There is no way to put this nicely: Haruki Murakami is terrible now.
I say this as one of the novelist's biggest fans. For years, I was that person, the one who would exclaim wait, you haven't read Murakami!? and proceed to hand over a list of what to read and in what order (start with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, don't neglect his short stories). But with the publication of his latest novel, Killing Commendatore, into English on Tuesday, I have to admit at last that Murakami is getting harder and harder to defend. At this point, it feels as if he is just filling in Murakami Bingo spaces at the neglect of actual engaging storytelling.
A perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Murakami is one of the most beloved writers in the world, with his work published in more than 50 languages. He is the only author in translation who can pack midnight release parties in the United States. In his native Japan, Killing Commendatore got an eye-popping first-run of 1.3 million copies last year. More than being known for, say, his prose style or his richly plotted narratives, Murakami is beloved for the genre he has created, his own particular take on magical realism, recognizable by tropes like pasta, cats, an oppressive sense of loneliness, and secret worlds that coexist in or beside our own.
It is a formula that has worked well for him for decades although after finishing Killing Commendatore this weekend, I couldn't help but look back at Murakami's last three novels and wonder ... were they even any good? While Killing Commendatore's predecessors, 1Q84 (published in English in 2011) and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (published in English in 2014), received generally positive reviews in the U.S., both were deeply flawed books: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a vague probing of the fallout of a false rape allegation, more interested in the impact on the male victim than the motivations of his female friend, and 1Q84 is an unwieldy door-stopper in desperate need of an editor. Where was the depth of Wind-Up Bird? Or the concision of A Wild Sheep Chase?
Killing Commendatore is at least the best of Murakami's most recent novels — it is coherent and not outwardly offensive — although it still succumbs to the author's worst tendencies. Modeled very roughly after The Great Gatsby, the novel follows an unnamed portrait painter during the nine months he is living in the mountains while separated from his wife. Yet over the course of 700 pages, you come to deeply feel Killing Commendatore's length; passages of exposition are redundant, and the excruciatingly slow build to action makes you wonder about Murakami's strategy of not having "any plan at all" when he begins a new book. What's more, the tropes that served as delightful flavoring in his earlier works begin to feel practically meme-like in their appearances, almost like mechanical inclusions by the author. Of 19 spaces on Grant Snider's "Haruki Murakami Bingo" board, I counted 16 in reading Killing Commendatore, including "weird sex," "dried-up well," and "unusual name." By the time a "secret passageway" was mentioned, I was practically rolling my eyes.
While Murakami has never been known for being a brilliant prose writer, on a sentence-by-sentence level Killing Commendatore is a sadly unimpressive effort: "Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within," the narrator reflects, although not very deeply. The mysterious Gatsby-like neighbor Menshiki is always smiling "faintly." Murakami uses variations of the simile "like a cat" 12 different times. Certain turns of phrase indicate the author still has a unique eye he can turn on the world — a night is as hushed "as if I were at the bottom of a deep sea," clouds are "like some wandering spirits from the past ... in search of lost memories" — but too often mornings are "chilly," coffee "as black as a moonless night," and silence "too quiet." (...)
Without 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Killing Commendatore might have just feel like a misstep in Murakami's career, a misguided effort to revisit the weird themes and images that helped make him a household name. But looking at the last decade of the author's career, it is hard to dismiss another terrible book as a fluke.
I say this as one of the novelist's biggest fans. For years, I was that person, the one who would exclaim wait, you haven't read Murakami!? and proceed to hand over a list of what to read and in what order (start with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, don't neglect his short stories). But with the publication of his latest novel, Killing Commendatore, into English on Tuesday, I have to admit at last that Murakami is getting harder and harder to defend. At this point, it feels as if he is just filling in Murakami Bingo spaces at the neglect of actual engaging storytelling.
A perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Murakami is one of the most beloved writers in the world, with his work published in more than 50 languages. He is the only author in translation who can pack midnight release parties in the United States. In his native Japan, Killing Commendatore got an eye-popping first-run of 1.3 million copies last year. More than being known for, say, his prose style or his richly plotted narratives, Murakami is beloved for the genre he has created, his own particular take on magical realism, recognizable by tropes like pasta, cats, an oppressive sense of loneliness, and secret worlds that coexist in or beside our own.It is a formula that has worked well for him for decades although after finishing Killing Commendatore this weekend, I couldn't help but look back at Murakami's last three novels and wonder ... were they even any good? While Killing Commendatore's predecessors, 1Q84 (published in English in 2011) and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (published in English in 2014), received generally positive reviews in the U.S., both were deeply flawed books: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a vague probing of the fallout of a false rape allegation, more interested in the impact on the male victim than the motivations of his female friend, and 1Q84 is an unwieldy door-stopper in desperate need of an editor. Where was the depth of Wind-Up Bird? Or the concision of A Wild Sheep Chase?
Killing Commendatore is at least the best of Murakami's most recent novels — it is coherent and not outwardly offensive — although it still succumbs to the author's worst tendencies. Modeled very roughly after The Great Gatsby, the novel follows an unnamed portrait painter during the nine months he is living in the mountains while separated from his wife. Yet over the course of 700 pages, you come to deeply feel Killing Commendatore's length; passages of exposition are redundant, and the excruciatingly slow build to action makes you wonder about Murakami's strategy of not having "any plan at all" when he begins a new book. What's more, the tropes that served as delightful flavoring in his earlier works begin to feel practically meme-like in their appearances, almost like mechanical inclusions by the author. Of 19 spaces on Grant Snider's "Haruki Murakami Bingo" board, I counted 16 in reading Killing Commendatore, including "weird sex," "dried-up well," and "unusual name." By the time a "secret passageway" was mentioned, I was practically rolling my eyes.
While Murakami has never been known for being a brilliant prose writer, on a sentence-by-sentence level Killing Commendatore is a sadly unimpressive effort: "Look deep enough into any person and you will find something shining within," the narrator reflects, although not very deeply. The mysterious Gatsby-like neighbor Menshiki is always smiling "faintly." Murakami uses variations of the simile "like a cat" 12 different times. Certain turns of phrase indicate the author still has a unique eye he can turn on the world — a night is as hushed "as if I were at the bottom of a deep sea," clouds are "like some wandering spirits from the past ... in search of lost memories" — but too often mornings are "chilly," coffee "as black as a moonless night," and silence "too quiet." (...)
Without 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Killing Commendatore might have just feel like a misstep in Murakami's career, a misguided effort to revisit the weird themes and images that helped make him a household name. But looking at the last decade of the author's career, it is hard to dismiss another terrible book as a fluke.
by Jeva Lange, The Week | Read more:
Image: Knopf
[ed. I'd agree, although I actually enjoyed 1Q84 (except for all the Little People and Air Chyrsalis nonsense). I'd recommend Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, and maybe Norwegian Wood. Everything else just seems repetitive (and the surrealism grating). See also: Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami review (The Guardian).]
