Rounding off the Sheep Chase

The conclusion of A Wild Sheep Chase is, thankfully, satisfying. Which makes me wonder if there's something to the criticisms of 1Q84 and its being unfocused.

It's a sad ending, however, like a napkin named happiness that's been used to dab up the spilled milk of melancholy. Though, reading the ending, the very final sentence evoked the same feeling as gently waking from a dream. Not a pleasant dream, not a terrifying dream, not a dream that you wish to return to, nor a dream that you wish you could never have again in your life. Just a dream. And wow, what an effect that is for a book to have.

Though, it's disappointing that we never do learn the main character's name. I mean, it would have been helpful to know who he is, even if in the end it's clear that who he is isn't important since he's just an anybody. 'A mediocre person in a mediocre world,' as the man in the black suit might quip. Though I don't think he'd quip with much of anything based on the news that the lead's girlfriend will never be seen again. There's that melancholy.

There's also more of what I'll dub "Lynch" in the last 50 pages of the book. A scene in which the main character talks with someone who is dead and who had been possessed by the sheep.

The way the sheep is described makes it sound so much more malevolent than the way it's described in the start of the book. But what really makes this scene Lynchian, is it's being set in the house on the mountain top as it is dimmed and the heater halts. And the person that he meets, the way his rubbing his hands together is described, makes me think immediately of Mike from the Black Lodge. David Lynch *must have* read this book - or at least been aware of it. It's got the exact same supernatural quality as Twin Peaks, and Lynch's oeuvre more generally.

Up next, The History of Nintendo Vol. 2: The Game & Watch games, an incredible invention.

Blending the Strange with the Standard

What I really like about Murakami is that what he writes, when it involves the bizarre, or supernatural, is a lot like David Lynch's take on it.

Without the horror elements (at least based on 1Q84 and A Wild Sheep Chase), though, yet still retaining that absolutely strange feel. I think that it's mostly Murakami's writing style really helps him to do this. In general it has an airy quality to it; details are not dwelled upon (I've yet to come across a paragraph that focuses in on a person's coat or any such thing), and each motion of his perspective characters is given flesh through his descriptions of their thoughts and states.

And it's this style that makes his stories so readable - despite their mundane strangeness. That is, the way in which he inserts some of the odd into the everyday - the appearance of the Sheep Man later in the book, for example.

And it's always a testament to a writer's powers when you can empathize with their characters.

When the Sheep Man says that the lead can never be with his girlfriend again because he's been too selfish in bringing her with him, my first thought was "I hope that's not true!" After all, we still have the mystery of her ears to get to the bottom of.

Though Murakami does leave the matter of the Little People in 1Q84 rather open.

The Sheep Revealed

If A Wild Sheep Chase is ever made into a movie, David Lynch has to direct the scene where the main character and his girlfriend go into the Dolphin Hotel. It's so much like the bank scene in the last episode of Twin Peaks. At the very least he should be consulted.

Fan-crew making aside, our lead characters next find some information to move forward on.

His girlfriend's ears are getting no secret messages, but it turns out that the Dolphin Hotel is home to a resource library about sheep, and the owner's eccentric father is the local authority on all things ovine. When the two go up to see him they learn the truth, and we as readers, learn that this sheep is some sort of bizarre spiritual force that has some sort of grand plan for the whole of humanity. As readers, we also no doubt guess that by the end of the book one or the other of the lead characters is going to be possessed by it. Maybe then we'll get a name, which might be pretty good.

Murakami's delivery of the history of Junitaki-cho (where their search has lead our heroes) as a narrative broken up by what the main actor does and observes between his own reading sessions is an excellent bit of first person expression. We're still firmly in this guy's head, even if we aren't quite privy to every last little thought of his. It's also interesting how the Ainu, the native people of Japan, are brought into the story through the relation of Junitaki-cho's history. The way the town's life-long Ainu resident's life is described makes me wonder if perhaps he had been possessed by the sheep-spirit-being.

At any rate, the story progresses and Murakami's power over written images is proven yet again when he compares the look and flight of a moth to a crumpled up piece of paper. Saying that the lead lady of the story looked older after the moth in question flew off of her is also curious, since it brings up ideas of time travel, but Murakami's clearly got enough going on in this book already.

By any Name?

The sixth section returns to the main character's being filled in on why the sheep in his insurance company newsletter are such a big problem.

After having gone through this part of the book, it's clear why we had to be taken out of the story to get the information from the Rat's letters, but they were delivered poorly. They wouldn't have worked through a prologue, since their placement would be too far from where they were relevant, and theirs isn't the tone or the sensibility of the rest of the book as the book's actual prologue is. Why couldn't he have reminisced about the letters and the Rat when he was on the train? Breaking into it right in the middle of the scene is why I found their placement to be so jarring.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that the girlfriend with the cute ears is back. I was worried that that was just one section in the main character's life and that was that.

Actually, now that the wild sheep chase itself is on, we get the main character and his girlfriend leaving to begin their search.

Their departure is typical, but it involves the main character enlisting the help of the chauffeur of the person that the two are now working for.

What for? Well, to look after his cat while they're off looking for this sheep with the brown wool and star birthmark. Since the main character's cat also has no given name, the three of them work their way into a lengthy conversation about names.

Particularly, they tackle the question of why some things are named and others aren't and what either of these possibilities impart. The whole passage runs from page 178 to 182 (or 178-179, just for matters feline), and is one among many of the philosophical digressions in the book. Young Murakami sure liked to linger in wondering.

A Rat among Sheep

Murakami's tale was taking a very similar avenue to 1Q84 before it got interrupted by the letters from the Rat. Possibly because there's nothing to announce it, or maybe because the section before it is so comic and enjoyable, I found the first letters from the Rat jarring and a little confusing.

However, it does point to something that I've noticed up to this point: None of the male characters (and most of the female characters) have names. they have adjectival phrases like "she would have sex with any guy" or "my partner" for names instead.

Since A Wild Sheep Chase is in first person, maybe this is just a way to sneak around naming characters. After all, this is Murakami's first widely published work. He's not going to be a superstar right out the gate, but he does definitely have the potential. That much is clear from his generous pepperings of evocative imagery. But, as far as I can tell, Murakami's not yet begun to write. Hopefully the main plot doesn't suffer another break.

Starting in the Past

Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase starts off with disorientation.

We're dropped into the middle of events - but these events take place eight years before the events of the story proper. So, it's kind of like a prologue, but it isn't really announced as such. Because it doesn't give this clue it's easy to start into the story thinking that it's going to be about a guy who knew this potentially homeless, mysterious girl who would frequent coffee shops and whom he can only remember as "there was this girl who'd sleep with anyone" - though he goes on to note that she had standards. In the short short scene that she herself describes them it's pretty clear that she has them, but whatever they are remains with her.

After jumping ahead 8 years, it's revealed that the main character is recently divorced, though he meets a new woman by sheer chance. An ear model. Who's also a call girl and a part time proofreader. The scene where she reveals her ears in a full French restaurant reads like a terse description of something out of an anime. Yet, though the main character seems to not have an eye for detail, his similes and metaphors are, for the most part fantastic. Some of them, though, seem to get lost in translation.

Actually, I find myself reminded very much of 1Q84. We've got a 30-something, lost-in-life male protagonist, a mysterious female protagonist (?), and we see her tell him that he's only half living and that his lfie is not as boring as he believes it to be. Similarly we had Tengo and Aomame in Murakami's latest, though the role of the Goddess figure (to relate it all back to the Hero's Journey) in that one was played by Fuka-Eri.

Still, the wild sheep chase is just now about to start in earnest - so let's see where it leads!

Some Quirks of Pre-1980s Nintendo

The History of Nintendo (Volume 1) is finished, and all I have to say is - what a ride.

Nintendo's history is certainly a fascinating one, though looked at in context, it makes sense that they wound up in video games. They also seem somehow quintessentially Japanese to me, after having read about their development.

I mean, it seems like the company tried everything. They hit it big with cards, and meandered into arcade games to fill Japan's empty bowling alleys and then checked out early home consoles that ran sets of games. They're like a character in a magical girl anime who's always re-inventing themselves.

What really surprised me, though, was just how strong a tent pole Disney was for the company. When their business was flagging on the card front, running off Disney themed hanafuda and Western playing cards worked - not because people loved playing cards that much, but because the Disney characters on them made them collectable. What's more, these close ties to Disney make later developments like the similarities between the Kokiri and the Lost Boys of Never Never Land all the more pronounced.

The fact that Nintendo was working with the electronics division of Mitsubishi when they were first making consoles is also pretty crazy. Though none of the pre-Famicom stuff looks that great.

For the most part they're just consoles that have x number of games built into their chips, most of which just being re-colours or very slightly modified versions of a single game (usually Pong, or a wall-breaker). That the Color TV Racing 112 console came with a steering wheel controller is pretty cool., though that bit of tech was a bit too far ahead.

The preview of the Game and Watch games, which are the focus of Part II was definitely a great thing to whet the appetite, but learning that Part II is entirely devoted to them makes me wonder how neat a read it'll be.

To break things up a little though, Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase is the next book for this blog. Watch for it!