Ian "Marvin" Graye's Reviews > Kafka On The Shore
Kafka On The Shore
by
by
Ian "Marvin" Graye's review
bookshelves: mura-karmic-wonder-land, nippon, re-read, reviews-5-stars, reviews, read-2014, kafka
Feb 22, 2011
bookshelves: mura-karmic-wonder-land, nippon, re-read, reviews-5-stars, reviews, read-2014, kafka
Read 2 times. Last read July 20, 2014 to July 30, 2014.
Is Your Figure Less Than Greek?
Early in "Kafka on the Shore”, the 15 year old narrator, Kafka Tamura, warns us that his story is not a fairy tale. The book's title is also the name of a painting and of a song mentioned in the novel, and it describes the one photo Kafka's father has kept in his drawer. But what Kafka neglects to tell us is that his story is a myth of epic, ancient Greek proportions.
Murakami has concocted a contemporary blend of Oedipus and Orpheus, East and West, Freud and Jung, Hegel and Marx, Tales of Genji and Arabian Nights, Shinto and Buddhism, abstraction and action, alternating narratives and parallel worlds, seriousness and play, not to mention classical, jazz and pop music.
Conceived as a sequel to "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”, it quickly took on a life of its own, and now sits somewhere between that work and "1Q84”.
If you had to identify Murakami’s principal concerns as a writer, I would venture two: the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and the dynamic encounter between consciousness (the ego) and the subconscious (the id).
There are elements of both in "Kafka” . Thus, it stands as quintessential Murakami.
The book I read.
Search for the Other Half
Like Greek theatrical masks that represent tragedy and comedy, life consists of dualities: "Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness.”
As hypothesised by Aristophanes via Plato, each individual is half what it once was (view spoiler). Our shadow is faint or pale. Murakami urges:
"You should start searching for the other half of your shadow.”
Beware of Darkness
Only, it’s easier said than done. We’re all "like some little kid afraid of the silence and the dark.”
We are "seeking and running at the same time.”
As in fairy tales, friends warn Kafka not to venture too far into the woods.
The irony is that the darkness is not so much outside, but inside. It’s in our subconscious. What terrifies us is "the inner darkness of the soul…the correlation between darkness and our subconscious”.
The woods, the forest are just a symbol of darkness, our own darkness.
In Dreams Begin Responsibility
While we’re awake, while we’re conscious, we think we’re rational, we’re in control, we can manage what happens around us.
However, we fear dreams, because we can’t control and manage them. By extension, we’re also skeptical of the imagination, because it is more analogous to dreaming than thinking.
Yet, we need our imagination almost as much as our logic. Murakami quotes Yeats:
"In dreams begin responsibility.”
It’s in this quandary that Kafka finds himself. It’s problematical enough for an adult, let alone a 15 year old who has lost contact with his mother and older sister at the age of four, and has now run away from his father:
"You're afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.”
For the Time Being
As would befit a Greek tragedy, Kafka’s father, a renowned sculptor, has prophesied:
"Some day you will murder your father and be with your mother…and your sister.”
This is the Oedipus myth, at once a curse and a challenge for Kafka:
"You're standing right up to the real world and confronting it head-on.”
We can only stand by and watch. What is happening? Does it really happen? Does it only happen in the labyrinth of Kafka’s imagination? Is the boy called Crow Kafka’s friend or his soul? (view spoiler) Is the old man Nakata a real person or his alter ego?
If Kafka can only prevail, he will become an adult. If nothing bad happens to him, he’ll emerge part of a brand new world.
It’s not enough for Kafka to spend the time being. He must act.
Reason to Act
Of course, there is a cast of surreal cats, crows and characters who contribute to the colour and dynamic of the novel.
One of my favourites is a Hegel-quoting whore (a philosophy student who might both feature in and read the novels of Bill Vollmann!), who counsels:
"What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts."
Although the protagonists of Murakami's novels are youthful, if not always adolescent, they are rarely in a state of stasis or arrested development. They're always endeavouring to come to terms with the past and embrace the future:
"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future."
We observe them when their lives are most challenging and dynamic, in short, when they're trying to find and define themselves:
"Every object's in flux. The earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place for ever."
My photo of the artwork on a power box I pass every day on my walk.
If I Run Away, Will My Imagination Run Away With Me, Too?
Murakami’s ideas about imagination, dreams and responsibility are fleshed out in a scene that adverts to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
The character Johnnie Walker (view spoiler) kills cats, so that he can turn them into flutes. He challenges Nakata (view spoiler) to kill him to save the cats. Nakata now has a moral dilemma as to whether to kill a person to save the lives of others (view spoiler).
Eichmann was the builder rather than the architect behind the design of the Holocaust. He was an officious conformist who lived and worked routinely without imagination. Hannah Arendt would describe him and his capacity for evil in terms of its banality. Others would call him a “Schreibtischmörder” or “desk murderer”.
In Murakami’s eyes, responsibility is part morality, but it also reflects an empathy with others, a transcendence of the self. Eichmann was too selfish and too conformist to empathise with the Jews he was trying to exterminate.
A Catastrophe is Averted by Sheer Imagination
After an accident in World War II, Nakata realised that he could talk to cats. Ultimately, he empathised with them enough to kill Johnnie Walker.
In Shinto, cats might be important in their own right. However, Murakami frequently uses cats in his fiction. Perhaps they represent other people in society, people we mightn't normally associate with or talk to, (view spoiler) but who watch over us and might perhaps be wiser than us, if only we would give them credit?
Murakami also criticised two women bureaucrats who visited the library for their officious presumption and lack of imagination, albeit in a good cause.
For Murakami, the imagination is vital to completing the self, bonding society and oiling the mechanisms by which it works, but it is also an arena within which the psychodrama of everyday life plays out and resolves.
Inside the Storm
So what can I tell you about Kafka’s fate? Only what Murakami tells us on page 3:
"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm...is you. Something inside of you.
"So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in...There's no sun..., no moon, no direction, no sense of time…[in] that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm…
"And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”
Unless you’re a total Murakami sceptic, when you close this book for the last time, you too won’t be the same person who walked in.
http://www.deviantart.com/fanart/?vie...
VERSE:
Kafka in the Rye (Or Catcher on the Shore)
Kafka sees a ghost,
One he’ll soon love most,
Somehow he has learned
She has just returned
Home from sailing by
Seven seas of Rhye.
If only Kafka
Could one day catch her,
Dressed, in the rye or,
What he’d like much more,
How his heart would soar,
Catch her on the shore,
Idly walking by,
Naked to the eye.
Swept Away
[In the Words of Murakami]
I am swept away,
Whether I like it or not,
To that place and time.
Where There Are Dreams
[In the Words of Murakami]
The earth moves slowly.
Beyond details of the real,
We live our dreams.
Metaphysician, Heal Thyself
[In the Words of Murakami]
You can heal yourself.
The past is a shattered plate
That can't be repaired.
The Burning of Miss Saeki's Manuscript
[In the Words of Murakami]
Shape and form have gone.
The amount of nothingness
Has just been increased.
Look at the Painting, Listen to the Wind
[In the Words of Murakami]
You did the right thing.
You're part of a brand new world.
Nothing bad happened to you.
SOUNDTRACK:
(view spoiler)
Early in "Kafka on the Shore”, the 15 year old narrator, Kafka Tamura, warns us that his story is not a fairy tale. The book's title is also the name of a painting and of a song mentioned in the novel, and it describes the one photo Kafka's father has kept in his drawer. But what Kafka neglects to tell us is that his story is a myth of epic, ancient Greek proportions.
Murakami has concocted a contemporary blend of Oedipus and Orpheus, East and West, Freud and Jung, Hegel and Marx, Tales of Genji and Arabian Nights, Shinto and Buddhism, abstraction and action, alternating narratives and parallel worlds, seriousness and play, not to mention classical, jazz and pop music.
Conceived as a sequel to "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”, it quickly took on a life of its own, and now sits somewhere between that work and "1Q84”.
If you had to identify Murakami’s principal concerns as a writer, I would venture two: the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and the dynamic encounter between consciousness (the ego) and the subconscious (the id).
There are elements of both in "Kafka” . Thus, it stands as quintessential Murakami.
The book I read.
Search for the Other Half
Like Greek theatrical masks that represent tragedy and comedy, life consists of dualities: "Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness.”
As hypothesised by Aristophanes via Plato, each individual is half what it once was (view spoiler). Our shadow is faint or pale. Murakami urges:
"You should start searching for the other half of your shadow.”
Beware of Darkness
Only, it’s easier said than done. We’re all "like some little kid afraid of the silence and the dark.”
We are "seeking and running at the same time.”
As in fairy tales, friends warn Kafka not to venture too far into the woods.
The irony is that the darkness is not so much outside, but inside. It’s in our subconscious. What terrifies us is "the inner darkness of the soul…the correlation between darkness and our subconscious”.
The woods, the forest are just a symbol of darkness, our own darkness.
In Dreams Begin Responsibility
While we’re awake, while we’re conscious, we think we’re rational, we’re in control, we can manage what happens around us.
However, we fear dreams, because we can’t control and manage them. By extension, we’re also skeptical of the imagination, because it is more analogous to dreaming than thinking.
Yet, we need our imagination almost as much as our logic. Murakami quotes Yeats:
"In dreams begin responsibility.”
It’s in this quandary that Kafka finds himself. It’s problematical enough for an adult, let alone a 15 year old who has lost contact with his mother and older sister at the age of four, and has now run away from his father:
"You're afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.”
For the Time Being
As would befit a Greek tragedy, Kafka’s father, a renowned sculptor, has prophesied:
"Some day you will murder your father and be with your mother…and your sister.”
This is the Oedipus myth, at once a curse and a challenge for Kafka:
"You're standing right up to the real world and confronting it head-on.”
We can only stand by and watch. What is happening? Does it really happen? Does it only happen in the labyrinth of Kafka’s imagination? Is the boy called Crow Kafka’s friend or his soul? (view spoiler) Is the old man Nakata a real person or his alter ego?
If Kafka can only prevail, he will become an adult. If nothing bad happens to him, he’ll emerge part of a brand new world.
It’s not enough for Kafka to spend the time being. He must act.
Reason to Act
Of course, there is a cast of surreal cats, crows and characters who contribute to the colour and dynamic of the novel.
One of my favourites is a Hegel-quoting whore (a philosophy student who might both feature in and read the novels of Bill Vollmann!), who counsels:
"What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts."
Although the protagonists of Murakami's novels are youthful, if not always adolescent, they are rarely in a state of stasis or arrested development. They're always endeavouring to come to terms with the past and embrace the future:
"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future."
We observe them when their lives are most challenging and dynamic, in short, when they're trying to find and define themselves:
"Every object's in flux. The earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place for ever."
My photo of the artwork on a power box I pass every day on my walk.
If I Run Away, Will My Imagination Run Away With Me, Too?
Murakami’s ideas about imagination, dreams and responsibility are fleshed out in a scene that adverts to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
The character Johnnie Walker (view spoiler) kills cats, so that he can turn them into flutes. He challenges Nakata (view spoiler) to kill him to save the cats. Nakata now has a moral dilemma as to whether to kill a person to save the lives of others (view spoiler).
Eichmann was the builder rather than the architect behind the design of the Holocaust. He was an officious conformist who lived and worked routinely without imagination. Hannah Arendt would describe him and his capacity for evil in terms of its banality. Others would call him a “Schreibtischmörder” or “desk murderer”.
In Murakami’s eyes, responsibility is part morality, but it also reflects an empathy with others, a transcendence of the self. Eichmann was too selfish and too conformist to empathise with the Jews he was trying to exterminate.
A Catastrophe is Averted by Sheer Imagination
After an accident in World War II, Nakata realised that he could talk to cats. Ultimately, he empathised with them enough to kill Johnnie Walker.
In Shinto, cats might be important in their own right. However, Murakami frequently uses cats in his fiction. Perhaps they represent other people in society, people we mightn't normally associate with or talk to, (view spoiler) but who watch over us and might perhaps be wiser than us, if only we would give them credit?
Murakami also criticised two women bureaucrats who visited the library for their officious presumption and lack of imagination, albeit in a good cause.
For Murakami, the imagination is vital to completing the self, bonding society and oiling the mechanisms by which it works, but it is also an arena within which the psychodrama of everyday life plays out and resolves.
Inside the Storm
So what can I tell you about Kafka’s fate? Only what Murakami tells us on page 3:
"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm...is you. Something inside of you.
"So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in...There's no sun..., no moon, no direction, no sense of time…[in] that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm…
"And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”
Unless you’re a total Murakami sceptic, when you close this book for the last time, you too won’t be the same person who walked in.
http://www.deviantart.com/fanart/?vie...
VERSE:
Kafka in the Rye (Or Catcher on the Shore)
Kafka sees a ghost,
One he’ll soon love most,
Somehow he has learned
She has just returned
Home from sailing by
Seven seas of Rhye.
If only Kafka
Could one day catch her,
Dressed, in the rye or,
What he’d like much more,
How his heart would soar,
Catch her on the shore,
Idly walking by,
Naked to the eye.
Swept Away
[In the Words of Murakami]
I am swept away,
Whether I like it or not,
To that place and time.
Where There Are Dreams
[In the Words of Murakami]
The earth moves slowly.
Beyond details of the real,
We live our dreams.
Metaphysician, Heal Thyself
[In the Words of Murakami]
You can heal yourself.
The past is a shattered plate
That can't be repaired.
The Burning of Miss Saeki's Manuscript
[In the Words of Murakami]
Shape and form have gone.
The amount of nothingness
Has just been increased.
Look at the Painting, Listen to the Wind
[In the Words of Murakami]
You did the right thing.
You're part of a brand new world.
Nothing bad happened to you.
SOUNDTRACK:
(view spoiler)
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
February 22, 2011
– Shelved
November 17, 2011
– Shelved as:
mura-karmic-wonder-land
March 22, 2013
– Shelved as:
nippon
July 20, 2014
–
Started Reading
July 20, 2014
– Shelved as:
re-read
July 29, 2014
–
57.42%
"Spot the philosopher I:
A person is not merely conscious of self and object as separate entities, but through the projection of the self via the mediation of the object is volitionally able to gain a deeper understanding of the self. All of which constitutes self-consciousness."
page
294
A person is not merely conscious of self and object as separate entities, but through the projection of the self via the mediation of the object is volitionally able to gain a deeper understanding of the self. All of which constitutes self-consciousness."
July 29, 2014
–
57.42%
"Spot the philosopher II:
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory."
page
294
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory."
July 29, 2014
–
57.81%
"Spot the philosopher III:
A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts"
page
296
A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts"
July 30, 2014
– Shelved as:
reviews-5-stars
July 30, 2014
– Shelved as:
reviews
July 30, 2014
– Shelved as:
read-2014
July 30, 2014
–
Finished Reading
April 19, 2015
– Shelved as:
kafka
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Kafka on the Shore is my favorite H. Murakami book - of the ones I've read - and the one I recommend to newcomers to his fiction.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/mag...
Can't wait to see your review on this book. I thought it was one of his best but his writing style is not for everyone.
Tough question! It's not so much a superiority or a lack, as a difference. Murakami is a creme caramel and Vollmann is a creme brulee. Sometimes the latter goes a bit too heavy on the blowtorch, but equally sometimes the former is a little heavy handed with the caramel.
Thanks, Momina. This is such a hard novel to discuss in any more detail without spoilers.
Thanks, Brian. Coincidentally, I was just reading how much he enjoyed Vonnegut and Brautigan when he lived in the US.
I would probably recommend Norwegian Wood over Kafka On The Shore as a first Murakami. See how you progress.
You're so kind, Elham. I loved your review, and so wanted to use the image of the painting. I ended up taking a photo at home instead!
Is the old man Nakata a real person or his alter ago?
I have to think about this more but he's surely the most memorable character for me in the book.
I'm reading some Murakami and Mitchell novels now, in preparation for their new releases over the next couple of months.
There were so many interesting characters in the novel, but I ended up writing about it thematically, so I could avoid spoilers.
However, one day, I'd love to explore issues like who really exists, who is part of Kafka's imagination, who is a double or a stand-in, what contact have they had with each other in the past, etc.
http://www.haruki-murakami.com/tagged...
P.S. Hoshino seems to be a popular subject.
Thanks, Maria. I loved your review as well, and recommend it to others who come here first!
Something that I think you briefly touched on was the killing of Johnnie Walker and Murakami's comments about Adolf Eichmann.
These issues didn't fit into my review as it emerged, but I originally wanted to think and write something about them.
Eichmann was a conformist who lived and worked routinely without imagination. Hannah Arendt would describe him as banal. Murakami used Yeats' line "In dreams begin responsibility" in relation to Eichmann and the challenge by Johnnie Walker to Nakata to kill him (so he could stop killing cats, out of which JW made flutes). Responsibility is part morality, but it also reflects an empathy with others, a transcendence of the self. Eichmann was too selfish and too conformist to empathise with the Jews he was trying to kill. Nakata empathised with the cats enough to kill Johnnie Walker, rather than let him continue to kill cats. It would be interesting to discuss the symbolism of cats. They are more than just cats. Do they represent other people in society. People we mightn't normally talk to, but who watch us and might perhaps be wiser than us, if only we would give them credit?
Murakami also criticised the two women bureaucrats who visited the library for their presumption and lack of imagination.
For Murakami, the imagination is vital to completing the self, but it is also an arena within which the drama of life plays out and resolves.
Hence, my question whether the whole novel might occur in Kafka's imagination.
Any thoughts?
Thanks, Sue. I look forward to your impressions of the book. Don't forget there's a new Murakami coming out in a couple of weeks.
Thanks, Ted. Unfortunately, I can only look at it and think about what it lacks!
Thanks, Michael. When it comes to victuals, I prefer to share than spill!
Thanks, Ted. Unfortunately, I can only look at it and think about what it lacks!"
Artists are never satisfied with their work.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I read and reviewed it as soon as it came out, something I hope to do with the new novel in a couple of weeks time.
I love Oshima and could probably write a whole essay dedicated just to him. For the moment, I've just stuck a little spoiler in the above review that hints at one of the issues concerning him.
I also enjoyed Oshima's brother, the surfie!
I'm very tempted to read it, but I might wait until the book arrives!
I figure this ought to be my next Murakami, and for that matter, my next Kafka. Good stuff, Ian.
Good to hear from you, Steve. I think she might have been the heart and soul of dialectical materialism.
Thanks so much, Betsey. I took the first photo!
Thanks, Nishat. Murakami always creates space to imagine!
Thanks, Aastha!
Thanks, Ritwik. Glad you enjoyed it.