confessions of a Murakami girl
If you've ever been to our apartment, you will know that the top shelf of our bookshelf is reserved for my favorite authors and their collection of works. Over the years, this revered position has changed very little save for a recent reshuffling of Donna Tartt post a failed The Goldfinch bookclub, and about 3 years ago I added Jhumpa Lahiri and set to diligently compiling her books through careful searching at our favorite used bookstore. But the largest mainstay, both in length of time and in literal, precious bookshelf real estate, is Haruki Murakami. I have been collecting his published works since I was in high-school, almost 15 years ago at this point.
There was a period in time where Tumblr was awash with Norwegian Wood quotes and stills from the adaptation with Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi, and Kiko Mizuhara (also a Tumblr model it girl at the time, if my feeds were any indication). The very fact that I'm able to remember these actors names without Googling, over a decade later, is a testament to how I worshipped at this particular altar. I lamented when they redesigned all the covers in 20151, but still dutifully bought the new books when they came out in paperback and moved them with me from apartment to apartment, bookshelf to bookshelf.
Norwegian Wood (2010)
At the time, I'm sure I was driven by some level of pseudo-intellectualism-not-like-other-girls energy, with a heavy influence of the teenage angst and whatever-nihilism on early Tumblr, but regardless, this collection is amongst my most prized possessions and represents to me actual shifting of time and many of my actually conscious, sentient years. Over time, maybe through exposure to new favorite authors, maybe through discussions of how his characters and stories are flawed, maybe just because there was more time in between his new works, I stopped being an active missionary to the cause, but I have always held on to the fondness and loyalty I spent years building. This all came with the implicit knowledge that (barring some crazy problematic scandal) I would continue the quest I started as an unaware teenager to read (and own, probably) his entire bibliography.
I just finished reading The City and It's Uncertain Walls and it reminded me of why I was so enthralled in his writing in the first place. It reminded me of the kind of writing i miss reading. Getting lost in the work, letting it flow through you. Where the meaning of the story is just as, if not less than, important than the experience of it.
Of course, I don't know if that is Murakami's intention with his novel, or if he would read this and think "this girl has no idea what the hell she's talking about and I wish she would keep these opinions to herself," but that is how I have always experienced his novels. I get lost in the world he's created, unsure what is meant to be real and not, unsure what you're supposed to take as truth. Maybe that's why I related so much to it when I was younger; feeling lost and blurred in the world is something his characters are no stranger to.
It is actually the Afterward of Uncertain Walls that has stayed with me the most since I finished reading it ~24 hours ago. Murakami says he prefers to not write afterwards, as they feel like a mechanism of justification for the work. But in this punctuation after the final sentence, he explains that this novel is a continuation/reworking of a piece from his early career that always felt unfinished. Amongst his explanation, this is what I keep thinking about:
As Jorge Luis Borges put it, there are basically a limited number of stories one writer can seriously relate in his lifetime. All we do - I think it's fair to say - is take that limited palette of motifs, change the approach and methods as we go, and rewrite them in all sorts of ways. Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change and movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about? At least that's how I see it.
After reading this, I knew that I was going to write about it on here. I think this is true of any artist, how we innately strive to tell the same core stories over and over in new ways. Some people might call it "personal branding," but it feels like it goes much deeper than being able to have a recognizable visual or written identity.
It makes me wonder, what is my repeated story that I'm trying to tell? Across different mediums, different moments. I think about creating a home - whether literally in making ceramic houses (an obsessions I haven't been able to shake for over a year), or to the drawings I've made that say "I'm here, I exist, this is the world I see." I have always enjoyed drawing things as in objects: concrete things in my house, my desk, the view I see in a literal space. I have always felt that every time I make something, it is like putting a small bookmark in that moment, a memory for later.
sketchbook & etc. archives
Whatever it says about me as a person, Murakami's characters have always been relatable to me in this way. People searching and wanting to leave bookmarks of themselves in the world. To be a folded corner on someone else's page.
Someday I know that this collection will be complete. Someday there will be no new stories and characters of his for me to read. However irrational, I think when that day comes, I will feel loss.
By E
Upon looking this up to find the year they redesigned, I actually came to learn that these covers are meant to be interconnected when placed in a specific order, which is admittedly very cool. I still ultimately prefer the Vintage covers, which also may have to do with the fact that tactically they just feel nicer in a matte way, instead of the glossiness of these. My collection has both, because that's just the way it is.↩