1Q84

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am a slow reader. Despite a battery of classes on speed reading and comprehension starting in 4th grade, when I was told I was a “gifted” reader, I still consider myself a slow reader. It might be the company I keep – I like to be around really smart people when I can – that makes me feel like a slow reader, in comparison. In any case, I do think I’m a slow reader.

It’s largely for this reason that I tend to avoid big doorstop novels. More often than not, they start out quickly, then slow to a crawl in very short order. And when I’m looking at over 1000 pages of text, the last thing I need is an uninteresting crawl.

I don’t feel that way with Murakami, for the most part, and especially with this novel, 1Q84. Murakami keeps things going here. Yes, there are slow spots, but if you’ve read or written (or both) enough, you’ll notice and appreciate that these spots are intentionally chosen to be slow. There are no real accidents in Murakami’s writing. Not in this novel, at least.

But there were plenty of places where he took chances.

Rather than giving a blow-by-blow of the novel (Aloha has done a magnificent job of reviewing the novel itself), I’d like to go where Murakami gambled and won. So, plug in some new retro synthwave music and read on!

Right from the get-go, Tengo, one of the story’s main protagonists, engages in a conversation with an editor, Komatsu, about writing. It’s interesting, to say the least, to read a writer writing about writing in his writing. And it works. Here, the reader gains some great insight into the act of writing, the strategic moves that one makes to make one’s writing great. Murakami does this in a non-pedantic, purely natural way. This is intentional: it is a setup for later metafictional moments throughout the novel. But it doesn’t feel intentional when the reader is in the midst of reading it. What a tangled web of reader, writer, and character Murakami has created here!

Komatsu later hatches a downright Dickensian scheme in which Tengo hollows out, plagiarizes, and rewrites the enigmatic Fuka-Eri’s novel. Here, Murakami sets the trap, as it were, for his characters and, it seems, for the reader. It’s an outstanding plot hook about a novel within the novel. You can probably see how things could go horribly wrong here for Murakami: If he overstates the scheme, the reader feels manipulated. If he understates it, the hook is ineffective. He pulls it off with panache.

One of the main “characters” are the Little People, which I won’t go into the trouble of explaining (nor do I want to spoil this for you). I thought of Arthur Machen’s The White People when I first read about them and, yes, Murakami is definitely giving a bit of an homage to Machen with them. But they are decidedly more intrusive and belligerent than Machen’s fair folk. Here, Murakami ran the danger of mimesis (or downright plagiarism), but he makes these Little People his own. I shall never read the words “Ho, ho!” again without a shudder. They give this novel a decidedly dark twist, darker than most of the Murakami I’ve read. Or, at least, the darkness is sustained for longer than it is in other works I’ve read by him. There are moments where this reads like an outright horror novel, and I’m not complaining about that a bit!

One thing that horrifies me almost beyond belief is a long info-dump. I have seen many an infodump soil an otherwise beautiful novel. I had to suppose that in a novel of this length, an infodump (or several) is unavoidable. Lo and behold, on page 203 (in the paperback), an infodump rears its ugly block-text, no break, no quote, too many worded head. I admit to flipping ahead and previewing just how much torture I was about to have to endure. Ten pages! That could be a deal-breaker for me.

Soon, though, I found myself entranced. Maybe it was the subject matter of the dump: the relationship and eventual suicide of the closest friend to Aomame (the other main protagonist, with Tengo). Or, perhaps it was the timing, one-fifth-ish of the way through the novel. I can definitely say that the writing was interesting, engaging, and, eventually, enthralling. Murakami pulled off one of the best infodumps I’ve read in the context of a novel. Kudos on this one. Gamble, win. Again.

One of the largest chances Murakami has taken with this novel is that of rushing headlong at the fourth wall. At first, he does so through writing about writing (see above), then he tackles the topic of the exploration of literature using a wonderful metaphor of exploring a deep magical forest, right at the same time that the readers are exploring this mental space themselves. Later, he becomes even more bold, with Komatsu stating “This is the magnificent world of a picaresque novel” when talking with Tengo about their current predicament. Of course, this is true on the level of their world and on the level of the reader, layers upon layers.

The metafictional nature of the novel doesn’t stop there. There is one element so important that I can’t give it away, that reveals to the characters that they might just be dealing with a reality within a reality. I can’t get more specific than that, but suffice it to say that while the characters do realize that, perhaps, they are “baked in” to an outside story, they still have their agency within it and can affect the outcome. They are not at the mercy of the author, or at least they think they are not. Murakami does an amazing sleight-of-hand in making the reader believe that the characters can make choices that affect the outcome of the novel . . . after having written the novel – the ultimate willing suspension of disbelief!

The final place where Murakami gambles is in his expectation of readers’ expectations, particularly when it involves character motivation and the prospect of deception. There were at least two major characters that I felt were being deceptive. I was convinced that their deceit would turn the plot in a different direction by betraying the main protagonists, Aomame and Tengo. I was wrong. Dead wrong. Both of these minor characters were exactly what they said they were. Against all readerly expectations of an “unexpected” (though frequently expected, in actuality) plot-twist, Murakami plays his cards straight out, face up on the table. And it completely threw me! I was more surprised when I figured out that these characters, both of whom were in a position to provide plenty of surprises and subterfuge, were telling the truth all along and acting true to themselves. Murakami didn’t need a poker face – he had a royal flush in his hand the whole time and made it obvious to everyone, so obvious that the reader couldn’t help but interpose his own thoughts of deception and intrigue on two of the most straightforward people in the novel.

This is not to say that Murakami reveals all. Far from it. There are several mysteries that remain unsolved and plot points unresolved. I am perfectly fine with this. I actually prefer to have vagaries in my fiction (both while reading and writing). I don’t want to know everything. I want the mysteries to linger long after I’ve closed the book, and there are some here that do. Was Kumi Adache Tengo’s reincarnated mother? Maybe, maybe not. And what of the NHK fee collector who harasses people from the hallway throughout the novel – was this or was this not the ghost of Tengo’s comatose father? I don’t know. I like to think so, but there’s nothing explicitly demanding it be so. I appreciate that Murakami has left room here for readers to fill in the blanks or to leave them unfilled, as they see fit. Not only do his characters have (the illusion of?) agency, but he imparts it to the reader, as well. If you’re looking for a novel to tell you every fine detail, to force-feed your conclusions, you are in the wrong place.

Not only is it a work of technical genius, there is a great deal of emotion here, as well. At least there was for me. The timing of my reading was . . . strange and not, I believe, coincidental.

Last year, about this time, my mother had recently died (in February) and my father was, I would later learn, dying. I had to make the sole decision, in both cases, to take my mother, then my father, off of life support. Mom passed quickly: ten minutes after we took her off the trio of vasopressors that were thrashing her heart into (barely - 54/16 blood pressure) functioning, she passed away. Dad lingered for much longer. Two full weeks I spent with him. Every day and many nights I spent by Dad’s bedside as he slowly died. He couldn’t speak much due to a tracheostomy (which he had had since November previous), but he could talk a little. Very little. I spent a great deal of time thanking Dad for the good things he had done for me as a son, for my Mom, and for my family. He had rough spots, as any parent has, some of them very rough, but I know that Dad loved me, and I told him I knew that.

In 1Q84, Tengo spends a great deal of the novel by his comatose father’s bedside. There were similarities between my relationship with my dad and Tengo’s relationship with his father – both older men were rough characters that showed little in the way of emotion. My father was a soldier. I was born and raised in the military. Sometimes Dad could be a very strict disciplinarian, as my conduct could reflect badly on him (and often did – whenever I was arrested as a teenager, which happened a few times, my Dad heard about it from his commanding officers). Dad himself did not show much emotion, though I know he felt, sometimes deeply. The first time I ever saw my Dad cry was when I had to leave home at age eighteen because I was being banished from the Air Force base that we lived on. Yes, literally, legally banished – but that’s a different story. After my teenage years, Dad and I became reconciled and developed a great deal of love and respect for one another. We truly learned to love each other, deeply. Letting him go was one of the hardest experiences of my life. So, that wound was still pretty fresh when, less than a year later, I read 1Q84. Now, the parallels between my experience and the fictional Tengo’s break down on closer examination. But the point here is that Murakami brought up some of the deepest feelings I’ve ever experienced reading a novel. I recall reading on my lunch break at work and having to put the book away to wipe away tears. Thankfully no one else was in the office at that moment. I was a bit of a mess. But it was cathartic, and needed.

After all the heartbreak and terror, 1Q84 is, after all, a love story. A touching love story. As I read, I often thought of a song that I used to listen to when I was in a contemplative mood as a teenager, contemplating about love, the Simple Minds' song “Someone, Somewhere, in Summertime”. I would be shocked if Murakami hadn’t listened to this song while writing this, as it perfectly captures both the mood and, in some ways, the actual plot, of the love story portion of 1Q84. Oh, and did I mention that I was 15 years old in 1984 and deeply in love for a good portion of that year? That might have something to do with my feelings about the love story, as well.

Connections abound. The heart is a lonely place, sometimes, but it’s well worth the effort to keep reaching, whether it be for a family member, a romantic interest, or a desired aspect of life. Life is fleeting, and love is fragile, but powerful. Keep reaching and you’ll find the connections you need, if you look long and carefully enough. Keep reaching. Don’t stop!

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