After Dark

http://culturalsnow.blogspot.com/2007/06/midnight-movie.html

You know, sometimes I think it's almost pointless to write about Haruki Murakami. You either get him or you don't, but it's just as laudable not to get him. From the blogroll, I know that Dr Hocking has tried to love him, but remains unconvinced; Scott Pack is pretty much a Haruki groupie. Amylola is even planning to teach his stuff next semester, which I suspect is just asking for trouble. Me? Well, I did borrow the title of this blog from one of his books. (I understand that Thom Yorke's a fanboy as well, but he doesn't return my calls.)

You see, Murakami bypasses normal critical criteria. For a start, there's the problem with any translated text. How can you address a show more writer's style when what you're really looking at is the craft of some intermediary (in this case, Jay Rubin)? Instead, everything's about the world he creates. Murakami (or his stooge) offers an engaging mix of deadpan humour, meandering description that seems to follow an almost musical logic (he's a big jazz fan) and occasional flashes of tender sadness and/or excruciating violence. He writes about loners, but loners who are at worst disgruntled, rather than tortured souls. He also seems to have a thing for pretty, damaged girls who won't go all the way, but don't mind giving you a hand.

However, there's no manual relief this time round. Indeed, After Dark seems to offer a few new departures for Murakami. It's written in the present tense; there's no one main protagonist; the action all takes place within the space of a few hours. It's by far the most filmable of his books, controlled cuts between scenes replacing the improvisational detours of his longer works. There are references to Godard, specifically Alphaville, and much of J-LG's loping cool is present, but I also thought of Wenders's Wings of Desire. We join Murakami in his role as observer of the city, and we can almost feel his feathers brush against our face, but we're not asked to join in.

But alongside these new departures, he offers up some of the familiar riffs, like a musician who wants to plug his new album, but knows the punters have come for the familiar lollipops. There's Takahashi, a gawky young man, a lover of jazz and toast, who makes a hamfisted attempt at wooing Mari, a self-contained young woman bearing a mysterious sadness. His name suggests an earlier story of trombones and outsiders, 'Tony Takitani', in last year's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and also, interestingly, the first of Murakami's works to be filmed. But would Murakami ever be that obvious?

Then there are odd interludes somewhere on the border between dream sequence and magic realism, with reader and subject (a beautiful girl in a deep, deep sleep) and a faceless attendant, moving from one side of a TV screen to another. There's violence (although nothing to match the horrific torture sequence in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle); there's lots of jazz in the background; there's the exquisite lostness of Tokyo after the last train has left.

And best of all, there's no user-friendly resolution. Loose ends remain defiantly loose. We know who perpetrates the violence, but not why; nor why the beautiful girl sleeps. Retribution is threatened, but we don't know if it's carried out. Takahashi promises to write to Mari, but we never find out if he does. A cellphone lies in the chiller cabinet of a 7-11. It rings a few times, to be answered by the wrong person. But nobody takes it out of the fridge.

If you like Murakami, you'll like After Dark. If you don't, you won't. If you don't know, you may never find out. But if you don't read a book, is it, like the cellphone, still there? show less

Told between the hours of midnight and dawn, After Dark follows encounters that take place across the city of Tokyo. Mari Asai is sitting in a Denny’s when her sister’s friend, Takahashi, recognizes her. Takahashi’s presence is tolerated by Mari but when he leaves, he’s not missed. Shortly after, Mari, at the asking of Takahashi, meets Kaoru, a manager of a love hotel, who needs her help with a Chinese prostitute who’s been beaten by a customer. Acting as interpreter, Mari helps the woman but feels worse for it in the end as she’s left wondering what will happen to her. We look in on Mari’s sister, Eri, who is in a deep sleep, meet the man who beat up the prostitute, and return to Mari following her throughout the night show more and the people she meets.

After Dark exposes a raw nerve and at one point I even took a step back wondering where it was all going. There are dreams, actual sleeping dreams, life dreams, nightmares, sad memories, and happy ones. It’s an examination of lives, thoughts, friendships, and loves. All seen through the eyes of a woman on the verge of change who is not sure if she wants what she’s worked for.

The writing itself is incredible. The dialogue is smart, stark, and spare. No one character says more than needed, especially Mari, who has a secret but doesn’t want to share it. When she does, it’s with a stranger. It’s a poignant exchange for these two characters even though the conversation is very short and you know there’s a chance these two will never meet again. Maybe knowing this makes it easier for the two women to confide in each other knowing each of their secrets will stay that way but they get the added benefit of still being able to talk about it.

I came across this book completely by accident but it was so right at the time. If you come across it, I recommend you pick it up and read it. It’s truly phenomenal. show less

Few things tease me more than knowing that there is a new Murakami extant, but that it will take some time for it to be translated; I've been looking forward to this from the moment I put down his last. Compared to his last new novel, [i]Kafka on the Shore[/i], this is a simpler, shorter novel, weighing at just over 200 pages. It's satisfying in a very Murakami sort of way; there's no neat resolution of the plot, but that's rarely the point of a Murakami novel, though there is a thematic return to an origin point.

The novel takes place in the course of a single night, beginning 'as the date is just about to change'. In an all-night diner, nineteen year old Mari sits reading a book and sipping coffee. She is about to encounter Takahashi, show more a slightly older man who once met her years ago; he went to school with her sister, Eri. Before the night is over, Mari will be drawn to help a nineteen year old Chinese girl who has been beaten up in Alphaville, a love hotel; and in an office building, the man who beat her up works into the night solving a computer problem. Through it all, Mari's sister lies asleep a perfect sleep, watched by a TV screen that flickers on even though the plug has been pulled.

[i]After Dark[/i] is short, but intensely atmospheric. Murakami's characters are warmly drawn, wandering through a slightly unreal night-time urban landscape where things look familiar but seem to hide subtle threats, and a looming sense of menace builds through the book. Everyone is lost to a degree, searching for something, sitting on the cusp of choices, some mundane, some fantastic. The characters flit in and out of each other's paths through the night, little intersections that occasionally peak and crescendo, particularly Mari and Takahashi, as they swap stories and feed tuna sandwiches to cats. Even the bit-part characters buzz with the life lived by those who wake and work while most people sleep: Kaoru, the former wrestler, now manageress of the Alphaville hotel, and her two assistants; the late-night bar tender still stubbornly playing LPs instead of CDs; the taxi-driver taking the office worker home at 4am - they all pulse in their scenes. It's a very cinematic book; an omniscient narrator guides us through key scenes by imagining ourselves behind a camera, and Murakami's prose, bundled into short chapters with an image of a clock telling the time at the beginning, is as tight, descriptive and evocative as ever.

There are dark undercurrents, lots of questions, and no neat resolutions. It's a very Murakami-ish Murakami novel, the literary equivalent of a good arthouse film, and whether the lost and alienated characters within are ever going to find their way to safe harbour is an open question. Despite that, I finished it leaving satisfied and contented. As with most of his books, one to reread in a few months and savour all over again. show less

A noirish little story starting with a girl who just wants to read her book in a diner. She's interrupted by a chatty musician boy who she barely knows, but who may or may not have slept with her beautiful, model sister. Said sister has been slumbering for two months while her consciousness is trapped inside a television. There she might be watched by an adulterous businessman who just beat up a Chinese call girl. Chatty boy informs the proprietress of a hotel for inappropriate liaisons that book girl speaks Chinese, so she's rousted from her reading spot as a translator to help said Chinese girl. The hotel proprietor and former female wrestler IDs, the john to the Chinese girl's employer who threatens revenge. On and on these lives show more interconnect over the course of a single night until you're left wondering if anybody really ever sleeps in Japan. show less

As usual, when I read Murakami, I don't understand everything. But this is still a fascinating read with the bizarre and surreal intertwining together with the ordinary. An interesting technique is the use of the lens of a camera to zoom into the lives of the characters. Though the word Tokyo never appeared at all, it is clear that the plot took place in this city, a place that I can't visit now because of Covid. We wonder why Eri Asai fell into a deep sleep. Is it to escape everyday life? Perhaps we all wish to be able to do that sometimes. It was not explicitly stated but Eri appears to regain consciousness, which I see as a symbol of hope. The story ends with the approach of dawn. After darkness, there will be light.

Töredelmesen bevallom, ezt a Murakamit azért vettem előre az olvasmánylistámon, mert Nyáry Krisztián egy riportjában állított valamit, és le akartam ellenőrizni. Ahhoz meg nem éreztem magamban elég szuiciditást, hogy egy Coelhot vegyek előre az olvasmánylistámon. Aminek amúgy kábé a legvégén vannak – a Cukorrépa-termesztés Kelet-Belgiumban és a Mire nem jó egy golyóscsapágy? c. szakmunkák után közvetlenül.

Szóval: igaz-e, hogy Murakami az értelmiség Coelho-ja?

Lássuk csak. Alapvetően mindketten szemre pehelykönnyű prózát írnak, sok klisével dolgoznak, és nem idegenkednek a hétköznapok szövete mögött megbúvó varázslattól. Ez nyilván felületileg rokonítja őket. De szerintem van egy show more alapvető különbség: amíg a brazil univerzumában a kérdésekre válaszok adhatók, addig a japán világának egyik legszembetűnőbb jellegzetessége épp az adekvát válaszok teljes hiánya – kvázi lehetetlensége. Tehát: amíg Coelho ezoterikus, addig Murakami misztikus. Persze lehet, hogy az „értelmiség”* ugyanolyan bizsergést érez a válaszok elmaradása miatt, mint amilyet a „nem-értelmiség” a konzervválaszok olvasásakor, amik mind külön-külön szinte kiabálnak azért, hogy a lapockánkra tetováltassuk őket. Amennyiben így van, a fenti állítás igaz. Csak bajosan ellenőrizhetjük kísérleti úton.

De hogy a könyvről is mondjak valamit. Atipikus Murakami műről van szó, nem csak azért, mert erősen behatárolt időben játszódik, de az elbeszélő miatt is, aki mintha voyeur-ként figyelné szereplőit egy mozgó kamera objektívjén keresztül. Tipikus Murakami műről van szó abból a szempontból, hogy egy két szálon futó cselekményt kapunk, melyben Mari és Takahasi bájcsevegését egy lényegesen mágikusabb fejezetsor ellenpontozza Mari nővérével, az alvó Erivel a középpontban, amelyben mintha felcsillannának a japán indusztriális horror (pl.: A kör) hangulatai. Van egy zsákutca-szál is az Alphaville szexhotel dolgozóival és látogatóival a főszerepben, de ez csak egy jellemző murakamis trükk, hogy az olvasót elkábítsa az ígért, de be nem váltott kapcsolódási pontok felkínálásával. Tetszett. És továbbra is úgy vélem, hogy Murakaminál senki sem ért jobban ahhoz, hogy a maga banális párbeszédei mögé beúsztassa azt a mágikus potenciált, amitől az ember úgy érzi: bármi megtörténhet. És mindez a nosztalgiára emlékeztető mintázatokat hoz létre – valószínűleg azért, mert oly sokunknak volt már olyan banális beszélgetése, ami végül mágikus kapcsolattá fejlődött, vagy legalábbis szeretnénk hinni, hogy banális beszélgetéseink akár mágiába is torkollhatnak.


* Nyilván ez egy felettébb lazán definiált „értelmiség”. show less

Well, there's the last one. I've read all 14 of Murakami's novels as of now. It's been a 4 year journey, with some enjoyable highs and disappointing lows. When Murakami is good, he really hits the spot. But after 14 books, some trends become unavoidably clear, and not all are flattering. I'm going to save the essay for when I re-read my first and favourite Murakami, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but here are a few thoughts I had while reading After Dark.

As I see it, Murakami's best works are ones with a more mystic viewpoint (as opposed to his human novels). Under the heading of "mystic" novels, there are many that explore space, and several that explore time. After Dark is a great example of a "mystic time" novel (as is Wind-Up). The book show more takes place in one night. This allowed Murakami to sidestep one of his flaws - he seems to have trouble writing believable and interesting growth for his characters. In After Dark, the minute slice of time allowed him to create a kind of literary tableau. The book also treated the narrator/point of view as a sort of camera, which encouraged me to imagine the scenes from the perspective of film, and while After Dark is no more or less detailed in description than other works, I experienced a deeper visual richness. Similarly, the viewpoint of slice-of-life is a good setting for Murakami's usually enigmatic characters, who sometimes suffer from a sense of unintentional absurdity as they are represented in the more every-day situations that a novel with a longer time-span require.

Speaking of the characters, they are a breath of fresh air. When compared to Murakami's usual anti-social male characters who, casually misogynistic, go through any number of ill-defined early-to-mid-life-mystical-crises, After Dark's characters are fresh and interesting, as much from the brief time-span as just plain better writing. The main character (named Mari) is female, which Murakami hasn't done aside from Sputnik Sweetheart and one plot thread in 1Q84. The image of Mari in a baseball cap pulled low is one of the most visually strong female characters in Murakami's works. Which is a low bar, but still. More could also be said about the female love hotel manager and the other female love hotel employees that Mari meets. In fact, all but two characters are female people. And all of them are motivated by their own personal reasons outside of any men in their lives. Further, the main male character is also more interesting than the regular Murakami fare described above (read: has an identifiable reason for existing).

After Dark shows Murakami at his best, and while his writing style in general is still something that both attracts and annoys me, this book showcases what he does best. show less