janus ([info]grey_ghost) wrote in [info]murakami,
@ 2005-01-29 15:55:00
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Characters and the Lead Character.
The odd thing that strikes me about Murakami's characters (Hard-Boiled .. and Wind-Up Bird come to mind) is that they don't seem too bothered about being loners.

That's what makes them so cool. It's that I don't give a damn, I roll with the punches like the best of 'em sort of guts: tough guys who are tough without effort, tough by definition and without demonstration or proof.

Thinking about it, I wonder if Murakami will ever write a book where the lead is a female. Immediately that sound to me a far more difficult book to write. Then again, I don't understand women very well (least of all, Japanese women), so who am I to say?

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[info]enyi
2005-01-29 01:04 pm UTC (link)
Tough or maybe passive...just drifting along in life...

I don't think he would ever write a female lead. He's gotten criticism for not making fleshed-out female characters, for using them only as symbolic sort of constructs for the male lead. Who knows, though?

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[info]stripling
2005-01-29 03:41 pm UTC (link)
I can see what they mean about not making fleshed out female characters. they seem to lack some sort of depth or reality or something.


I did like the letters in Wind Up Bird from May Kasahara though.

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thoughts
[info]womanonfire
2005-01-29 01:47 pm UTC (link)
I was telling someone just tonight that i thought the people in their stories were "cool", I used that exact word even. But I definitely didn't think of it as "tough"
For me it is more like they are introverted, painfully so, defiantly so. But they are comfortable with that. They live in what they feel are pointless times doing things that are just there for passing their "pointless" lives. But then they find that there are so many moments that give life meaning... That life is made up of these little bright moments, that might hurt more than they would like, but that is life. And the bright moments are how you know you are alive. You cannot avoid them nor can you make them happen... his guys realize they need to savor those important moments....

It takes somebody cool to realize that. Uncool people just go crazy. >_<
I am reading Norwegian Wood btw. that is the guy I am most thinking of. But the man in Wild Sheep Chase was just the same.

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Re: thoughts
[info]divinedemon
2005-01-30 07:38 am UTC (link)
Sounds alot like South of the Boarder, West of the Sun.

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[info]erdufylla
2005-01-29 02:15 pm UTC (link)
The thing with Murakami's protagonists is that they're not very Japanese... They're much more Amreican or European in action and personality. Or at least that's been my take on them...

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[info]ex_exitmusic23
2005-01-31 12:20 am UTC (link)
then again, one can easily forget that Japanese are so different from one another..

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[info]ako_lang
2005-02-09 07:18 pm UTC (link)
i believe that it was exactly that reason why his books are well-known (not only in Japan). the fact that even though the readers are not Japanese or haven't even gone to that place, people can relate. as a reader, the only things that'll remind you that you're reading an Oriental author are the names and the places.

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[info]castallia
2005-01-29 04:01 pm UTC (link)
Some of Murakami's short stories had female protagonists: "Sleep", "The Ice Man", "Landscape with Flatiron","Thailand" and "Little Green Monster" are some that come to mind. I thought the main character of "Sleep" was the most interesting and complex of the women from these stories.

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[info]polishq
2005-01-29 04:38 pm UTC (link)
Agreed.

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[info]asashoryu
2005-01-29 07:46 pm UTC (link)
After Dark, published her in Japan lst September, features a female protagonist of sorts. All the action takes places between midnight and the hours leading to mid-morning the next day. The novel is a bit of a departure for H.M. for many reasons. But nobody cares now because it won't be translated until 2007, or so Rubin informs me.

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[info]divinedemon
2005-01-30 07:40 am UTC (link)
So the translation has been pushed forward from 2010.

It'll be the first novel then, right? I think everytime he's writen from a female POV it's been in short stories.

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[info]december_clouds
2005-02-05 03:40 pm UTC (link)
I loved sleep, that's my favourite short story of his.

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on understandint women
[info]abazureonna
2005-01-29 08:32 pm UTC (link)
oh yes, as a woman i agree that it's quite difficult to understand the female mind. it hovers somewhere around venus and sends signals to us all through feminine hygene products.

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nevermind me
[info]abazureonna
2005-01-29 08:32 pm UTC (link)
i'm quite drunk.

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Re: nevermind me
[info]reeseisdanky
2005-01-30 02:30 pm UTC (link)
One of the better drunken posts I've seen.

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