South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

Look, I'm doing this again!  I was only going to take a break from doing this for a month last year, but... Well, clearly it went a little longer than that.  I took three English classes and a history class that was basically a Lit class, though, so I have one heck of an excuse.  (I shudder to think what my final two years in college will be like.)  Hopefully I'll be able to do at least one book a month in the future or something, but we'll see.

Anyways.  First off, I got awesome nerdy things for Christmas which I am going to tout: Kate Beaton's Hark, A Vagrant! book (the one with Napoleon on the cover), Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer (which is an absolutely gorgeous and amazing book.  Last year when it came out it was out for forty dollars, which I can assure you is totally worth it.  It's beautiful, and a good book too.) and an uncensored edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is also amazing.  Kate Beaton, I have touted before, and you can check out her awesome comics at harkavagrant.com, Foer's book is a reworked version of the book Street of Crocodiles, a book I myself have not read, but he says is his favourite book, so now of course I need to read it.  I recommend searching Google images for pictures of the book if you're curious about it--but I don't think you can really get it unless you're actually cracking it open yourself and reading it.  In fact, I take that back.  Don't even wonder about it until you actually buy it.  I kind of knew what was in store when I asked for it (Foer cuts out parts of the text to create a new story out of it all), but I was still awed when I opened it.  It's seriously amazing.
The edition of Dorian Gray I got was this edition, and is worth the money, even if you already own three copies of the book already, which I definitely do not.  It gives a very good background for the novel, as well as a more in-depth look at Wilde's life and the parallels between that in the book.  To read an even better case for it, go here.  (Really--much better than my description thus far.)  It's also interesting because all of the story with James Vane (Sybil's brother) hadn't existed yet, which meant until about ten minutes ago, when I checked my 1910 edition, I thought I was going insane.  Actually, James's death occurs in (I believe) chapter eighteen, which the original manuscript never even reached.  So yeah.  Get that.  It's definitely worth it.


Anywayyys, Haruki Murakami's book... I borrowed it from Meg.  I've heard he was good for a while, but from a source that I was not particularly fond of in the least, so I put off trying him out.  In any case, I really did enjoy this book.  It's kind of like--well, the end of it reminded me of John Green's Looking for Alaska, or Paper Towns.  You see, the book starts with Hajime reflecting on his early years, and girl he was close friends with right before he hit puberty, or before puberty really hit him.  He was attracted to her, and he moves away before they get any older and their relationship really has the chance to become anything more.  She definitely becomes a sort of romanticized figure, but not in a whiny way, if that makes sense.  He thinks of her from time to time while he's dating Izumi in high school, and every so often he thinks of the girl (Shimamoto), but it's not dominant.  He even gets married, becomes pretty successful in his job, and has two children and all of that.  She appears in his life again when he's thirty-seven, and things become turbulent for a while, but other than that time, it's not like "SHIMAMOTO SHIMAMOTO" and I'm going to try real hard not to smear Looking for Alaska, but this book is like the perfect version of it.  No--better.  It's unfair to say that.  But it reminded me a lot of that, and the end could have potentially gone on a long time more in a Looking for Alaska-esque way.

One thing I don't understand is a section with Izumi.  The first time they kiss, Hajime decides it is important that he gets condoms ASAP, not for any lascivious reasons, but because he's just a teenager, you know, sixteen or so.  Izumi is nervous, and he assures her that he was just curious about them, and that he will take it slow and never hurt her or anything like that.  The thought of it makes her nervous, still, though, and she says she feels like a snail without a shell--Hajime responds by saying that he is nervous too--he feels like a frog without any webs.  I'm not sure if I get it... Webs?  Last time I checked, frogs weren't spiders...?  Translation issue?  I don't know...
Anyways, things obviously don't work out with Izumi.  Hajime has sex with her cousin on multiple occasions--where Hajime moves on, Izumi does not.  She is permanently damaged by the occasion and kind of... deflates.  She appears from time to time throughout the novel, and now that I think of it, kind of serves as a picture of a person who is too wrapped up in the past.  She just kind of dies inside and becomes emotionless and kind of creepy.  (An old classmate of theirs says that the local children are scared of her, specifically of her face.)  That sounds mean, but... but yeah.
The Living Desert.  "'There's nothing you can do about it. Another person's life is that person's life.  You can't take responsibility.  It's like we're living in a desert.  You just have to get used to it.  Did you see that Disney film in elementary school--The Living Desert?'  'Yeah,' I answered.  'Our world's exactly the same.  Rain falls and the flowers bloom.  No rain, they wither up.  Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds.  But in the end, every one of them dies.  They die and dry up.  One generation dies, and the next one takes over.  That's how it goes.  Lots of different ways to live.  And lots of different ways to die.  But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference.  All that remains is a desert'" (Haruki 81).  Kind of depressing, especially in that it does have merit, right?  Don't worry, I'll be getting back to this later.

Anyways.  Shimamoto reappears in Hajime's life.  She tells Hajime very little about herself--she has surgery on her bad leg (she had a partially lame leg when they were kids, which led Hajime to go on a blind date with a different girl with a partially lame leg at some point in his twenties), she had a baby but it died within, at most, two days of its birth, and she does not wear a wedding ring.  Their first 'excursion' is to go out and spread the baby's ashes.  But they spend a lot of time together at one of the bars Hajime owns, talking and drinking and what have you.  They actually only have sex once--well, not once, but only one night is, uh... marked by sex.  After this she disappears.  Hajime's wife reveals that she knows that something has been going on.  Now I'm going to spoil the end, which I didn't intend to do, but I am the worst person after all.  Hajime chooses between the two--and comes to the fact that Shimamoto was idealized.  (Actually, his sudden run-in with the deadened Izumi is what kind of brings him to that realization.)  While driving with Shimamoto to the cottage they had sex at, she told him that she had a sudden impulse to grab the wheel and jerk it--undoubtedly that would kill them, but she does not add that.  Hajime comes to the conclusion that she's... Not so much unbalanced (though I would definitely put it like that) but that whatever had happened made her so desperate that death kind of... infected her.  It was the only real option she could truly see.  Or, she became "creepy as hell".  Actually, he described her eyes as being very dead, or having death in them, while they were having sex (I think specifically while she was giving him a blow job), so yeah.  "Creepy as hell".  (But can you see why she would bring up the image of Alaska?)  

Anyway.  My last bit (sorry if this post seems weird; I'm kind of out of practice.)  goes back to the desert.  (And also a little bit onto Alaska.)  After he decides that he will stay with his wife, he meditates at the table until "someone" comes and "lightly rested [their] hand on my shoulder", imagining "rain falling on the sea.  Rain softly falling on the vast sea, with no one there to see it.  The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it is raining" (Haruki 213).  It shows an opposite, more optimistic view of life than that afforded by Hajime's old schoolmate, yet I believe it may be saying the same thing.  The people are the rain, hitting the water, the world, eternity, what have you, and the fish are supposed to God, the universe, all of that.  At least that's what I'm thinking.
And I hope you can see the connections to Looking for Alaska--the idealized girl, the car issues, that sudden impulsive suicide (or not-suicide in Shimamoto's case), etc.  I think potentially, the book could have gone on like the second half of Looking for Alaska.  I thank God it did not, because that was three-quarters of the reason I did not like the book.  He could have and he didn't, which I respect.  I mean--I understand why the main character (Pudge?) wanted to find out the reason behind it all and everything, but it just got boring and painful, like an episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Ugh, sorry about this.  I didn't mean to slam John Green.  I loved An Abundance of Katherines.  (I did mean to slam The Big Bang Theory, though.  It is terrible.)

Um... Yeah.  Sorry that this post is a little... Strange.  Well, in any case, I liked the book, and would definitely recommend it.  I'm still a little leery about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which Meg said she'd lend me next, just because its style is supposedly a little odd, but it's still going to happen.  Hooray and goodnight!


MLA information: Haruki, Murakami.  Trans. Philip Gabriel.  South of the Border, West of the Sun.  Vintage Books: New York, 1999.