Medium Delirium

I don’t think it’s an over-exaggeration to say that Haruki Murakami’s writing was the fulcrum of my twenties. I started when I was at university in London, after I picked up ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’ from a box of books in Portobello Market. It was a beguiling mix of mystery, magic and romance, with elements of both historical drama and the occult (Years later, I would discover that this was the first full novel Murakami had written, and was therefore a serendipitously fitting place to start.) I was hooked. Over the next few years I hunted down everything he had written (and was writing – he is after all, still very much alive). The pile of Murakamis on my windowsill followed me back to Singapore and continued to grow. Fiction and non-fiction, I read them all. I wore my favourites thin, weathered from countless dog ears and being lugged around as reading material for my daily commutes. When I couldn’t sleep, I would crack open a book of short stories under the tungsten glow of a nightlight.

University was an extraordinarily transformative time for me. Most things I knew or assumed about life and the world were being systematically deconstructed, in the rubble of which I had the opportunity and freedom to put together experimental new versions of me. I slid headlong into the identities laid out like clothes on a rack, discovering the spaces available for me to inhabit in the different worlds I revolved through. Art school was the ultimate playground for identity – anyone could be anybody and anything, as long as it wasn’t boring. This kaleidoscopic state of flux was perfectly complemented by Murakami’s intrepid exploration of the self, full of suggestive but vague symbols for the complexity of an inner world. Through the lens of his (often nameless) narrators, I felt like someone was sticking a gloved hand deep into the messy whirlpool of my consciousness, extracting shreds of debris into the light and examining them for meaning.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the charm of it all began to fade. From the vantage point of my late twenties, the vagueness of the plots that I’d found so enthralling and mysterious became convenient ways to avoid the need for more consummate resolution. The recurring tropes got old. It became clear that most of the female protagonists had serious mental health issues. I wondered if my disenchantment was a function of blossoming clarity, or the death of something from my youth. Or both. And I’m not sure if I liked this new me or not.

Despite all that, I was already stuck in pretty deep, so in the name of being comprehensive I kept up with my record of reading everything Murakami wrote. There were gems, mostly non-fiction. A beautiful and poignant piece in Granta about taking a long walk through his hometown in Kobe. The fiction in recent years, however, has all been quite disappointing. The quietness and isolation so integral to Murakami’s worlds suffer in the light of the constant and unbridled connectivity of contemporary existence. Even the short story ‘Drive my Car’, which became enough of a hit to be turned into an extremely long film, was bland for my taste.

Ever the optimist, I started ‘The City and its Uncertain Walls’ – Murakami’s latest – with some eagerness. J is my great ally in Project Murakami – he found me the edition of Granta with the walking piece, and he bought me this book too. I’m not done, but so far it just reads like a poor amalgamation of stories he’s written before. Most obviously, the ominous and near-desolate town of ‘Hard Boiled Wonderland’, with its shape-shifting wall, library of dreams, and herds of unicorns (or ‘beasts with one horn’). The troubled young female protagonist of ‘Norwegian Wood’. The disappearing act of ‘South of the Border’, ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’ and bits in other stories. The dry well and walking-through-walls of ‘Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’. It feels lazy. I’m more than halfway through and I’m still waiting for something new to happen, much less to be gripped by the story like I used to be.

Perhaps this is a premature and unfair assessment, and the second half of the story is wildly exciting and unexpected. The odds are low, but it’s hard to let go of something you loved for a whole decade, so I’ll fly the flag of blind hope and carry along down this increasingly overgrown path. And for all my complaints, if I woke up tomorrow as my 20-year-old self, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it all again, and surely that’s worth something. Onward!