Sunday, Apr. 11, 2004 - 6:41 pm
Um... I'm sorry.
This relationship just isn't working for me.
I'm at www.dailypreciousness.org now. So change that bookmark.
Finished Murakami's brilliant wind-up bird chronicle yesterday, in which the painful collapse of a marriage is superimposed on a psychological scavenger hunt for the truth of old world war two stories. Throughout the story, sinister personalities lurk behind familiar faces.
This is a story of memory failing us, memory saving us and memory haunting us as we struggle to get past the sins of our collective national past.
Where does guilt lie? On whose shoulders does it rest? And how resolutely do we point fingers at the guilty? Aren't we guilty as well?
These are some of the questions answered in this soaring, spiraling, epic, imaginative piece.
The Booklist review gives another perspective:
"Really, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, it's been a lot of fun being with you. No kidding. I mean, you're such a supernormal guy, but you do such unnormal things. . . . So hanging around you hasn't been boring in any way. . . . But tell you the truth, it's made me nervous too." The speaker is May Kasahara, a Japanese teenager who bears a strong resemblance to Holden Caulfield. She's speaking to Toru Okada, who lives down the street from May in Tokyo and to whom a series of very strange things has been happening. Her words could also stand as a response to this absolutely mesmerizing, befuddling, unaccountably brilliant novel" (Aug. 1997 by Bill Ott).
I like the explanation I found in the literature resource center: "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle presents the war not as a firsthand experience but as part of the psychological baggage that all Japanese of Murakami's generation carry around half consciously."
The burden of the previous generation's sins... that's a big load to shoulder! I found this concept fascinating -- mainly because I have never had much of an understanding of shame or guilt. My conscience has been well oiled for most of my life, so I don't really let much stuff get stuck there.
For me, it was the character May Kasahara's voice that really speaks to me. In her letters, she speaks of the intimate and emotionally raw relationship she shared with the main character. And it is her voice that I relate to on a very basic level. As a writer and a thinker, as a very introspective feeler... that's what this character and I have in common.
Maybe that's why I chose to echo Tori Amos' "Strange Girls" concept album idea when I spoke in the character of May Kasahara for my latest experiment in the sound museum. Listen and be kind. I'm still a beginner with all this.
