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Information of the Book

‘Hear the Wind Sing’ by Haruki Murakami is the first novel of Haruki Murakami and the first published novel of Murakami, and the first volume of the ‘trilogy of the Rat’.

Outline and Style

This novel is composed of fragments of descriptions of 1970 and past (childhood and school years) by ‘I’ on 1979, and reflections and tales by ‘I’. This fragments are composed of 40 chapters.
This story begins August 8 and end August 28 1970. It’s only a record of a boring summer days of a adolescence. Also ‘I’ told his memories and way of life, and his thought and method about literature and writing while referring to Derek Hartfield (an imaginary writer).

Characters

“I” (narrator)

: A student of a university in Tokyo, his major is biology. 20 years old. In his childhood, he had treatments by a psychiatrists. Before became 18 years old, he encountered works of Derek Hartfield. He have a bother left for the United States. He have three uncles. He had been slept with three girls. Because of the family rule, he had been polished his father’s shoes everyday. Now (1979), he married with his wife, live in Tokyo and write novels(!?).

The Rat

: A student of a university in the town. A friend of ‘I’. He is from a rich family but he hate rich. He dropped out a university. And he decided to write a novel.

: The bartender and owner of a small bar ‘J’s Bar’. A Chinese man, but he never visited China. He speaks better Japanese than ‘I’. He always fries fried potatoes.

Girl, left hand had only four fingers

: A shop assistant of a small record shop on the harbor town.

Girl, lent ‘I’ her ‘California Girls’ record

: She made a request of the song on the NEB for me, so the DJ called ‘I’. But she didn’t before ‘I’. She had dropped out of the collage because of illness.

Disc Jockey

: A disc jockey of The Greatest Hits Request Show on NEB Radio. He phoned ‘I’ by the request of Girl, lent ‘I’ her ‘California Girls’ record, and read the letter from a girl suffers incurable disease on his radio show.

Psychiatrist

: A doctor treated ‘I’ in ‘I’s’ childhood. He told ‘I’ to the worth of communication.

Derek Hartfield

: An imaginary author or novelist was created by Murakami. A man of the same age with Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, was born in 1909, a small town, Ohio. He was an unfortunate writer. He sold his fifth short novel to “Weird Tales” for twenty dollars in 1930. The next year, he wrote and wrote 70,000 words per month, in the following year, it gained 100,000 words, in the year before he passed away, it was 150,000 words. There’s the legend that he must change and buy again a Remington typewriter every six months. Most of his works are adventure story or horror story. His biggest hit series is Waldo, Boy Adventure a mixture of both of them. His text is difficult to read, the story is random and the theme is immature. But he was few writer which can use words as a weapon. On a clear Sunday morning, in June 1938, he jumped from the Empire State Building holding a portrait of Hitler and put up an umbrella. (1, 40)

The narrator learned much about writing by Hartfield. Hartfield said about good text like below: “Writing a text is only a act of confirmation of the distance to things surrounding myself. What a writer needs is not sense, but is a ruler” in his work What’s So Bad About Feeling Good? (1936). (1)

In his semi-autobiographical novel, One and a Half Times Around the Rainbow (1937), Hartfield revealed his real intention like this “I take an oath swearing the most sacred book an alphabetised telephone book. Life is vain, but there’s salvation. At first, there wasn’t vain. We made effort and struggled many times, and we wore out it. No matter what who must know this fact should read Romain Roland’s Jean-Christophe.” Hartfield opinion was novel must can be expressed by a graph or a timeline rather than significance, the accuracy is increased in proportion the amount of text gains. (34)

The narrator may didn’t write a novel, if he had not came a work of Derek Hartfield. Anyway it altered his way of life. (Afterword: Derek Hartfield, Again)

Few years later (from the story of this novel), the narrator visited the small tomb of Hartfield in Ohio. He lay on his back beside the tomb, closed eyes and listened a song of swallows for hours. (Afterword)

The third girl I slept with

: A French literary major girl, I came across in the library of the university. On a day of the next spring vacation, she passed away by herself in the shabby grove of trees in the university. (19) She said the narrator’s male organ is “Your raison d’être.” (23) She wasn’t beautiful suitable for her personality. The narrator had one picture of her. In the picture, she is 14 years and cut her hair like the pixie cut of Jean Seberg, and it’s the most beautiful appliance of her. She said seriously she entered the university to obtain a divine revelation. Nobody knows why she passed away, it’s the same with her. (26) She must be the same character of Naoko in Pinball, 1973 and Norwegian Wood.

My class mate girl (the first girl friend), Hippie girl

Girl is in a hospital

Thirtyish woman in a gaudy, French sailor

Places

J’s Bar

: The place that ‘I’ and the Rat visit frequently and spent the whole summer, drinking much of beer, eating so many peanut.

Key Elements and Keywords

beer, peanut

: ‘I’ and the Rat always drink beer and eat peanut at J’s Bar during the summer.

fried potatoes

: ’The Rat and I … scattering enough peanut shells to cover the entire floor of J’s Bar to a depth of two inches.’ (p. 8-9) But, in this novel, fried potatoes fried by J appears several times.

cigarette

: ‘I’, the Rat and the girl with nine fingers smoke cigarettes many times.

raison d’être

: The third ‘not beautiful’ girl told ‘I’s’ penis is his raison d’être. On the other hand ‘I’ looked for his human existence in numbers.

1. Derek Hartfield, writing, elephant, Fitzgerald, Empire State Building, Adolf Hitler, ‘What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?’, Kennedy, literature, art, notebook with a line drawn down the middle

2. August

3. rich, beer, the Titanic, peanut, boredom, Rorschach test, two green monkeys, ‘To be blunt’, tomorrow’s weather, bathtub plug

4. shiny black Fiat 600, pizza, cigarettes, Richard Burton, war movie, lucky pair, sneaker, butt, monkey cage, vending machine, ocean, beach

5. books, ‘A Sentimental Education’, Flaubert, ‘Route 66’, portable TV, incurable disease

7. psychiatrist, cold orange juice, two doughnuts, portrait of Mozart, goat, heavy gold watch, every Sunday afternoon, muffins, apple pie, syrupy pancakes, honeyed croissants, dentist, civilization, communication, a big fat zero, free association, cat, elephant, fish, sausages, flood of words

8. early-morning sun, radio calisthenics broadcast, terry-cloth blanket, Worcestershire sauce

9. ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, postcard, whiskey, hairbrush, shoulder bag, wallet, lipstick, aspirin, bull

10. heavy door of J’s Bar, French fries, unwashed armpits, French sailors, corned beef sandwich, Gimlet, baseball game, life insurance, airline, potato chips, sanitary napkins, Johnny Hallyday, jukebox, Adamo, Michel Polnareff, neuralgic cow, ‘The Mickey Mouse Club Song’

11. The Greatest Hits Request Show, NEB Radio, haiku, Brook Benton, ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’, Creedence Clearwater Revival, ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain’, cold Coke

12. rattan chair, cheese cracker, radio, spaghetti, hiccups, ‘California Girls’, the Beach Boys, student, biology, special T-shirt, stand-up comic

15. harbor town, small record shop, can of Coke, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto number 3, Glenn Gould, Backhaus, Miles Davis, ‘A Gal in Calico’, 5550 yen, Harpers Bizarre

16. Henry James, telephone directory, Roger Vadim, birthday present, Leonard Bernstein

17. the English department of a second-rate school in central Tokyo, McCormack Salad Dressing Corporation

18. wicker chair, shower, south wind, potted plants, balcony, pigeons, Bob Dylan, ‘Nashville Skyline’

19. Empire State Building, the Great Depression, seventeen, true love, brown loafers, white socks, pale green seersucker dress, her odd underwear, wristwatch, the Sunday edition of the Asahi newspaper, the Shinjuku Subway station, Mejiro, white canvas bag, thick windbreaker, two T-shirts, a pair of jeans, three soiled pairs of underwear, few coins, French literature major, school library, tennis courts

20. ginger ale, polishing, father’s shoes, brain cancer, New Year’s cards, can of shaving cream, white wine, IQ, bra size, concert pianist, cocktail glass, vacuum cleaner, biology, animal, Colonel Jim Corbett, the leopard exterminator

21. Jules Michelet, ‘La Sorcière’

22. telephone, local pool, towel, beef stew, sofa, the Top 40 in the radio, shower, a pair of Bermuda shorts, coastal road, chilled white wine, white plates, bowls, fruit knife, TV commercial, ‘Lassie’, debate between a biologist and chemist, Pascal, scientific intuition, vaccines, bowl of salad, rolls, wide-open windows, her records, cup of coffee, the MJQ, Marvin Gaye, an Elvis Presley movie

23. raisin d’être, short story, meaning of life, numbers, August 15 1969, 358 lectures, 54 times sex, 6921 cigarettes

24. Jim Beams, pinball machine, ‘Everyday People’, ‘Woodstock’, ‘Spirit in the Sky’, ‘Hey There Lonely Girl’

25. pancakes, a bottle of Coke, May sunlight, concoction, white popcorn

26. young, beauty, Kennedy, bullet, Jean Seberg, long red gingham dress, divine revelation, angel wings, tissue paper

27. black bird, jungle, toast, apple juice, olive-green cotton suit, neatly pressed shirt, black knit tie, air conditioner, TV news, the hottest day of the summer, roomful of books, river, tennis court, golf course, lengthy row of large houses, tidy restaurants and boutiques, old library, primrose, monkey cage, burning asphalt, memories of summers past, warmth of girl’s skin, old rock ‘n’ roll song, freshly washed button down shirt, odor of cigarette smoke, Kazantzakis, ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’, sunglasses, zoo

28. ocean, mountains, giant port, highway, two-story homes, glassed roof garden, the Rat’s father’s Mercedes-Benz, the Rat’s Triumph TR3, basement garage, Piper Club, old televisions, refrigerators, sofa, coffee table set, stereo equipment, sideboards, penniless, the war, small chemical factory, insect repellent cream, the South Pacific, the Korean War, New Guinea, beer bottle, spring and summer vacation

29. approach of autumn, evening breeze, whiff of autumn rose, bourbon, jukebox, pinball machine

30. being cool, Peter Paul and Mary

31. swimming pool of the hillside hotel, end of summer, American guests, villa, prewar aristocratic family, beautiful garden, ocean, harbor, twenty-five-meter pool, deck chairs, cold Cokes, American military plane, P-38s, DC-6s, DC-7s, Eisenhower, U.S. Navy, sailors, MPs, Sabres, napalm, naïveté, sunglasses, novel, cicadas, the Kennedy half-dollar pendant, Nara, hiking, deep moat, the grave of emperor, frogs, spiders, the cosmos, summer grasses, small hotel bar, superman, plate of fries

32. ‘One and a Half Times Around the Rainbow’, jokes, sarcasm, paradox, vitriol, alphabetized telephone directory, human existence, salvation, erosion, Romain Roland, ‘Jean-Christophe’, information, graphs, charts, Tolstoy, ‘War and Peace’, Cosmic Idea, ‘A Dog of Flanders’, Waldo, Mars, Venus, ‘The Martian Wells’, Ray Bradbury, earthing scientists, civilization

33. the YWCA, French class, umbrellas, black gravestones, enormous sign advertising refrigerators, vanilla ice cream, frozen shrimp, carton of eggs, box of butter, Camembert cheese, boneless ham, fish, chicken legs, tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus, lettuce, grapefruit, cola, carton of milk, absence of salad dressing, ponytail, pink Lacoste polo shirt, white cotton miniskirt, glasses, beach towel

34. lies, modern society, silence, truth, fridge, sausage, lettuce, stale bread, two sandwiches, two cups of instant coffee, chilly night, October, can of salmon, mustard, old movie on TV, ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’, Alec Guinness, nature of human pride

35. small restaurant near the port, simple meal, Bloody Mary, bourbon, cow, cud, lump, lips, evolution, white tablecloth, quiet street, row of warehouses, twilight, fragrance of her shampoo, leaves of the willow trees, Christmas, my birthday, Capricorn, bricks, green moss, rusted doors, shipyard dock, Greek freighter, high waterline, white-painted dock, fragrance of summer, scent of ocean, distant train whistle, touch of a girl’s skin, lemony perfume of her hair, evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams

36. strawberry-flavored toothpaste, gaudy beach towel, jigsaw puzzles made in Denmark, six-color ballpoint pen, terry-cloth blanket, operation, abortion

37. (…)

38. (…)

39. (…)

40. (…)

Summary and Memoir

1.
A discourse about Derek Hartfield, literature and background of ‘I’. ‘I’ encountered his works before 18 years old. At the same time it would be a discourse and reflection about possibility, impossibly, method, means and value of writing and literature.
‘I’s’ writing not a novel, literature or art. His work(s) is a list on ‘a notebook with a line drawn down the middle’.

This chapter is a opinion of literature by ‘I’ according to works and life of Derek Hartfield.
C’est l’opinion littéraire des un impossibility et un désespoir.
The first literary description of Haruki Murakami begins writing about impossibility, possibility, method and value, especially about impossibility, about literature and writing.
End of the chapter 1, ‘I’ declared his work is not a novel, literature or art. And it’s list which classify in two things. It’s a mechanical method of literature.

3.
A conversation between ‘I’ and the Rad at J’s Bar. The Rat any why hates the rich, but he is from a rich family.

4.
The first contact of the Rat and ‘I’. It was three years earlier. They made a clash incident by the Rat’s shiny black Fiat 600 and were smashed and flying down the load. But, fortunately, they are no injured. So they teamed up.

5.
A conversation with the Rat at J’s Bar. They talked about the good things about beer and books. The Rat said the former one is that ‘you piss it all out’. And ‘I’ said he only read books by dead writers, because he can forgive dead writers.

6.
About the Rat’s novel. It contains no sex scenes, and in it there’s no one died. A conversation between the Rat and his girlfriend at somewhere.

‘I’ is a narrator of this novel and the alter ego of Murakami, but the Rat writes novels.
The Rat’s novel contains no sex scenes and deaths, but this novel and other Murakami’s novels contains many of them.

7.
Healings with a psychiatrist doctor in ‘I’s’ childhood at the doctor’s house. ‘I’ was a very quiet child, so his parents worried and took him to a doctor. The doctor taught a meaning and benefit of communication to ‘I’.

A psychiatrist told a meaning and benefit of communication, but ‘I’s’ speech and behavior and description of this novel might deny them.

8.
‘I’ had drunk at J’s Bar. Next morning, ‘I’ woke up in the house of a girl whom he didn’t know.

9.
A conversation between ‘I’ and the girl. The girl woke up and blamed ‘I’. And ‘I’ explained his friend had died of alcohol poisoning.

10.
Conversation with a French sailor and a thirtyish woman in a gaudy at J’s Bar. She talked to ‘I’, but ‘I’ went away from J’s bar when she had phoned.

11.
A disk jockey’s talk on his radio show.

12.
A phone call from the disk jockey to ‘I’ on the radio show. The DJ suggested ‘I’ to should return a new copy to her.

13.
A quotation from the lyrics of ‘California GIrl’ by the Beach Boys.

14.
A T-shirt from the Radio Station arrived three days later. A drawing of T-Shirt by Murakami.

15.
The following morning, ‘I’ unexpectedly encountered a girl with nine finger at a small record shop in the harbor town. She was a shop keeper of the shop. ‘I’ bought records including ‘California Girls’ and suggested her to have lunch together. But, she refused.

16.
A conversation with the Rat at J’s Bar. The Rat said he had been reading a lot since the last time he saw ‘I’. And he quoted Roger Vadim’s words. Then ‘I’ presented the records of Glenn Gould and Miles Davis to the Rat.

17.
‘I’ tried to search the girl lent me the Beach Boys record. But ‘I’ can’t find the girl, because she had dropped out the collage by the reason of illness.

18.
A phone call by the girl with nine fingers. They made an appoint at J’s Bar.

19.
A statement about three girls ‘I”ve slept with. The first girl is a high school classmate. The second is a hippie ‘I’ met in Shinjuku subway station. She left a farewell note consisted of a single word of ‘Asshole’. The third is a French literature major ‘I’ met in the school library. She commited suicide.

20.
Chatting with the girl with nine fingers at J’s Bar. They talk about their families and backgrounds. ‘I’ was late to polish his father’s shoes by the rules of his house. The girl was lost her little finger by a caught in a vacuum cleaner when she was eight. And she has a twin sister have the same face, IQ and bra size.

21.
The third girlfriend ‘I”ve slept with killed herself too. A quotation from Jules Michelet’s ‘La Sorcière’.

22.
At an afternoon, there was phone call from the girl with nine fingers. ‘I’ and the girl have a dinner of beef stew, salad and rolls at her house. They talked about Pascal’s scientific intuition.

23.
The third girl called ‘I’s’ penis ‘I’s’ raison d’être. ‘I’ reflected on the meaning of life, his raison d’être and his proof he really existed. But ‘I’ realized his raison d’être is only numbers, and he became completely alone.

This novel and Murakami’s works have a side of cite or list of signs. A list of sign become a proof of human existence in the consumer societies. On the other side he waved more human stories.

24.
A chat with Rat at J’s Bar. The Rat knocked off five Jim Beams on the rocks, didn’t touch a drop of beer. It was an ominous sign.

25.

The Rat’s favorite food was pancakes that pour a bottle of Coke over the top.

26.
A memory of the third girl. She was no beauty. Her beauty didn’t match her personality. She entered the university in oder to find a divine revelation.

27.
‘I’ recalled memories of summer’s past, during he strolled the town by his car to kill time.

28.
‘I’ talked about his home town. But his talk ended up refer to wealthy the Rat’s father in the town.

29.
Talks with J and situation of J’s Bar and the Rat. As autumn approached, the Rat’s mood became negative.

30.
A confession about a method of expression by ‘I’. ‘I’ decided ‘Toward the end of high school, I decided to express only half of what I was really feeling.’ So ‘I’ became a person can’t express more than half of his feeling.

Impossibility of communication and expression.

31.
A conversation between ‘I’ and the Rat at the swimming pool of the hillside hotel at the top of town. The Rat came out he had dropped out the collage and he decided write a novel. But the Rat seemed anything anxious.

32.
A description about thought of literature by Derek Hartfield and a summary of his short story ‘The Martian Wells’. According to his thought, literature should be information, graphs or charts.

Again, there’s a argument of mechanical inorganic method of literature.

33.
‘I’ and the girl with nine fingers are appointed in front of the YWCA. A description of an enormous sign advertising refrigerators on the roof of an office building next to the YWCA.

There’s a long description of a sign advertising out of proportion to this story.

34.
‘I’s’ thinking about telling lies. The greatest sins afflict modern society are the increasing of lies and silence.

35.
‘I’ and the girl with nine finger take a light meal and drink a bourbon and a Bloody Mary at a small restaurant near the port. Next, they strolled along the harbour. They talked about a cud of half-digested grass put from a abdomen of cow and the evolutions of human and universe. He felt the sign of end of summer.

36.
‘I’ and the girl took a walk to her apartment. They stopped at several show on the way and bought useless stuffs.
In her apartment, ‘I’ told her want to have sex with her. But she denied because of her surgical abortion. And she murmured remembering memories of her family.

37.
(…)

38.
(…)

39.
(…)

40.
(…)

Analysis and Remark

This novel is a story of ‘I’, the Rat and the girl with nine fingers, is also a literary theory by Murakami or ‘I’.
‘I’ is a narrator of this novel and the alter ego of Murakami. And ‘I’ told his mechanical theory of literature and his way of communication, and he encountered works of Derek Hartfied and told Hartfield’s episodes. But the Rat writes novels, even through he hated novels and books at first.
In this novel, the mental condition of ‘I’ got better, but the Rat’s got worse.
The girl lent ‘I’ the Beach Boys record and the girl suffering incurable disease are related?
It can’t be translated well the anonymity characteristics of the leading character as ’I’.
In this novel, no big event or serious incident are occurred or described. ‘I’ didn’t meet the girl lent him the Beach Boys record, the girl with nine fingers denied have sex with ‘I’ and ‘I’ couldn’t say good bye to the Rat.
In this novel, 5 dead people ‘I’ knew (first uncle, second uncle, the third girl ‘I’ slept with. a friend died of alcohol poisoning and father of the girl with nine fingers) are described.
There’s no grand narrative. ’I’ met with the Rat and the girl with nine fingers and they spent boring days while only chatting, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Then the summer had passed before ‘I’ or they knew it.

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