A Wild Sheep Chase (1982)

a very compelling story / mystery... but I'm still having to ponder this one. It's a good fun, mystical read, but as my friend Terry says "You just need to suspend your logical mind and believe." I'm intrigued by Murakami, so I think I'm in for more.

I'd be a higher rating if I thought I understood; so clearly, I'm struggling with Terry's directive. Working on that... ( )

This is my first encounter with Murakami. I chose this book because currently, "1Q84" has been recently released and has been getting good, but not in the aggregate stellar, reviews. Many have suggested that one not try "1Q84" as their first Murakami. I picked this one because all of his prior books seemed to be reviewed equally well, so why not read the first one translated into English? This book is the third and final book in his "Rat Trilogy", but reads like a standalone novel. Apparently Murakami didn't think the first two measured up to his current work, and hasn't been too eager to have them translated. English translations do exist, but haven't been made as widely available as those of his later books.

I've heard a lot of comparisons to other writers bandied about (Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins), but I'll mention two more: Milan Kundera, since both writers throw a lot of philosophical observations at the reader, with the plot as sort of a loose skeleton upon which such observations are hung. Paul Auster, since events occur in a dreamlike, seemingly unconnected manner, with the context not initially apparent, but with a vaguely noir feel.

The only character in this book who is named is a cat. And the way he's named calls to attention the fact that none of the other characters are named, but only described. One character is called "The Rat", but you're given to understand that's not his given name.

What's this book about? That's a good question. See, there's this sheep that possesses people, and...I suppose what the book is about could be the subject of a long discussion. I imagine different readers' interpretations will tell you more about the readers than anything else. Anyway, the book is oddly compelling, and full of charming, though unnamed, characters. I found the last third of the book to be very suspenseful, in the manner of "The Shining".

Do check it out. ( )

Thank you again, brian tanabe!

Books like these, I feel like a child who has finally graduated to the grown-up table only to find that the cultery is too big and sharp, the edge of the table is level with my eyes, and the conversation always above my head. But no! I refuse to be demoted back to the kids' table with all the babies! I wanna eat here and contribute to the discussions about whether a vacation home in Hawaii or the SE islands would be better (so boring...zzzz....) and did you catch when the bridesmaid tripped and fell on the groom hahahaha oops there's a kid here (*eyes snap open* what?) and the land war brewing in Asia and, and, whatever it is grown-ups talk about. Which is still mysterious to me.

I'm reminded of when I tried to read The Crying of Lot 49 with Elizabeth and Ceridwen (you're supposed to flip back and forth between their posted reviews to get the full conversation). It was such a treat to listen to them tear into the book! I didn't understand a word of it! Pass the peas, please.

The confusion Pynchon brought was similar to the confusion from Murakami for me, but I tried to watch for all those double-meaning grown-up things for this book. With the main character and mysterious Boss in a tightly controlled advertising industry, sheep everywhere, a girlfriend with special ears, and a quest to find the meaning of a certain photo, I think it may be something about control of information and loss of individual will that comes with lack of accurate facts? Well. Maybe. I wasn't sure about the significance of the disolving of the main character's patched-together life at the beginning. At the end, I wondered if the character had gone insane. The magic-y bits were unexpected.

I wonder if it would be better to ramp up to Murakami, since I've always had difficulty with English and Literature classes in school and then all my training and work is for such literal things, where metaphors are not used and a sheep is just an animal that requires passage from field to stream. After reading reviews of others who love Murakami (notably, BenH), I know I'm missing much beauty and meaning.

But then I read something like this, http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/39456993, and I feel better. In my larval stage of lit appreciation, it's too easy to attempt to take on other opinions instead of concentrating on my own. Another reason for loving gr, all the varying loves and hates for the same things. ( )

I read this one as a result of reading Dance Dance Dance, not realising that it had come out before and the similarities between the stories actually worked in the opposite direction to the one I thought they did. But that in itself is quite Murakami-esque. ( )

I made a mistake in reading Dance Dance Dance before A Wild Sheep Chase, not realizing that they were even related in terms of their story lines..don't make the same mistake I made...read this one first before the other and I think it will be a little less confusing. This one has to do with ghosts and mythological sheep if that makes any sense but truly about isolation as well. This is where the idea of The Dolphin Hotel is also introduced and some of the characters join in Dance Dance Dance.

Within this book's center is a journey to the truth of a mere photograph that offers more questions than answers and seems to offer only an impossibility. There is also a character that speaks in complete riddles.

As a strength, this book shows Murakami at his most poetic with such a strong grasp of language and metaphor that you can see some of these scenes and characters very vividly. One key point to remember going through it..the sheep is not what it seems.



Favorite Quotes:

pg. 37 "I turn a corner," I offered, "just as soeone ahead of me turns the next corner. I can't see what that person looks like. All I can make out is a flash of white coattails. But the whiteness of the coattails is indelibly etched in my consciousness. Ever get that feeling?"

pg. 79 "There are symbolic dreams-dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities-realities that symbolize a dream. Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councillors of the worm universe...and in this universe of alternate considerations, the major problem is everything becomes protracted and complex."

pg 87 "I think I've gradually lost my sense of time. It's like there's this impossible flat blackbird flapping about over my head and I can't count above three. You'll have to excuse me, but why don't you do the counting?"

pg. 94 "To my surprise, The Rolling Stones and Beach Boys are still going strong. Time really is one continuous cloth, no? ... "All winter long the roads are frozen and almost no cars come through. Off the roads, it's damp so the ground is frozen over like sherbet.

pg. 112 "Age certainly hasn't conferred any smarts on me. Character maybe, but mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up."

pg. 112-113 "I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other's throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn't stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war's-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they'll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end."


pg. 184 "The sum total of time doesn't change. It's only that you can see more movies. "

"If you wanted to see more movies," she added.

As soon as we arrived in Sapporo, we actually did see a double feature.


pg. 197 "Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment," she said, thrusting a skinny back of her hand before my eyes. "Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories."


pg. 200 "Mountains are living things...Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain."


pg. 276 "And it was quiet. The sound of the wind itself was swallowed by the grand expanse of forest. The air was split by the cry of a fat blackbird. Once the bird was out of sight, the silence flowed back in, a viscous fluid filling every opening. The leaves that had fallen on the road were saturated from the rain of two days before. The road seemed endless, like the birch forest around it. The low clouds, which had been terrifying only a short while before, now seemed surreal through the woods."

pg. 278 "An odd house the more I looked at it. It wasn't particularly inhospitable or cold, nor built in any unusual way, nor even much in disrepair. It was just..odd. As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn't know how to express them, but rather that it didn't know what to express."

pg. 324 "Darkness crept in through my ear like oil. Someone was trying to break up the frozen globe of the earth with a massive hammer."

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