Fiction Review: Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami (1979, Kodansha International)

Murakami isn't for everybody.

I'm not claiming hipster status here, declaring that I'm somehow a superior human being because I enjoy his writing, or that if you hate him your parents used Intelligence as your dump stat during character creation, just pointing out the obvious. If you already tried Murakami and found him lacking, Hear the Wind Sing isn't going to alter your opinion or shatter your worldview like a soccer ball upside the head.

You need to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy his fiction. Think of it this way: if you attend a stage play at your local repertory theater, but you go in with the mindset that you're about to experience a multi-million dollar cinematic blockbuster, you're not going to have a good time. A stage play is all about the understanding between audience and performers that what you're about to see isn't reality, or even a close approximation thereof. There's only so far props and costumes can take the actors--the audience has to agree to that willing suspension of disbelief. A stage production of Oklahoma! rarely involves real horses and carriages, South Pacific isn't performed on a tropical island, and it's sound effects and lighting as opposed to real sewage that signifies the death of Javert in Les Miserables. If you can't get past that, you and the theater won't make good buddies.

Reading Murakami requires a similar mindset. He's a lyrical writer who invents circumstances which cannot possibly be real in order to explore the human condition and play with language. One reads Murakami not to partake of a perfectly normal, rational tale about ordinary people, but to imbibe some of his "magical realism" and go along for the ride through a field of metaphor, simile, and possibility.

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Despite this being Murakami's first novel, I wouldn't recommend it as the starting point for the new would-be readers, especially ones who've little to no Japanese literature notched on the bedpost. For those readers, Norwegian Wood or A Wild Sheep Chase are better, more accessible examples of his fiction to start with--wading pools instead of Olympic-regulation natitoriums. If you prefer non-fiction, check out What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, or Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.

If you like what you see, and know what to expect, then dive in to Hear the Wind Sing.

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It's amazing to me to read a first novel by a writer and see them so competently and completely command their authorial voice. Hear the Wind Sing is just such a work--you can see Murakami playing with and laying out so many of the points he wants to hit as an author, establishing tone and setting, flow and viewpoint, style and substance.

The first of what would eventually become a four-book series, Hear the Wind Sing features an unnamed narrator who goes through his life in a way that feels a few degrees divorced from reality. The people he meets, the actions he takes, the sights he sees, are all filtered through a peculiar lens. If you've ever watched an old Doctor Who broadcast and noticed that everything shot on a sound stage (like the TARDIS interior) looks just the slightest bit 'off' when compared to the stuff shot on location (like a disused quarry in Wales), that's a visual representation of what Murakami's literary lens sees.

Be prepared for things to be a little 'off' and take them as they come.

Classifying Hear the Wind Sing isn't easy. It's fiction, yes, but it's fictional in the same way Seinfeld is fictional. Looked at like a traditional novel, you could find it guilty of being about nothing. There's no grand truth at the heart of Murakami's prose, no stunning revelations, not even any truly memorable characters. Reading it is like getting a slightly deeper look at the lives of the people you pass by on the street every day, the ones you interact with at restaurants and check-out kiosks, the folks in the car the next lane over who become part of your life by virtue of being stopped at the same traffic light. You go your way, they go their way, and that's pretty much it.

But what if you could spend a while in their head space? What if you could intuit somehow what gives their lives meaning (or fails to give their lives meaning)? That's the so-called "Magical Realism" of Murakami. It isn't page-turning thrills, it's not mile-a-minute suspense, and most of the characters aren't even very likable. In fact the person for whom the series is named was given the moniker "The Rat" by the narrator, because it just seemed to fit.

Despite all this, the book just works. If you're in a Murakami state of mind, if you're fine with the narrator groping his way through life as we all do (smoking cigarettes, hanging out in bars, and dating nine-fingered women), if you appreciate a fine simile the way cigar aficionados appreciate a fine Cuban, you are the target audience for this book--and much of the rest of Murakami's prolific output too. Just as in real life, the details will go by in a flurry of the mundane, of which you will remember little. But after you close the cover, you'll still have the vague feeling of having been through something important. You'll dwell on memories of your own youth, comparing and contrasting with the unnamed protagonist. You'll ponder some vague point of philosophy or wisdom doled out by a down-on-his-luck, poor-little-rich-Rat.

You'll wonder what the point of it all is, what the point of it all was, and you'll be reminded that it isn't up to Murakami, or any other writer, to answer that question. Just as his characters need to work it out for themselves, so do we all have to decide what (if anything) is important about life. Most of us exist in a day-to-day world, coasting on the knowledge that today's sunset will be followed by tomorrow's sunrise. Hear the Wind Sing is an invitation to recognize what we're doing and look a little closer at the 99% of our lives that pass by without our acknowledgement.

There may be magic in the mundane. No promises. But after every Murakami book, you view the world like the kaleidoscope has been given a quarter-inch twist to the left. Nothing much has changed, but the net result is a change in everything.

Four magically-realistic stars out of five.