Murakami Scrapes Bottom

Perhaps the worst book ever written by a (formerly) major writer -- and truly amazing someone was paid to "write" this 180-page scribble. But then the publishing world is like the yakuza: once you're in, you're in. (Or you're dead.)

Open a page, any page. 24:

It's August 14th, a Sunday. This morning I ran an hour and fifteen minutes listening to Carla Thomas and Otis Redding on my MD player. In the afternoon I swam 1,400 yards at the pool and in the evening swam at the beach. And after that I had dinner--beer and fish--at the Hanalea Dolphin Restaurant just outside the town of Hanalea. The dish I have is walu, a kind of white fish. They grill it for me over charcoal, and I eat it with soy sauce. The side dish is vegetable kababs, plus a large salad.

No desert?

Page 139: 

There were torrential rains in parts of [Japan], and a lot of people died. They say it's all because of global warming. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Some experts claim it is, some claim it isn't. There's some proof that it is, some proof that it isn't. But still people say that most of the problems the earth is facing are, more or less, due to global warming. When sales of apparel go down, when tons of driftwood wash up on the shore, when there are floods and droughts, when consumer prices go up, most of the fault is scribed to global warming. What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, "It's all your fault!"

If only Karl Marx had such understanding.

88:

Young girls in revealing bikinis are sunbathing in beach towels, listening to their Walkmen or iPods. An ice cream van stops and sets up shop. Someone's playing a guitar, an old Neil Young tune, and a long-haired dog is single-mindedly chasing a Frisbee. A Democrat psychiatrist (at least that's who I think he is) drives along the river road in a russet-colored Saab convertible.

A Democrat psychiatrist -- "a least that's who I think he is." Since Murakami long ago stopped being able to perceive anyone beyond his or her Yuppie externals, how interesting. As Truman Capote once said of Kerouac "This isn't writing. It's typing."

And from page 99:

If possible, I'd like to avoid ... literary burnout. My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal. . . That's my aim as a novelist. And besides, at this point I don't have the leisure to be burned out. Which is exactly why even though people say 'He's no artist,' I keep on running.

Literary burnout?? This guy's become a cross between one of Billy Crystal's writing students in Throw Momma from the Train and John Cassavetes at the end of The Fury.

What happened?

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle remains not only one of the great late-20th Century novels, but for me one of the most important private books. I was lucky enough to find it, or it found me, during a time of brutal divorce. I read the book three times and it helped me to heal and to grieve. And there are other lovely achievements: Sputnik Sweetheart, South of the Border and the short story masterpiece "Tony Takitani." What happened to Murakami is right here in this flyspeck of a running book: the man now revels in his own navel-gazing narcissism. Has there ever been a writer as in love with his own thought process as Murakami? Okay, sure: Mailer, Miller, Lawrence, Henry James, Simone Weil, Goethe. But in Murakami's case, we're talking about a meatball mind. He seems very hip to the notion that one must push one's strengths and forget about what one was not blessed with. And when his beautiful craft and strangeness carried the day, he produced beautiful works. Since things began to fall apart at about the moment he became a Big Time Literary Celebrity, whatever balance he once had between the unconscious magic of creation and his own "ideas" was trashed by new found fame. The ideas became predominant. And trash is what he's produced since.

But he sure knows his audience -- evidently as self-involved and as incapable (or unwilling) to engage something outside themselves as is Murakami. He knows the happiness or sadness of every muscle in his body. Yet what about fatherhood, Haru-san? You've been married to the same lovely devoted woman since you were both in college, and you have all the yen in the world. Where are your children? Instead of wasting time on 62-mile Ubermarathons, try helping the poor. Try fighting in a war. Maybe try homelessness for a month, sort of a modern day Sullivan's Travels. Prison helps the soul, so they say. Try it.

Anything. But stop eating your damn walu.