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Synopsis & Review | After Dark by Haruki Murakami & Jay Rubin, Vintage Books, 2008 (originally published in 2004)

Summary Synopsis

At autumn midnight, in Shibuya, a 19 years old boyish and innocent girl, a student of the University of Foreign Studies, Mari Asai was reading a thick book at Denny’s. Her sister’s ex-classmate Tetsuya Takahashi found her and shared the table with her. Then Kaoru, the manager of a love hotel, Alphaville, got her to speak and help a Chines prostitute girl, Dongli who was ruined and robbed of her belongings.

Simultaneously, Mari’s older sister Eri Asai who had been slept for two months was shut into the room in a TV screen by the Man with No Face, and suffered meaningless violence…

Mari had grown by to come across night people, Takahashi, Kaoru, Korogi and a bartender. In the morning she got back home, got into Eri’s bed…

Book Review

After Dark is Haruki Murakami’s 12th long novel, and an experimental 18 chapters long novel describes occurrences during a midnight by the objective third-person viewpoint. And each part is attached to pictures of a clock, and it shows the passage of time. The original Japanese hardcover edition is 294 paged book. But substantial content or plot of this novel is a novelette, and it isn’t significant story. This novel only describes very very long midnight occurrences during 7 hours. I think this novel is short as a long novel, very long as a story of 6 or 7 hours occurrences. Because there are lots of short chattings and objective descriptions.

This story is the story of to connect, to sync and to exchange symbols, metaphorical meanings or something among three girls (Mari, Eri and Dongli), and between Mari and night people, Eri and Man with No Face, and Dongli and Shirakawa. Each chapter is basically divided by the episodes of Mari Asai, Eri Asai, Kaoru and Shirakawa, each plot progresses simultaneously, and each episode connects directly or indirectly in real or metaphorical meanings. It may signify fragmental connections and information in the internet space. The situation was described by the third-person point like the view of Google Earth and Google Street View.

Mari knew Curtis Fuller's Five Spot After Dark, her most favourite movie is Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, and wore a Boston Red Sox cap (She was given the cap by a friend only, and was not interested in baseball.). These things mean randomness of knowledge in the global culture and the internet. And, Mari’s coming across a Chinese girl Dongli, Shirakawa’s escape imply random encounter of the era of globalization and internet.

Takahashi’s saying “Say your sister is in some other Alphaville kind of space—I don’t know where—and somebody is subjecting her to meaningless violence”, and Mari’s reply “In a metaphorical sense?”. (p.130) ”Aspects of the interrelationship of thought and action” (p. 153) of which Shirakawa considered. They imply the most important theme of this novel. There are proper or accidental connections in physical or metaphorical senses in the world, for better or worse, like a network or the internet. So the contemporary world is moving and changing.

In this novel, Murakami splendidly described the situation, state, atmosphere and communication in the age of network and globalization and the 00’s internet and cellphone era. The era in which people connect through the internet and cellphones, and meet at third places such as family restaurants, convenience stores, fast-food shops and Starbucks café as points of networks. Third places connect things and people from global to local.

Also this novel is a story of experiences of Mari during 7 hours. Mari came across and talked with adult night people, exchanged kindness and tenderness, then she grew up. And it’s profound and beautiful experiences have positive influence on some characters and readers, and give readers good feelings.

This story is beautiful and impressive, it's a precious thing for me, but it's not masterpiece and grand narrative. I think this novel is one of fine works of Murakami.

Details of the Book

After Dark
Haruki Murakami (Author), Jay Rubin (Translator)
Vintage Books, London, 5 June 2008
208 pages, £6.99
ISBN: 978-0099506249

Book Review | Drive My Car from Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami & Philip Gabriel, Vintage, 2017 (Originally Published in 2014)

This story is a story about driving as a spiritual activity, acting as a common activity and differences between men and women. The content is not directly relevant to the Beatles’ song, Drive My Car. But concerning from the lyrics, “She said, ‘baby, can’t you see I want to be famous, a star on the screen. But you can do something in between’.” and “Baby, you can drive my car. Yes I’m gonna be a star.” (A girl said to a boy.), this title is an irony to Kafuku.

This story is a story about car as a machine. But car is not only a machine, one’s driving reflects the human mind, sensibility, characteristics and personality. Driving a car in this novel is a psychological and spiritual activity. It is like playing a musical instrument, communicating to the environment or the world, a reflection of self and a spiritual treatment for one’s mind. And it’s an enjoyable and refreshing act also a life-threatening act that hurts and damages other(s) and self.

Also, this story is a story about actors and acting. Acting is a psychological and spiritual activity too. Kafuku said he can become someone by acting and it’s fun, and people all play roles. And, on Novelist as a Profession Murakami wrote he can become someone by writing a novel. In this novel, I think the profession of actor is a symbol of today’s people. He acts in a role made by other(s). We all act something social roles, but by the roles, anyone lost their true selves. It’s essential problem in the contemporary world.

The notion by Kafuku in the first part, suggests women can’t separate consciousness and action, and mind and body while an activity. So he founded a kind of tension in women's drivings. And women can truly act a role in a drama. So his wife couldn't separate herself and roll, and she slept with actors with which she co-starred.

Watari Misaki, an inelegant and manly woman who smokes her favourite Marlboro cigarettes (a symbol of American masculinity), is a person who can across men and women. Watari in Japanese means “go across” or “cross over”, and Misaki means “cape”. She can go across between capes of men and women, can talk naturally with men as an individual, or can understand the minds of each of men and women. She helped Kafuku to heal his heart by put him in the passenger seat, driving his car and talking about his and her past.

And this novel is Murakami's own thoughts about and reflection on writing and woman. Driving and actings is an activity to enjoy its operation, transition and moving. And I think both of them are partial metaphors of writing a novel. Acting is an activity of interpreting and tracing others’ stories. On Novelist as a Profession Murakami wrote to write a novel is to ride on or to fill a content with a proper vehicle or container. (This long short story is a small-medium size vehicle.) In these two activities are equal to writing a novel, Murakami described the mental differences of men and women. On these activities to commit stories, states of men and women appear differently, men can’t understand the core of the state of mind of women and its reason and mechanism.

Via this short story, Murakami succeeds to express about the mysteriousness of women he thinks, through to describe driving car and acting.

Details of the Book

Men Without Women

Haruki Murakami

Bungeishunju, Tokyo, 7 October 2016

300 pages, JPY 748

ISBN: 978-4167907082

Men Without Women: Stories
Haruki Murakami (Author), Philip Gabriel (Translator), Ted Goossen (Translator)
Vintage, London, 17 May 2018
240 pages, £9.99
ISBN: 9781784705374
Contents:

Drive My Car
Yesterday
An Independent Organ
Cheherazade
Kino
Samsa in Love
Men Without Women

Synopsis & Review | Ghosts from the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, Faber and Faber, 1992 (Originally Published in 1986)

Summary Synopsis

A private detective, Blue took a riddle case by White. The request is to watch a mysterious man, Black. But, Black did not do anything. He just sat beside the window, write something, read Walden by Henry David Sorrow and took a brief stroll. To watch and to think about Black, Blue felt complex feelings mixed up friendship, calmness, worry and hostility, and a feeling to watch like a Doppelgänger. Blue searched Black by some measures, but the case didn’t make progress. About one year passed by, Black’s life didn’t vary. A summer day, Blue followed Black, Black took a seat at a lounge of a hotel, and Blue shared the table with Black. Then Black said “I’m a private detective. My current job is to watch someone. He doesn't do anything…"

Book Review

Ghosts is a novelette by Paul Auster and the second volume of his New York Trilogy. And the most symbolic and representative work of the trilogy. This novel is to be said “postmodernist literature”, but the expression and the description are plain, yet to understand the veritable meanings of content and theme is difficult. The style of this novel is unique and particular, and the description is minimal and metaphorical. This novel is a psychological and philosophical story that uses the form and style of a detective story or mystery story, describes the lack of human existence, the question for self, the emptiness of contemporary routine life and the impossibility of writing a novel or a story. Also, it’s a novelette to deconstruct the form and the significance of story or grand narrative.

Blue was requested by White, to watch and investigate Black and to send weekly reports. But Black only did his routine in solitude more than one year, and to watch Black, Blue felt a dilemma between friendship or pity and impatience or anxiety, and to watch his Doppelgänger or looking-glass self. And Blue couldn’t act freely, he was in a closed and limited situation, he reflected on his life and tormented the strange existence of Black. So this novel is a detective story without an incident and a mystery without a murder, and no significant incident occurred until the end. Half of this novel describes the contemporary sober and monotonous life and its emptiness. I think one theme of this novel is the lack of self and real existence of people live in contemporary society, and to escape from the monotonous routine life.

Characters of this novel are named by colors. It has an effect the world of this novel appears monotonous, colorless and blur to a reader. Colors are signifiers or surficial meanings of things and persons, it implies today’s people and things have no reality, soul and content. The names of colors strengthen the world of this novel become monotonous.

And the word ghost in this novel means traces or spirits of persons who passed away, and a metaphor of men of emptiness such as writers, detectives and the state of today’s people spent a vacant life. Writers and detectives think out, make up or trace others’ stories or plots, they don’t live a story of themselves. On the other hand, today’s people live in story or discours made by others or society. I think this novel splendidly succeeded to describe the nothingness and the impossibility of writing story itself by describing a novel.

In this novel, White's request is impossible at first and his aim was ambiguous. So Blue and readers seek an incident and an enigma themselves. In the other words, they seek the story and the meanings to follow.

In the end, Blue found a pile of paper in Black’s room was Blue’s weekly reports. This implies the story and the world of this novel are operated by Black. Blue was controlled by Black, also readers are controlled by him. And the story can’t be said as a proper story, it’s vain and nothing had happened. Then Blue read Black’s manuscript and he knew it was Blue’s story, Black’s biography is identical to Blue’s life or this novel Ghosts itself that we read. This novel is a novel about a novel. And, so, this novel is also a story that deconstructs and breaks out of the modern subjective structure of story.

This novel is also a story of many excellent, vivid and skillful citations and cited episodes. Citations are Blue’s aspiration in his head and his wish to escape from dull Black’s case and the unexciting life. Also, the story is made up of parts and fragments, it's the thought about the literature of Paul Auster. By Auster’s thought, a story is only built by others’ fragments and data for better or worse. And writer or novelist doesn’t write by his subjectivity.

Paul Auster deconstructed the proper story by writing a novel, and he succeeded to write a story of the nothingness or the nihilism as today’s problem of there’s no story and its meanings, the impossibility of writing by writing the nothingness itself causes the impossibility of writing a story.

I think this novel is today's existentialist novel which describes the sufferings of existence as today’s people have no self and real existence. There’s no proper, positive and subjective story. We must live in the world of emptiness, nothingness and that stories are deconstructed.

The later part of this novel is the beginning of the end, Blue said. I think this novel is Paul Auster’s end of the beginning. His beginning is this radical and brilliant deconstruction of story or novel, then his true novelist career and veritable his own grand story begun from following works.