘I’, twins and the repairman have breakfast of coffee, Danish and boiled eggs. Then the old switch panel left on the floor of ‘my’ apartment.

• The old switch panel is a symbol of mother or women.

4

Description of the Rat’s regular visits alone to a beach in his childhood.

Description of the Rat’s visits to the woman’s apartment by a sea.

5

‘My’ memories of 1970 according to a pink pay telephone of the apartment and a girl lived on the second floor.

Description of ‘my’ daily life with twins.

6

The Rat’s life of his mountainside perch. Sometimes he see the sign of human activity on the hillside below.

• The words of ‘a golfer’ and ‘downhill course’ course connected with ‘my’ life?

The first meeting of the Rat’s girl friend. He bought her electric typewriter listed in the Used Goods section on a local new paper.

7

A day, ‘I’ caught cold but he finished his daily work.

After back home, ‘I’ went to bed. And the twins made dinner and play the Beatles’ Rubber Soul record.

8

The Rat went to a cemetery near a crest of mountain with his girlfriend. Descriptions of the cemetery and feelings of them.

9

‘I’ strolled the golf course.

In ‘my’ apartment, ‘I’ and twins talked about the old switch panel.

10

A description of the Rat’s repetitive dull life.
A the Rat’s visiting to J’s Bar. After the visiting, the Rat drove the seaside road, then he viewed the apartment of his girlfriend.

11

A fine rainy Sunday morning, ‘I’ and twins went to a reservoir and held a funeral of the old switch panel. They made and watched the old switch panel sank into the bottom of the reservoir.

12

‘My’ daily work of a Thursday. ‘I’ and the girl with long legs went to a great lobster restaurant.

13

A Sunday evening in October, when ‘I’ and twins sat on the green of the golf course and watching the sunset, anywhy ‘I’ recalled the memories of the pinball machine and it seized ‘me’.

In 1970, ‘I’ and the Rat, especially the Rat absorbed in the Spaceship pinball machine in the J’s Bar.

• After disappearing the old switch panel, then my searching for the pinball machine began.
• Recalling of the pinball machine bring about the former part of this story.
• ‘I’ absorbed in numbers of game.

14

Descriptions of the Rat’s dull daily life and the memory of ‘my’ first visit to J’s Bar in ‘my’ eighteen.

15

In the winter of 1970, during six mouths, ‘I’ enthusiasticaly soaked up the Spaceship pinball machine of a game arcade, identical to the one at J’s Bar.

• The Spaceship pinball machine is woman.

But the pinball machine disappeared in February. The game arcade was replaced by an all-night doughnut shop.

16

A hard rainy day, again, the Rat drove the seaside and looked the apartment of his girlfriend and recalled the conditions inside her room.

17

In 1973, ‘I’ started to search the pinball machine. And, ‘I’ appointed a pinball enthusiast.

At a café, ‘I’ talked with a pinball enthusiast Spanish lecturer. He talked about the history of pinball machines and the enigma and misfortune of the Spaceship. Then ‘I’ asked the existence of the Spaceship set up in a small game arcade in Shinjuku. But the lecturer didn’t know one’s whereabouts.

18

A description of my private life with the twins in the autumn.

‘My’ days in the translation office were pleasant.

19

The Rat went to J’s Bar after midnight to tell he would leave the town. But he couldn’t tell his real intention, said only ‘I’m lost’.

20

The Spanish lecturer told ‘me’ to he found out the whereabouts of the pinball machine.

‘I’ and the Spanish lecturer went to the suburban Tokyo by a taxi.

21

‘I’ approached alone the chilly dreary silent treatment for warehouse holding fifty pinball machines by a pinball fanatic.

22

(…)

23

(…)

24

(…)

25

(…)

Chapters about ‘me’, total 16, 14 or 12

: (prologue,) 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, (12, 13,) 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, (25)

Chapters about the Rat, total 10

: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 16, 19, 23, 24

Talking with the long leg girl about their annual office trip on chapter 12, or (and) recalling the pinball on chapter 13 is the turning point of this novel.

Analysis and Remark

• The former part of this novel is the story of old switch panel and the Rat’s love with his girlfriend. The later part is the story of searching for the pinball machine and the Rat’s days of demolition.
• On this second novel, Murakami’s work entered a state of overflow of signs in consumer society.
• The Rat’s ruined idle life is meaningless and stagnant. Also ‘my’ life is lifeless and stagnant.
• ‘I’ hate the centralization system symbolized the switching panel, and but ‘I’ like the game of numbers.
• Hear the Wing Sing is a story of summer 1970, this novel is a story of autumn 1973, following, A Wild Sheep Chase is a story of winter 1978.
• The summer went by, the Rat’s mind made sick. In the autumn, it fell in to ruin.
• This novel is a story about devices, and contains two urban adventure about devices (the old switch panel and the three flippers pinball machine). And the twins are not human, they seem to be pets or marionettes of ‘me’ to cure him.
• When the old switch panel had disappeared, I remembered the pinball machine. And when ‘I’ had met again with the pinball machine, the twins left for anywhere.
• Is the pinball machine and old switch panel is a mediator of changing from analogue to digital? Or, metaphor of forgettable things and losers by changing era?
• The pinball machine seems to be mataphor of memories of the Rat or looser as the Rat, but factually ‘she’ is a metaphor of Naoko or memory of her.

Details of the Book

Wind/Pinball: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 (Two Novels) (Vintage International)
Haruki Murakami, Ted Goossen
Vintage Books, London, 3 May 2016
256 pages, $16.00, Canada $19.95
ISBN 978-0804170147
Contents

• The Birth of My Kitchen-Table Fiction: An Introduction to Two Short Novels
• Hear the Wind Song
• Pinball, 1973

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