Tag: Haruki Murakami

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Timeline of Haruki Murakami

1949 – Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan. His parents are both junior high japanese teachers. His father was the son of a Buddhist priest. His mother was the daughter of a merchant of Osaka.

1951 – The family moved to Shukugawa, Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture. Murakami raised in Nishinomiya, Ashiya and Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture (Ashiya is the exclusive residential district of Kansai area next to Kobe, and Kobe is the second largest port town of Japan).

Opposition to his parents’ occupations, Murakami devoted himself to and has been deeply influenced by Western and American literature and culture. He spent his teen years reading ‘World Literature Collection’ and ‘World Literature’.

1968 – Murakami spent a year preparing for the entrance examination, he entered Waseda University (the second best private university in Japan) in Tokyo, where he met his wife, and studied drama and cinema.

1971 – Married with Yoko Takahashi.

1974 – Opened a jazz café (the Japanese unique style of café, coffee shops play Jazz records all day long.) ‘the Peter Cat’ at Kokubunji, suburban Tokyo.

1975 – Graduated Waseda University. His graduate thesis is The Chronicle of Journeys on American Cinema in which he mentioned New Hollywood and Easy Rider.

1977 – Moved the café to Sendagaya, Shibuya, Tokyo.

1978 – Murakami was inspired to write novel while watching a baseball game at the Meiji Jungu Stadium (home stadium of the Sankei Atoms).

1979 – His first novel Hear the Wind Sing recieved the Gunzo Newcomer Literary Prize, then published. And it nominated the Akutagawa Prize, but defeated.

1980 – Pinball, 1973 Again, it nominated the Akutagawa Prize but consequently defeated. Nevertheless some committees (Junnosuke Yoshiyuki, Kenzaburo Oe and Saiichi Maruya) praised.

1981 – Sold the café to a friend and started to write for a living. Moved to Funabashi, Chiba.

1982 – Murakami’s first full-length novel, A Wild Sheep Chase was published and received the Noma Literary Newcomer’s Prize. This novel is full-scale (post-)modern urban adventure, and he began to construct his grand narrative.

1984 – Moved to Fujisawa, Kanagawa.

1985 – Moved to Sendagaya, Shibuya. Murakami’s master-piece Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World received the Tanizaki Prize.

1986 – In February, moved to Ohiso, Kanagawa. From October, stayed Roma and Athens for a time. (Far Drums)

1987 – Norwegian Wood , Murakami’s first love story but out of ordinary love story.

1988 – Dance, Dance, Dance , concluding work of Murakami’s career till that time.

1989 – The first English translation publish internationally of Murakami’s works, A Wild Sheep Chase translated by Alfred Birnbaum, Kodansha International. Then, in 90’s, in the short term, Murakami got a international recognition and reputation.

1991 – January, Went to the US as a associate researcher of Princeton University.

1992 – In January, nominated an associate professor at Princeton University (till August 1993). South of the Border, West of the Sun

1993 – In July, transferred and taught at William Howard Taft University (till May 1995).

1994 – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle volume 1 and 2

1995 – Returned to Japan. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle volume 3 For The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award (Best Novel).

1997 – The first nonfiction by Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche received the Takeo Kuwabara Prize (1999).

1998 – Underground 2: the Place that Was Promised

1999 – Sputnik Sweetheart

2000 – Moved to Ohiso, Kanagawa.

2002 – Kafka on the Shore prized the World Fantasy Award.

2004 – After Dark

2006 – Murakami received the Franz Kafka Prize. For Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, he received the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

2009 – In January, Murakami received the Jerusalem Prize, he made the “wall and egg” speech. 1Q84 received the Mainichi Publishing Culture Prize.

2010 – Film Norwegian Wood , directed by French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung.

2011 – Murakami awarded the International Catalunya Prize. By the speech, he criticized the nuclear policy of Japan and mentioned about the impermanence of Japanese.

2013 – Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

2014 – He awarded the Welt-Literaturpreis.

2016 – He awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

2017 – Killing Commendatore

Related Posts and Pages

Keywords of Haruki Murakami

Note (EN) | Novelist as a Vocation

Book Review | Abandoning a Cat, When I Talk About My Father

Note | Abandoning a Cat, When I Talk About My Father

Note (EN) Horned Owl Spreads Its Wings Only With the Falling of the Dusk (Haruki Murakami A Long, Long Interview) with Mieko Kawakami

Note (EN) | Hear the Wind Sing

Book Review | Killing Commendatore

Works of Haruki Murakami

Literature / littérature / Literatur Page

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Note | Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami & Ted Goossen, Vintage Books

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.

Haruki Murakami Pinball 1973 Vintage Books Relationship Chart

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

Related Posts and Pages

Note (EN) | Hear the Wind Sing

Note (EN) | A Wild Sheep Chase

Note (EN) | Norwegian Wood

Note (EN) | Novelist as a Vocation

Book Review | Killing Commendatore

Note (EN) | Killing Commendatore, Book 1

Note (EN) | Killing Commendatore, Book 2

Note (EN) Horned Owl Spreads Its Wings Only With the Falling of the Dusk (Haruki Murakami A Long, Long Interview) with Mieko Kawakami

Timeline of Haruki Murakami

Works of Haruki Murakami

Literature / littérature / Literatur Page

YouTube Haruki Murakami Commentary Playlist

YouTube Literature & Philosophy Channel

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Note | Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami & Ted Goossen, Vintage Books

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.

J

: 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

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

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