Pleb or patrician?
Failed patrician, I haven't liked his stuff since Kafka on the Shore
Read two of his books, both were shit.
>>7957804
Stopped Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore both halfway through. I rarely put down books and flat out don't finish them.
I'm gonna say pleb. Of the Japanese authors I've read, he is easily at the bottom of the list (the others being Akutagawa, Dazai, Soseki, and Ishiguro- if you count him).
>>7957817
I don't agree with the hate some contemprary authors get here (not talking about John Green here), including Murakami, although I think Norwegian Wood was awful, his worst, and Kafka on the shore looked like it was written by a teenager at times.
This being said, the first work I've ready by him was After Dark, and I think it was his best. It's very short and I recomnend it, you could change your opinion. I liked Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world as well, at least most of it.
He's not as bad as people make him here (that happens because he's mainstream) but obviously I also think him being a strong contender for the Nobel prize every year is ridiculous.
The Japanese Borges.
>>7957804
nice middleground where he isnt blowing minds with ideas, but he is an interesting and comfy author. certainly not lazy, and a good chunk of his work is worth reading IMO
>>7957804
Patrician. I studied Japanese for about 3 years and I'm reading 1Q84 really, really slowly. It's a great time.
>>7957804
He's the gateway to better stuff.
very pleb. middlebrow as fuck, read almost exclusively by people who dont like literature but want to appear sophisticated.
Trite pablum.
>>7957817
what about
MIIIIIIISHIIIIIIIIMAAAAAAA?
>>7957804
the only things that work are the short stories--particularly After the Quake--and South of the Border, West of the Sun.
LN writer
https://ask.fm/kastelpls/answers/110702414302
>>7958458
patripleb
>>7957817
Why is Akutagawa bad?
>>7958576
He's not.
>>7957838
they literally have nothing in common senpai
>>7957804
Read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and didn't think it was anything special. I wonder if it's a matter of translation though; maybe it reads better in the original language.
>>7957804
He's a worthless bourgeois writer, like Kundera, Baricco and Ruiz Zafón.
Shallow sludge with a dash of magical realism.
How much of /lit/'s hate is because they're too pleb to read it in the original Japanese?
>>7957817
The fact that you consider counting Ishiguro as a Japanese author pretty much voids your opinion my dude
He left Japan when he was like 5 and is pretty much anglicised
>>7957804
Decidedly middlebrow, i.e. pleb.
>>7958619
Norwegian Wood sample
直子はその日珍しくよくしゃべった。子供の頃のことや、学校のことや、家庭のことを彼女は話した。どれも長い話で、まるで細密画みたいに克明だった。たいした記憶力だなと僕はそんな話を聞きながら感心していた。しかしそのうちに僕は彼女のしゃべり方に含まれている何かがだんだん気になりだした。何かがおかしいのだ。何かが不自然で歪んでいるのだ。ひとつひとつの話はまともでちゃんと筋もとおっているのだが、そのつながり方がどうも奇妙なのだ。Aの話がいつのまにかそれに含まれるBの話になり、やがてBに含まれるCの話になり、それがどこまでもどこまでもつづいた。終りというものがなかった。僕ははじめのうちは適当に合槌を打っていたのだが、そのうちにそれもやめた。僕はレコードをかけ、それが終ると針を上げて次のレコードをかけた。ひととおり全部かけてしまうと、また最初のレコードをかけた。レコードは全部で六枚くらいしかなく、サイクルの最初は『サージャント・ペパーズ・ロンリー・ハーツ・クラブ・バンド』で、最後はビル・エヴァンスの『ワルツ・フォー・デビー』だった。窓の外では雨が降りつづけていた。時間はゆっくりと流れ、直子は一人でしゃべりつづけていた。
What's hard?
>>7958629
Ok, I'll admit, that's pretty simplistic prose.
I loved Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, though half the characters seemed to speak with the same voice and the prose wasn't amazing (then again, it was a translation).
He's not mind-blowingly good or anything but he's definitely well above shit-tier pleb authors like Stephen King, GRRM etc. Honestly his english language publishers make him out to be some surreal mastermind and play on his foreign-ness, while he doesn't even seem to take his own writing all that seriously. He's just an old Japanese dude who writes enjoyable and interesting fiction.
He's no Mishima or Borges, but worth a read every now and then.
His sex scenes are always awful, though.
>>7958629
2Japon4me
hes far from patrician, everyone reads him
Got _Colorless Tsuruku Tazaki_ as a gift and liked it. Haven't read any others. Now though I have a strong distaste for contemporary settings and technology in fiction so I wouldn't read something like it again.
>>7958619
murakami reads better ine nglish than in japanese. he himself even admits this, and his translator has pointed this out as well.
>>7958629
Childs play I was reading Japanese when I was 2.
>>7958849
I picked it up for the cover alone and enjoyed it as well. I'm a sucker for interesting cover designs.
Patrician, but he should put the pen down.
>>7957804
How about a new word called "Plebtrician", which is kind of like the middle ground between pleb and patrician.
Which books would fall under this?
>>7959484
John Fowles, perhaps.
>japanese
there is more intellect and meaning in curious george and the man in the yellow hat than anything to ever come out of japan
i would say that he's top tier pleb
>>7959692
Explain.
>>7959709
this, out of all the plebby writers, he's one of the better.
>>7959719
it's his meme
he's a disgruntled english teacher with a pleb bucktoothed girlfriend
leave him be
Norwegian Wood is very comfy. It's like watching a Wes Anderson movie with the contrast turned way down.
Middlebrow
patrician among plebs.
>>7958458
Duuuuuuuuude
>>7959749
Sure is. I don't really understand all the hate it receives, it's not complete garbage.
I really think After Dark is his best work, but nobody ever mentions it or even really seems to know it exists.
He can definitely be hit and miss, though, going off on wild tangents that don't actually add anything to the story.
>>7957804
Both. He has a few pleb books and a few patrician books. I think his patrician books not only outnumber his pleb ones, but more than make up for it. Honestly, a lot of the hate he receives from this board is because he's too mainstream, either than or the person read one of his books and judged the rest of them from it.
Read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Started out promising, but god damn, there's nothing there. At least I can tell stoner cuties I read Murakami, since College age """"alt"""" girls tend to be all over that guy.
Might give him another try sometime, but no time soon.
>>7960746
I read that one. I liked it but it was weird how the characters acted like May and that gypsy that wanted to move away with him and entering that well to get to some kind of dream world. I guess I didn't fully understand it. I only started Norwegian Wood and I like the characters. This one seems more down to earth to me but I don't know how it's gonna turn out.
>>7960746
I think WUBC is one of his best actually. Still, taste in literature is pretty subjective and very few people on this board acknowledge that. Not saying there aren't shit writers like John Green or anything, just that once you move away from pure shit on the literary quality scale, the scale becomes increasingly more difficult to read, so to speak.
Murakami's books aren't patrician, but I think a patrician could enjoy them. No one has to be serious all the time.
>>7960746
Somebody else on /lit/ said, after reading 1Q84 that it's more about the journey with Murakami. I find that to be true. I'm almost done with WUBC and I read Norwegian Wood, and they're just super fucking comfy, easy reads. It's a notch above YA, imo.
Wind up bird is also strange to me, since everybody has this weird emotional distance to them. Like, all these horrible things happened, but they're never sad about it. Not sure if that's intentional or just lack of ability
>>7960723
Thanks, I'll check that out next. Is it different-ish from his other ones? Or does it still have the MC who listens to jazz/classical and has a harem of women fucking with him
>>7960851
I think that might be intentional in WUBC. It seemed to me the book dealt with human suffering, and he was sort of trying to get across a zen-style "go with the flow" sort of thing with it. Hence the guy laughing when he gets the shit beat out of him, etc.
>>7960851
After Dark is short, but has many of the dreamlike stuff that occurs in the others.
If you play videogames, it's analogous to Catherine in comparison to the SMT series. Similar themes, from a different angle.
I know it's a meme the guy teaching me Japanese culture pretty much said the words "In my country he is nothing" and we discussed Mishima instead. So I never got the urge to read him.
>>7960890
But anon he has like literary prizes over there. Heihachi and Kazuya are pretty cool guys but I don't see how they can compare.
I liked the parts with the father and the town of the cats in 1Q84. That, plus the whole thing with the ugly private detecitive and how his story ends.
>>7960851
>>7960871
Well, I would have liked it if it were a zen 'go with the flow' kinda thing but the final act Noboru Wataya becomes this evil villain and Joe Protagonist has to go fucking kill him with a baseball bat to save his wife. Yeah 'go with the flow by using astral projection to fucking murder people you don't like.'
Also had a very contrived sense of plot where everything that happened mattered, and everyone who was anyone who wasn't pure evil wanted to help the protagonist for free or suck his dick. It's the kind of thing that works in Barth's metafiction where he's riffing off tradition, or Pynchon where you feel the whole thing is being staged by figures with ulterior motive, but here it just seemed like bad cases of wish fulfillment and lack of natural direction.
>>7960871
Yeah, I definitely that go with the flow thing you're talking about. I figured it was intentional, given the themes, but you never know. I like it, at any rate
>>7960889
Oh fuckin nice, I loved Catherine. Will definitely keep an eye out for it now.
>>7960930thanks for spoiling that last chapter bruh
I consider his stuff to be heavily influenced by the whole self-insert anime thing. Cause that shit is exactly what would happen. Still comfy though.
>>7960851
>it's more about the journey with Murakami.
This is probably the least stimulating thing you can say about any piece of literature, thanks.
so, there was a scene in WOBC where someone recalled a situation when as a child he/she witnessed one or two people climbing up a tree in the backyard. did that have any meaning for the plot i didn´t get? it felt pretty unnecessary to me
>>7960954
Genuinely sorry. Was going to spoiler the whole second chunk ...
Well for what it's worth studies have proved spoilers are a meme and that you enjoy literature more when you know what happens already.
Also I was kind of oversimplifying it. Things are a bit more ambiguous than I made them out to be. Perhaps I haven't spoiled too much. But my point still stands the end seems a pretty stark outlier from the whole 'go with the flow' thing.
>>7957834
Good post
>>7959692
>curious george and the man in the yellow hat
my sister loved that show. now i feel sad
