Haruki Murakami and His Early Work

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Running Artist

AvMasaki Mori

Inbunden, Engelska, 2021

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Beskrivning

Haruki Murakami and His Early Work first discusses Murakami Haruki’s real-life activities and interests, such as his self-identity as a Japanese novelist, his position in the Japanese literary canon, music, translation and running. In this context, three short stories as pivotal to his early writing career are examined, including “The Second Bakery Attack,” “The Elephant Vanishes,” and “TV People.” Written in an easy style to read, and with the content full of references to select contemporary popular culture and consumer products, his fiction in general tends to invite criticism of irrelevance and frivolity. Against their nonsensical, even humorous appearance, however, the book’s close analysis reveals his persistent concern with the plight of today’s humanity in postindustrial reality. Through the bewildering stories, Murakami delivers a covert critique of aspects of the sociopolitical system, including unbridled consumerism, relentless pursuit of efficiency, and electronic media saturation, that brings people into total submission without their realization of the plight in which they are placed. In this respect, these short stories rival his acclaimed novels while showing his essential concerns and literary creativity more succinctly.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2021-02-11
Mått:162 x 229 x 16 mm
Vikt:372 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:134
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:9781793635976

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Masaki Mori is associate professor and head of the department of comparative literature and intercultural studies at the University of Georgia.

Recensioner i media

An insightful analysis of Haruki Murakami’s early works, Mori's slim yet substantive volume delves deep into the heart of Murakami’s unique standing in the canons of both Asian and Asian American literature. Never has Murakami been so thoroughly analyzed by a compatriot whose authority and command of the Japanese sensibility confer authority on the close readings. Eschewing the raw commercialism of Japan’s economic rise in the 1970s and 1980s, Murakami—from his school days onward—espoused Western culture, especially American writing. His fastidious devotion to translating works by such Western writers as Raymond Carver and J. D. Salinger afforded him the tools to create what some critics have called his postmodern style, a designation Mori challenges. Mori argues that Murakami’s works exemplify an Asian “premodern” world view in which the living and the dead intermingle. This prominent Edo period belief, Mori argues, sets Murakami apart from postmodern writers, rendering Western critics’ discussion of his books from the postmodern perspective inaccurate and imprecise. Murakami refuses to be pigeonholed into any identity as a writer. Brief and to the point, Mori’s volume makes a valuable contribution to Western literary analysis of living Asian writers. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

Innehållsförteckning

Chapter 1: Murakami’s Self-Conscious Ambivalence as a Japanese WriterChapter 2: Beyond National Canonicity: Murakami and the Japanese Literary CanonChapter 3: Translation as a Beneficial Diversion for Murakami’s Fiction WritingChapter 4: “The Second Bakery Attack”: The Induced Burial of Young AspirationsChapter 5: “The Elephant Vanishes”: What Efficiency ProducesChapter 6: “TV People”: The Slick Assault by Electronic MediaChapter 7: Televisual Appropriation and Fear in “TV People” and Ringu