Thoughts on Norwegian Wood Upon my Second Reading - Ayushi

This blog post will read less like an analysis and more like a stream of consciousness. I don’t think you can read Haruki Murakami without reflexively introspecting on your own life, mind, and surroundings. Here are some intimations on how I’ve been understanding Murakami’s characters (thus, if I may, even Murakami) by paying more attention to how I feel in the operations and occurrences of my own life. 

I sipped my morning coffee and got to thinking. I’m trying to understand a writer who is famously known for writing postmodern literature & the magical realism genre. Simultaneously, these narratives are written on the backs of rational, almost mundane characters and themes. This is why I believe that Murakami is one of the most contradictory authors I have had the confusing pleasure of reading. 

Norwegian Wood makes sense. Until it doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense. Until it does.
Did Murakami do this on purpose? Did he just write and write or did he have a particular purpose? He challenged my personal notion that all writers write with intention; that is the whole point. Even if there were multiple intentions, there would be a theme they converged to. 

Interestingly, this seems to be the least ‘Murakami’ of all the books and excerpts we’ve previously read, but somehow the most confusing one of all. I was bookmarking pages and highlighting lines that I knew meant something, but  I’m not sure what. Essentially, I was operating with the same vague intent as him—with definite meaning that was unbeknownst to myself. Maybe that’s it. 

The multiple perspectives we discussed in class felt like we were desperately, almost madly, trying to solve the mystery of Murakami’s intention. The red yarn became increasingly more tangled as we swerved from one clue to the other. 

Personally, the red yarn led here— to one of the most immersive moments of the class so far. When I wrapped a piece of cucumber in a sheet of seaweed, then dipped it in soy sauce. Toru repeated this inherently mechanical process multiple times, which would’ve been mundane or banal if it wasn’t in this context: while he was, not for the first time, adjacent to death (Midori’s father). A mechanical gesture, made touching and complex given the situation. He said that cucumber tastes of life, so I savored it—the harmonious crunching and crinkle of each bite, the lasting note of umami from the soy sauce. I tried to taste every bite the way Toru did. They way Midori’s father might have. In this way, I felt closer to Toru and to Murakami, tasting the same thing they did. In a similar way, was Toru constantly getting closer to the dead through their shared experiences? '