Hear the Wind Sing is the first novel by Murakami, which was published in 1979 but never released in the US (I bought my copy from a Japanese bookseller on eBay). This book and the subsequent one, Pinball, 1973, which I'll read next, serve as preludes to his third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, which is available outside of Japan.

The narrator is a 29 year old man, but the story takes place several years before, when he is a college student on his summer break. The action centers around him and his friend The Rat, who both appear in A Wild Sheep Chase, who spend an inordinate amount of time in J's Bar. He also has a quirky and short relationship with a young woman who works in a record shop, who he finds passed out on the floor of the bathroom in the bar.

As compared to his later writing, the characters are sketchily portrayed, and the story seems to jump around in short, aimless fragments. It wasn't a bad read, but I'm certainly glad that this wasn't the first book by Murakami I picked up. ( )

Kaze no Uta wo Kike is Murakami Haruki's first novel. I'm glad I didn't read this first, because I may never have read anything else of his. It's okay, but I was just kind of bored. Apparently there are two other books (Pinball something and something with sheep in the title) that make up this trilogy (though they also stand alone? This one does, anyway), but I doubt I'll read the others. I have a couple of his later books (English translations), so I will read those, and hopefully they'll be as good as The Elephant Vanishes. Actually there were some stories in The Elephant Vanishes that were similar to this. Just really stories about nothing, and while that works okay for a short story, I don't think it works very well for a novel, even one that's only 150 pages). ( )

Late last year, after finishing Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, I went on a quest to complete my Haruki Murakami collection. I felt like I simply had to have every one of his books published in English to truly get into this author. I was lucky that Borders was having their 3 for 2 promotion for all the British covers of Murakami, so I managed to get them all, except for his two first novels: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. Though these novels have had their English translations published in Japan, Murakami doesn't want the English-speaking world reading them, because he thinks they're terrible.

Thanks to eBay, and an enterprising fellow in Japan who's stocked up on English copies of Hear the Wind Sing, I managed to get my hands on a copy. And at 6" x 4", such a cute copy it is! At that minuscule size, it's the perfect book to read on the LRT. That's of course, if you don't doze off first. As is usually the case, the problem with first novels is that the writer hasn't found his voice yet, and this is especially true with Hear the Wind Sing.

The novel takes place within 18 days in the summer of 1970, and follows the aimless wanderings and ramblings of the nameless protagonist that Murakami is infamous for and also that of his friend, Rat. Murakami's signature icons and animals already start to appear in this book. Elephants, cats, wells, weirdo girls. They're there, but perhaps a little less underused than they will be in his later novels and short stories. Then there's his penchant for invoking Western culture. References abound from Gatsby to Dostoyevsky, Marvin Gaye to The Beach Boys.

Though this initial novel proves Murakami was already a writer with great ideas and adept in creating interesting dialogue, it also betrays a lack of skill in plotting. Did he pick that up later on? There is no discernible plot whatsoever in this book, just a college student aimlessly going through his life while waiting for his summer vacation to end.

I thought Hear the Wind Sing plodded along at an unbearably slow speed. Nothing that helps the story move along ever happens, and when a mystery crops up, they go unsolved, and the characters remain unbothered and indifferent. The dialogue continues throughout to hint at something more substantial waiting to be revealed, but that never seems to happen. Talk about pretentious! If this was submitted to Western publisher by an unknown writer, it'd be left rotting in the slush pile. ( )

http://culturalsnow.blogspot.com/2006... ( )