Life has been pretty interesting lately; I've broken from a lot of my normal routines in some important ways. I've frequently lamented the fact that I never read anymore over the past couple of years even as I contributed volumes upon volumes of text to this blog. I felt myself improving as a writer just by turning it into a routine, but it's an accepted fact that reading the work of others is one of the best ways to improve. I'm not sure why I neglected that for so long or why I've had a number of false starts. My last honest attempt was Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a book I very much enjoyed--until stopping about 3/4ths of the way through it for reasons I cannot articulate.
I think one of the more wonderful things about relationships is that they tend to encourage you to try new things and to broaden your horizons in order to make yourself into a better person. There is something beautiful about sharing those things that you're most passionate about with someone for whom you care for. I'm now more comfortable driving an hour away to the marginally bigger town neighboring mine, for instance--and I'm more comfortable doing it on a regular basis. I've spent a lot of time cleaning my house and scrubbing away the dust of neglect that has settled over my home like some implacable cloud. I've spent more time watching movies, of course, and as I hinted, I've started to more seriously make an effort to read, starting with another Murakami classic, Norwegian Wood, a book I happened to come across as Barnes & Noble. I remembered it being recommended to me sometime ago--and I already knew I enjoyed Murakami's writing, so I decided to give it a shot.
Norwegian Wood is evidently more straightforward and simply told than other books in Murakami's catalogue. What I read of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle certainly bordered on surreal, whereas Norwegian Wood strikes me more as a memoir of sorts, a tale of the protagonist's experiences throughout college, told through the voice of his older self, who remembers the events of those days with startling clarity. It is a story of love, of loss, of a stoic loner who has difficulty opening up to others but will listen intently to what they have to say. I was stunned by the effortless beauty and tragedy of many of these stories, particularly when it came to the stories of Naoko and Reiko, two principal characters with which the protagonist, Toru Watanabe, interacts.
Watanabe recounts his experiences with an anal roommate nicknamed Storm Trooper, whose rigid adherence to routine and cleanliness earned him the moniker. He is a source of laughter (and not a small amount of ridicule) for Watanabe and others with which he converses throughout the story, but he finds himself struggling with a dull emptiness when he disappears without a trace. Nagasawa is a charismatic womanizer who nonetheless finds himself drawn to classic literature like Watanabe himself and thus strikes up a friendship and drags him into his various hijinks. Norwegian Wood features several colorful characters like these that all have their own unique perspectives and connect with Watanabe in their own ways. I found myself identifying with him as an introvert, as he so frequently found himself in situations where he spent times with others in intimate one-on-one situations. It seemed clear that this is with what he found himself most comfortable--and always he is more content to listen and consider the words of others before contributing his own.
There is a tragic beauty to Norwegian Wood and how it handles issues of love and loss, and the depths it plumbs in discussing the sickness with which one's heart finds itself stricken when those one loves and cares for are taken from them. Murakami is frequently startlingly frank with his approach toward intimacy and sexuality--refreshingly so. I found myself affected with a not insignificant level of melancholy upon finishing the book, although not out of dissatisfaction. I found myself drawn to the struggles of Watanabe and Naoko, of their shared love and their conflicts, and how in some way they were never resolved. Just like real life, there is frequently never a solid and final answer for some problems--and even when things seem to be getting better, it is never certain things are going to work out. Watanabe and Naoko are connected by their love for a fallen friend, Kizuki, whose death reverberated through their lives in unpredictable ways. For Naoko, who loved Kizuki, it caused a wound that might never fully heal.
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