LoT Book CLub - Book 2 - Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

Spoiler:

It's almost oas if he passivly accepts anything that happens in his life, no matter how odd, shocking or strange. He just acknowledges the fact that these things are odd or shocking but doesn't seem to actually react in any assertive way to these things.

Spoiler:

This reminds me of the convo he had with May where she says that some things are just weird because they are supposed to be weird. That if her parents put macaroni in the microwave and ravioli came out (or something like that) they would just assume that they put the wrong thing in, when really the macaroni had changed into ravioli. Toru is the opposite, it seems.

[€uroMeinke]

Page 362

Spoiler:

Okay, I finally got to the scene I was hoping a second read would make more illucidating - the boy watching the two men bury a cat/infant body - and I still wonder:

Is that Mr. Honda as a child, his ability to hear the wind-up bird a telling of his own connection with the other world?

Or is it a moment in Toru's childhood, or Noboru's, or maybe even foreshadowing of Cinnamon's? Perhaps it is/can be of any or all of them?

Is the house the Miywaki's place, and is the act before the war which defiled the place and brought bad luck to those who lived there? Or was it the acts of war that ultimately blocked the flow of the well?

And who are the two men, one sort of like the boy's father - the other tall in a hat. Having read Kafka on the shore, I got chills thinking it was foreshadowing of Johnny Walker - especially if the body was that of a cat

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

Page 362

Spoiler:

Okay, I finally got to the scene I was hoping a second read would make more illucidating - the boy watching the two men bury a cat/infant body - and I still wonder:

Is that Mr. Honda as a child, his ability to hear the wind-up bird a telling of his own connection with the other world?

Or is it a moment in Toru's childhood, or Noboru's, or maybe even foreshadowing of Cinnamon's? Perhaps it is/can be of any or all of them?

Is the house the Miywaki's place, and is the act before the war which defiled the place and brought bad luck to those who lived there? Or was it the acts of war that ultimately blocked the flow of the well?

And who are the two men, one sort of like the boy's father - the other tall in a hat. Having read Kafka on the shore, I got chills thinking it was foreshadowing of Johnny Walker - especially if the body was that of a cat

Spoiler:

I always thought it was Cinnamon. I assumed the reason he no longer talked was because a large portion of him got stuck in that world. Thus getting back in bed and seeing that he was already there.

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

Spoiler:

He may be other things in addition to passive, but I would definitely use the word passive as ONE of the adjectives I'd use in describing Toru. Although he does take action at certain times, he lets things happen to him quite a bit. I just was reading where he finds Creta naked, next to him in bed. He basicially does nothing about this situation but cover her with a quilt. Then he falls asleep again on the couch. Then they have this very odd conversation over breakfast and Toru that is completely unlike any conversation I've ever had. So very accepting to her odd story of showing up at his house sans clothes.

Spoiler:

I agree, he certainly took action when he quit his job. That was a bold move, but it seemed like he didn't have any plans after that, then he became passive and sat around, waiting for something to happen.

It's interesting when he describes his garden as only getting light for a very short amount of time during the day, very similar to the experience he and others will find in the well.

[Not Afraid]

Originally Posted by DreadPirateRoberts

Spoiler:

It's interesting when he describes his garden as only getting light for a very short amount of time during the day, very similar to the experience he and others will find in the well.

Great observation!

I finished Book 2 last night and have been looking back for a conversation netween Toru and May (or maybe it was Creta) about hate. She(?) says something about hate being something that is not separated from you, it is connected to you and that, when you lash out in hatred at someone, you are lashing out at yourself. However, I can't find this passage anywhere.

What brought it up to me was the dream of the man with the guitar case.

Spoiler:

In Toru's dream, after Toru beats him up, the man with the guitar case (Norobu?) takes out a knife and peels off his skin. The skin then slinks across the floor and completely covers Toru. I thought this was an illustration of the passage I read earlier (but can't find) - how hate ends up effecting you as much as the person you hate.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Spoiler:

Yeah, definitely Cinnamon. The morning muteness + the appearance of his Wind Up Bird Chronicles on the computer confirm that for me.

[Alex]

Ok, finished it today. I have to spend a bit of time processing it but I absolutely loved the first part and, and first consideration anyway, found the last act pretty lame (from the appearance of Nutmeg on). Kind of like a weaker Stephen King novel.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Ok, finished it today. I have to spend a bit of time processing it but I absolutely loved the first part and, and first consideration anyway, found the last act pretty lame (from the appearance of Nutmeg on). Kind of like a weaker Stephen King novel.

Once again proving that Alex and I are the inverse of each other most of the time.

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Euro

Okay, I finally got to the scene I was hoping a second read would make more illucidating - the boy watching the two men bury a cat/infant body - and I still wonder:

Spoiler:

Wow, I'd forgotten about that. I had no clue who it was until GD mentioned Cinnamon. That kinda bugs me now. WTF happened there? Who were the men, what were they doing?

[Alex]

When do we get to stop talking in spoiler tags?

[Alex]

I was browsing the reader reviews of the book at Amazone to try and help me put my thoughts in order and came across this review that might be of interest. A quick search didn't turn up any other mentions of this so I don't know if it is accurate but thought the people more familiar with Murakami may have heard about it.

Link, don't know if it will work.

Many of the previous reviews do a great job of discussing this novel, and I will not repeat that discussion here.

But what the previous reviews do not mention is that the American publishers, Knopf, forced Murakami and his translator, Jay Rubin, to significantly abridge the original Japanese text. The casual reader would have no way of knowing this, and, indeed, I only noticed because I was reading alternating chapters of the book in English and Russian translations. Half-way through the novel, entire chapters suddenly started disappearing from the English-language text. Puzzled, I went back to the copyright page of the English-language edition, where, for the first time, I noticed the cryptic notation that the book was not only translated but also "adapted from the Japanese."

How much of the original text was "adapted" away? I don't read Japanese, but, based on a comparison with my Russian-language translation, which appears to be complete (no Russian publisher would commit such a travesty on an award-winning novel), it seems that something like 15-20% of the text has been cut. For those of you who find the English-language text of the "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" choppy, or puzzling, or seemingly incomplete, at least some of the blame lies at the feet of the American publishers who decided, unilaterally, that American readers cannot handle a long book.

Anyway, the upshot is that if you can comfortably do so, try to read the "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" in a non-English translation. Or, if you can't, demand that Jay Rubin's original and complete English-language translation be published.