Norwegian Wood

At the recommendation of a buddy (The same who recommended reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being) I picked up Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood which was written back in ’87 and translated from Japanese into English in 2000.

This is another novel that I was spellbound by and finished over the course of a week. It is a simple tale spanning the life of a young man as he enters college. It deals with friendship, death, loss, life, and of course, love in its many masks. Murakami fashions Toru Watanabe, the main character, in such a way that anyone can relate to him and his thoughts and feelings. His (Watanabe’s) style is akin to Holden Caulfield’s from Catcher in the Rye – something that the author coyly alludes to mid-novel that I found amusing. Where Holden came across as a loner and an outcast from society, berating those around him (the phonies), Watanabe is gentle and while still a loner, is seen as more stoic and reflective, if a bit of an outcast.

One of the issues that young Watanabe must deal with is death. He learns that

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.

Something that I think we can all agree with, and have come to similar conclusions of on our own. This theory, though, applies not only to the loss of life, but to the loss of many things in this life, be they physical or psychological.

Another portion of the novel touches on depression and loss;

April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass – but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.

We cannot rush getting over something (someone) being lost to us. It does indeed pass, slowly, and on its own terms, and usually leaves a dull ache behind. I’m not sure how the masses deal with loss and despair, but I know that I tend to address it, deal with it, and either move along, or accept that whatever it was that I’d lost, or that had affected me to such a degree is now a part of me. Something that can’t be forgotten, or ‘gotten over’ or ‘moved on from’, but is rather now part of what makes me me. It is that intangible knot buried deep within, no longer raw and jagged as it once was, but there none the less; a dull ache. After a while, that ache fades and is forgotten most of the time, but as with Watanabe, there are certain triggers or tremors that remind us of that which has become a part of us.

This particular passage struck me because of the line I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. I remember a time when I was going through what was the toughest challenge I’d faced at that point in my life, and feeling just that way. I can still vividly remember going outside on a frigid December morning at the office, and unbuttoning my coat against the cold, letting the wind knife its icy fingers into me just to feel something other than the pain and loss of the situation. I challenged nature and my body to challenge me back, ‘gritting my teeth’ if you will, and letting time take its course.

One of my favorite passages from the book touches on a peripheral character, describing her beauty and elegance on that particular night. How she has her own special draw and attraction;

Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the cab. Every now and then her thinly daubed, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as if she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation I was feeling could be.

The passage as a whole is fairly remarkable; you get a feeling of how the rest of the novel is written as well as the author’s ability to portray emotions – both subtle and apparent – in merely a few lines. The latter half of the final sentence sums up how new love feels. Rarely is one’s deeper attraction to someone obvious, rather, it is something new and churning within us that can’t quite be pinpointed – subtle, elegant, alluring.

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, is a passage where one of the characters is describing herself and some of her wonderful traits;

…I may be a little crazy, but I’m a good kid, and honest, and I work hard, I’m kinda cute, I’ve got nice boobs, I’m a good cook, and my father left me a trust fund. I mean, I’m a real bargain, don’t you think?

I sure think so. And that’s what makes this novel so spectacular. Murakami is able to paint the spectrum of emotions and situations. On one hand, we have the earlier passage, outlining a subtle attraction, one that is shrouded and seen as if through rose colored lenses, another that is perfectly tangible and makes sense at a completely different (logical) level. One can understand the love of both characters, be they simultaneous or disparate.

At any rate. I recommend picking up a copy of Norwegian Wood at your local bookstore and having a read. Also, if you know any good, honest, hard working, cute girls with nice boobs who are a little crazy, AND can cause an emotional reverberation within me, send them my way.

 

- The Alaskan

Readings

At the recommendation of a buddy, I recently picked up Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’. This is a novel first published in 1984, translated by the author from Czech. I read the book in two sittings and I could really stop describing my take after these three words: simple, beautiful, elegant; but I won’t.

Page 8 really sets things up and struck a chord within me. It’s a bit philosophical, and touches on something I think we all struggle with at times:

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, “sketch” is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

How often do we feel as though we’re trying to make the ‘best’ decision of the moment, or fully believing that what we’re doing is the right thing? Who is to say what is right, wrong, good, or bad in our day to day lives. We can strive to be the best, but at the end, we truly are like an actor going on cold, using the tools at hand to judge a situation and move forward.

This is a novel about life, love, philosophy, and some of the deeper things in life, all told through a simple tale of two lovers and their lives together through a turbulent time in and about Czech. It asks (and answers) many questions, addressing life through metaphor. One such instance is when the author begins to speak about the phenomenon of Vertigo:

…What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

Read the last line again.

I may be alone in thinking this way, but how often do we yearn for the terrible? Secretly hoping for that one terrible thing to happen… just to see what happens. You imagine yourself ‘falling’ (I use falling here as an allusion to whatever it is you’re being drawn towards, whatever it is that terrifies you), and dealing with whatever the situation is. Whether it’s something terrible in the moment - like dropping your bowl of chili all over the crowded deli floor - terrible for you alone - like that blemish you’re worried about that’s probably nothing, but could turn into your everything - or terrible for the masses - something akin to a 747 blasting into your 10th floor office, or the bridge dropping out from under you as you make your commute. Vertigo.

Much of the novel is devoted to thoughts on love. Love in it’s many forms, and how love can be all encompassing, but different to every individual, even those who are ‘in love’ with one another. Kundera describes how love begins, at one point in the novel, as

the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Think back on the women you’ve loved in your life (family exempt) , and I’ll bet you can pinpoint a moment. A single moment, or a collection of events that can be described by the aforementioned. Simple, Beautiful, Elegant.

(note: being a heterosexual male, I use the term woman here, but I’m sure you concluded all on your own that the same can be applied when the sexes are reversed)

The last excerpt that I’m going to comment on talks about love again, and one of it’s many iterations - unconditional.

It is a completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

And something else: Tereza accepted Karenin for what he was; she did not try to make him over in her image; she agreed from the outset with his dog’s life, did not wish to deprive him of it, did not envy him his secret intrigues. The reason she trained him was not to transform him (as a husband tries to reform his wife and a wife her husband), but to provide him with the elementary language that enabled them to communicate and live together.

With all of the thoughts, discussions, readings (bloggings), and actions, are we, in fact, demeaning the nature of love? Now I’m not saying that love should be given unconditionally forever, but can you imagine a world where people thought not of ‘does he love me enough‘ but rather ‘do I love her enough’, giving of our love unreservedly. I know that’s a watered down outlook on things, and there are more layers to ‘love’ and ‘relationships’ than there are grains of sand in the Sahara, but it’s certainly worth consideration, at least to this wayward Alaskan.