After Dark

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.

Murakami's prose is entrancing, and this short novel showcases it beautifully. The book spans only a few hours, but moves between characters as if through a dream, and bridges a clear glimpse of reality with what seems almost spectral. As always, though, it is the moments that stand out here, and Murakami's distinct way of presenting what seems utterly casual in a fashion that suggests everything rests on it.

I couldn't put down this book almost from the second I picked it up, and loved sinking into Murakami's words again.

Recommended.

A quick read that passes fast but perfectly captures the eerie hours before dawn in a big city. I liked how unromantic the locales were, from a Denny's to a love hotel, and how many mysteries were left unsolved, like they only existed in that in-between time and dissolved in the morning.

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

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

A capable mood piece that tries to capture the feeling you get in a city at night when the pace of life is still there but it is not as relentless as the day. "The basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding," as Murakami tells us on the very first page. There's a sort of disconnected, conceptual, smoky jazz bar type of vibe running through the book – deliberately so – and that's either your thing or it isn't. After Dark has to be something you want; it is not a book where you can just take something of worth from whatever it leads you to. You have to want to go there, on some level.

This can turn a lot of people off and even those people who are open to it might show more find it doesn't fulfil its promise. Because sometimes with stuff like this, if you criticize it then other people will say you just don't 'get' it. But even though some of the characters were well drawn and there was a metatextual angle I liked – and I am very interested in some of the themes and concepts Murakami explores here – there were also things that seemed clunky or that were being tried and just didn't work. It might just be the translation – and trying to get Japanese syntax and social norms to play well in English must be a challenge – but it seemed a bit too stilted at times when it should have been flowing. And even though plot is not the point here, the lack of resolution or even context (especially to the Eri Asai and Shirakawa chapters) cannot help but disappoint. Nevertheless, I would not be put off from reading some of Murakami's more developed work, even if it is similar to After Dark, because the performance might be better there: a sort of freeform jazz in which there are movements according to the mood and the beat and the place and it all peels off into ashes. show less