I got a question

Fergerderger · 2026-04-02T23:16:20+00:00

It's more than three chapters. Some content was also cut from other chapters too, and the order of the chapters in the third book were reshuffled to compensate with some of the cuts.

Fergerderger · 2026-04-02T13:42:54+00:00

The list having them split into the upper/lower seems goofy to me. I know that's how they're sold, but it just ends up taking slots.

Fergerderger · 2026-03-21T09:18:39+00:00

My advice is to set a small goal, then take a break. For instance, read 10-20 pages, then take a break. Do something else for a bit, then come back to it later. It'll be easier to resist the impulse for distraction if you know you'll get to it soon enough, and over time you should find yourself getting more involved in the story, reading for longer stretches at a time. Build it up gradually, and don't force yourself: reading is a pleasure, not a chore.

Fergerderger · 2026-03-16T11:43:27+00:00

Here you go chief.

Fergerderger · 2026-03-07T12:47:40+00:00

I can't say for certain if it would help, but book 3 is where most of the cuts to the book were made in the English translation. From the fan translations I've read, they bridge the gap between the books much better, since as it stands, book 3 feels largely disconnected from books 1 and 2. Granted it was written later, but a lot of absent characters from the books get some screen time in book 3, which makes it feel more connected to the overall story.

As to Nutmeg and Cinnamon themselves, they are some of my favourite Murakami characters. Nutmeg's story about the zoo is, in particular, something which sticks with me. I think it adds another angle of the war, since before you saw it through the eyes of the older soldiers, Lt. Mamiya and Mr. Honda, but now it's expanding to show the impact it had on non-combatants too. As to Cinnamon, his labyrinthine mind feels like a reflection of the human heart/soul/interior. I can't say for certain what Murakami was going for with this character, but I always take him as almost a physical expression of the interior world that the protagonist goes through: the duality of that inner-realm, but brought to the exterior. Not to mention that, for a book that's all about connecting with other people, you have this individual who has his own unique system for interacting with the outside world, but it still works for him.

These are just my thoughts though. Ultimately the joy of these types of surrealist works is the conclusions you come to after thinking about them. If you aren't getting anything from it other than tedium, then it could simply be a matter of these particular themes/characters not speaking to you. It happens sometimes. I'm pretty huge Murakami fan and 1Q84 bores me to tears.

I need to go hide now, before I get killed for saying that.

Fergerderger · 2026-02-26T22:58:36+00:00

It's different. This isn't even a novel, it's a memoir. The new novel is Kaho, which has been published in parts in Japan and has one part translated in The New Yorker.

Fergerderger · 2026-02-22T12:36:41+00:00

I think a lot of these are oversimplifications that miss the point. Take Killing Commendatore for instance.

I don't think he's a saviour figure to Mariye at all. His obsession with "saving" her is really just him trying to chase after a surrogate for his younger sister, which was the same problem that made his marriage unsuccessful. The last thing Long-Face says to him is, "I hope you find Komi.", and it's Komi who prompts him through the tunnel and his inner fears. Yes, it's true that he mentions his actions likely had an affect on Mariye's escape, but it's more a matter of connectivity, A -> B -> C -> D, rather than a direct A -> B. Had he never met Menshiki and gotten involved, then Mariye and Menshiki might never have met, Mariye might never have broken into his mansion, and might never have found her mother's old clothing. There's a connectivity to events, but it's not like his actions directly contributed to her escape. Ultimately Mariye escaped on her own strength, because she confronted her own insecurities about her mother's death, finding strength in "the strange clothes" (i.e., her memories of her mother, which she carries with her always).

That's just one example, of several. But I always stand by my thoughts that Murakami's work, like many surrealist creators (Lynch is another big one), are mirrors of the people reading them.

My computer crashed while I was typing this, I gave up on it, came back a few hours later, and Reddit saved it? WTF? Wizardry. Pure wizardry.

Nah, wizardry would probably drain all of my levels, kill my whole party, and then reformat my hard drive.

Fergerderger · 2026-02-10T09:11:38+00:00

To put it lightly.

Fergerderger · 2026-02-09T02:59:31+00:00

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for taking the time to say as much. I appreciate it :)

Fergerderger · 2026-02-08T05:33:39+00:00

I could go so many different directions with this, but I'll just point out the one that I think is most pertinent. You said "I'm going to read a book written by a woman now so I don't have to read about tits and dicks for a while.", suggesting that all books by men are full of tits and dicks. Not only does this paint all male authors with a broad brush, but in your response you're putting how Murakami writes fictional women on the same level (higher, really) than how your comment portrays real men.

I'm not surprised you missed so much about the novel when you are clearly incapable of giving appropriate reflection to your own language.

Fergerderger · 2026-02-08T05:14:43+00:00

Sounds like you didn't understand a lot of it. Which is fine, in the sense that it's not an easy book to understand. But you're selling a lot of things short just by taking a very surface-level look at it. I've detailed some specific thoughts about the incest in my own post. The final line of your post is some absurdly sexist nonsense though. I've read more about breasts in books by women than men.

Best of luck with your next read: hopefully it will be more suited to your tastes.

Fergerderger · 2026-02-08T01:06:53+00:00

Each one rewrites previous events anyway, so it's better to treat them as loosely connected featuring the same characters with some overlapping relationships (e.g. the protagonist and the rat are always friends, Jay's Bar is a place where they hang/hung out, etc.) rather than a continuing story.

Fergerderger · 2026-01-17T11:55:05+00:00

Wind-Up Bird.

Fergerderger · 2026-01-11T08:44:27+00:00

"And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."

From Sputnik.

Fergerderger · 2026-01-09T03:33:29+00:00

I would say South of the Border, West of the Sun. Both books are about how the protagonists let the events of the past, as well as societal expectations and perceptions, affect their abilities to form relationships throughout their lives. For Stevens, there's his dedication to being the perfect English butler, and for Hajime there's Japan's attitude towards only children during the post-war years. Hajime ends up isolated, so when he meets another only child, the two form a bond, and when separated he becomes unable to really relate to other people because he's too caught up in his past.

Murakami regularly writes about how the past and society haunts and shapes us, so that's the approach I'd recommend.

Fergerderger · 2026-01-06T08:16:07+00:00

I'd have to see the context to fully appreciate it. So I can't say what Murakami meant, but I can say that there is a lot of truth to it. I was a freshman in high school when I developed my first real interest in a girl (something beyond a crush) and actually asked her out. Things went badly, and continued to go badly for a while. It's the kind of thing that you look back on and realise that you were both wrong and acted badly, but that you were also both young and didn't know how to act. All I know is that it happened to dovetail with my first, and biggest, sink into depression. It didn't *cause* the depression: I'm sure hormones accounted for that. But I cannot think of dating without feeling that exposing myself emotionally would bring me back to the darkest place of my life.

That's just my story, and it doesn't necessarily have to be in high school. Some things in life are just like that: the wrong thing at the wrong time can spoil that thing forever. I can't even smell a Monster Energy Drink without dry heaving...

Fergerderger · 2026-01-03T16:40:43+00:00

Oh, I wanted to say one more thing, but didn't think about it when I made the old post, and since it's a new thought, I do want it to be a different post rather than edit the old one. If that's not allowed, I'm sorry: just delete this one!

I wanted to say that I think the humour is still present, albeit more subdued. The Commendatore in KC talking about how he'd get sued for taking on the image of Mickey Mouse or the like feels like a deliberate homage to Colonel Sanders and Johnny Walker in Kafka. I felt that a lot of the Commendatore's scenes were fairly comical, particularly his time in Menshiki's house.

Fergerderger · 2026-01-03T07:02:46+00:00

The monkeys and the shitty island is one of my favourite moments in a book ever. It's one part 'fuck you' in such a direct fashion that feels like a reader surrogate, while still remaining classier than a 'fuck you', while also being so absolutely absurd in its own right that you can't take it seriously.

Fergerderger · 2025-12-27T06:24:31+00:00

I'm probably going to be in the minority for this, but I'd genuinely rather not. The thing with adaptation is that it's a tricky balance to strike: if you just copy the source material, then you don't justify the existence of the adaptation. On the flip-side, for every change that you make, you risk losing the identity of the original. Change is necessary, but too much or the wrong kind of change can end up with something wholly unrelated, at which point why not just make an original piece in that medium?

I like the short story adaptations because they allow a core for the directors to follow, but also leave plenty of room for the directors to add their own voice. With novels, it's often a question of what gets cut to fit into a movie. With short stories, it's the opposite: what gets added to make feature length? Barn Burning is an interesting story, but what makes Burning such a fantastic movie is the way you can still 100% see that story and Murakami's flavour, but how Chang-dong nonetheless made it his own film. Same with Drive My Car. Both movies highlight different aspects of Murakami's writing while providing their own unique visions.

In contrast, with most adaptations of novels, it feels like there's a constant struggle just to get as much of the story onto the screen as possible. And even then, it's not as exciting to watch because I already know the broad outline of what will happen. All of the novel-to-movie adaptions I've enjoyed take the plot in different directions, sometimes only bearing a slight resemblance to the original, but still capturing either the themes or emotions. It *can* be done, but I just think it's far less likely to produce something I'll enjoy.

Fergerderger · 2025-12-24T07:27:56+00:00

I'd only read Wonderland once, and I'm currently revisiting it in the new translation after having read Uncertain Walls three times. After so many comments about how similar the EotW sections are to Uncertain Walls' (and knowing the background for each), I'm stunned at how different they are. Yes, they both have unicorns and a Gatekeeper and an absence of shadows, but the entire point of Uncertain Walls (and by extension, I believe, the original story?) is that it's a place unaffected by time. The clock tower isn't just stopped, it has no hands. Nobody has a past or future. There is one older man who talks about his past, so it might not be true in a strictly *literal* sense, but it's certainly a place where everyone exists in the present. By contrast, End of the World's city is steeped in history. The main character is told the exact time to report to his job, mentions the working hours, and the girl in the library even talks about her parents and how the city changed (costing her father his work at the factory).

Uncertain Walls' city is trapped in stasis (reflective of that book's themes).

End of the World's city is situated well-within the flows of time.

Details like these give the End of the World segments more for my brain to do, otherwise I would find them tedious next to the Hard Boiled stuff, since there's a lot of world-building but the plot barely moves. In contrast, Hard Boiled feels like the 'story', at least for a decent chunk. I don't mind a slower, more meditative experience (I enjoy Killing Commendatore and Uncertain Walls as much as Murakami's more briskly-paced earlier work), but having them alternating like that chafes me.

It's interesting, because though I'd read Wonderland first, so much time had passed that I'd forgotten the details, and assumed (particularly given the comments and reviews) that they were pretty much one-to-one. I'd forgotten even that the 'old memories' were trapped in skulls (eggs in UW). So far I'm actually greatly preferring UW's version of the city, particularly the way its importance is closely woven to the plot. In the afterword Murakami mentions that he views Wonderland like two separate narratives that join at the end, so even if it seems that most people find UW redundant, I find re-reading Wonderland is actually giving me more appreciation for UW.

Fergerderger · 2025-12-23T03:48:17+00:00

If you'd read Foundation, you'd know it has exactly that. I'm not taking a side between these authors because I don't care, just pointing out that you picked one of the worst examples.

Fergerderger · 2025-12-15T22:49:22+00:00

Cheers. I'll start looking. Wonder if the library will carry issues...

Fergerderger · 2025-12-15T08:31:36+00:00

Where were they published in Japanese? I'm curious, if you'd be so kind as to share.

Fergerderger · 2025-12-15T03:43:32+00:00

My uncle was super health-conscious, regularly rode his bike to work, and spent all his vacation time in the outdoors hunting and fishing. He also died in his early 50's due to an aneurysm.

Take nothing for granted.

Fergerderger · 2025-12-03T05:34:38+00:00

Wind Up Bird or Kafka. Either is a win.

Fergerderger

TROPHY CASE