Haruki Murakami: A Wild Sheep Chase (Analysis) BOOK REVIEW

On Murakami's third novel, 'A Wild Sheep Chase', which is part of the Rat series (Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball 1973, A Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance).
Themes from this novel: Power, seizing power, environment, wholeness, separation, compartmentalization, function, narrowness of function, memory.
Reading Group: dgozli.com/rea...
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#HarukiMurakami

[@arashsharif6332]

Greetings to you, Mr. Gozli I started Haruki Murakami's work with his first work, Listen to the Song of the Wind. I saw the maturity of his work in the last chapters of the book in search of hunting wild sheep. I followed his catchy, complex and enigmatic text and magic in dance dance dance. that this book was actually the next part of Rat's trilogy. These four books are actually the four foundations of the rest of his works.

[@spikedaniels1528]

Thanks!

[@DavoodGozli]

Thank you, Dan!

[@mikegseclecticreads]

Despite your lukewarm reception of this book, my curiosity after watching was the push I needed to finally read something by Murakami and see what he's all about. I just finished reading this book and at risk of being too simplistic, I didn't really enjoy it but still have somewhat of an open mind about it. Maybe it's partly because I'm hyper-rational sometimes to a fault, so a work like this that's hard for to grasp analytically or make immediate sense of is inherently challenging for me. Despite having read fairly extensively in certain genres and styles, I'm not very well-versed in this type of literature and thus find it hard to even identify an entry point with which to relate to the novel and its characters. So it's possible that with a little time, I'll come to have a different view of it. At the same time, I don't think there is a lot here to help readers like me find an entry point. Sure, the descriptive writing in some scenes was enough to draw me in or paint a nice picture. But the narrator seems pretty accepting throughout the novel (except maybe at the very end?) that his life is one of mediocrity and that nothing around him makes all that much sense, that he is at best a pawn in a game played by greater powers... and the whole narrative cadence and tone of the novel reflected this, such that I felt very little driving force behind it, or even curiosity as to what would happen next. By the middle of the novel I had caught the narrator's attitude of, I don't know what's going on here or what it means and I don't even particularly care what happens next, but here I am and there are words on the page so let's proceed. Perhaps this is an achievement in itself for Murakami to have captured the character's apathy in this way, but it's not something I particularly care to partake in. Maybe some of this is what you allude to in your video when you say that Murakami and his characters recognize the problems in their world, but they simply accept those problems (even "accept" is too active of a word) and become complicit? For most of this book I felt that our narrator, and by extension I as a reader, was bumbling about in a state of apathy and mediocrity. Whether in doing so Murakami subtly romanticizes this aimless mode of existence, or critiques it, or both, I'm not sure.

[@maralkhabaz4449]

You’re the best, as always!” 🌟

[@DavoodGozli]

Thank you - You're too kind!

[@sebrishwakeed2293]

What would be your recommendation if someone wants to start reading Murakami. Is Kafka on the shore a good option???

[@DavoodGozli]

I think you can start pretty much anywhere. My own opinion is that the best place to start are the short stories. There is a Vintage Mini collection of short stories under the title Desire.

[@gordonfreeman5872]

Every time I finish a Murakami novel, I end up looking it up on youtube as a sort of coping mechanism. Great prose throughout, but I'm always left feeling frustrated by the end. Now that you mention it, it might be partially due to the way he writes protagonists. I remember having a visceral reaction like never before, when I first read Camus' The Stranger. For some reason I'm deeply repulsed by descriptions of this total apathy towards death, sex, the self and the world at large.

[@DavoodGozli]

That's an excellent comparison with The Stranger. I think Camus grew out of that apathy in later works, perhaps as a result of his engagement with politics and international relations. If you read, for example, his collection of short stories (Exile and the Kingdom) you will find characters that are intensely moved with passion and a sense of meaning.

[@arashsharif6332]

Thank you so much for converging and sharing your beautiful interpretation of Murakami's work; And precisely for those who want to understand this work, they should study two important works that form the foundation of all Murakami's subsequent works; One listens to the song of the wind and the other pinball. In this regard, I felt it necessary to point out a few points; The beginning of the story begins on the date of the suicide of Yukio Mishima, a Japanese traditionalist writer. November 25, 1970; The day of the sacrifice of God's lamb; Yukio Mishima. Christ of Japan I will not go into the details of his death because, like Christ, he suffered a lot until his death. I want to enter into one of the common points of some themes that the author mentions in most of his works, including time travel, which I want to analyze. In this book, Murakami several times imagines himself in the abyss of a well that he does not know where it ends and a feeling of fear and questioning emerges for him, which is precisely explained in his other work, Killing the Knight, when he is trapped in wormhole-shaped caves. It alludes to the journey of the narrator's little sister in Killing the Knight when she enters one of these caves. He is like one who is lost in the midst of countless worlds. Like the effect of a mirror in this book when a man sees a sheep in this. In other words, the author has mastered many principles of quantum physics and string theory, as well as reincarnation, but not in its popular sense; Rather, in the sense of progress in the direction of the evolution of people's roles in order to be perfected in the direction of Nirvana, he tries to give meaning to reality from the heart of metaphysics. Like the works of other authors such as Borges, Fuentes or Marquez. For this reason, in my opinion, suicide in Murakami's works, despite the fact that it is made bold, is forbidden, and in fact, suicide in Murakami's works is considered a valuable act, which is purposeful and helps the evolution, to get rid of evil, but not in all times, but it is a work aimed at finding the value of the nature of ethics, which can be seen as a re-emphasis on the importance of ethics in society, such as what Immanuel Kant was interested in, regardless of religion or any other school. . A girl's ear and listening power is actually cosmic intelligence; Intelligence that we won't need anymore when we get the chain of evolution. He appears for us as a single element to achieve peace and reach the truth in the path of evolution, and when we succeed in finding this chain of evolution; His duty is terminated. Today, Japan has fallen into an abyss of confusion due to its separation from thought (Zen), which expresses the supreme human truth, and cannot find a way out of this abyss. Another important point in Murakami's works is Murakami's view on sex. Although most critics of his works consider him anti-feminist, it should be noted that he criticizes life from an artistic point of view, even in sex, and somewhere in this book, for example, when he mentions: Not tonight! This is the importance he attaches to this point. Sex in Murakami's works is like painting and mixed with art, and he divides the pleasure between himself and his partner. I hope you accept my boldness in criticizing the work.

[@DavoodGozli]

Thank you for your very interesting comment! I appreciate thinking about Murakami through different perspectives and your multi-layered interpretation of his writing sheds new light on the meaning of his work for me.

[@andreluissoriano]

I loved all Murakami I’ve read when I was in uni. I believe I’ve read Norwegian Wood multiple times now. And then I went back to him this year and last year and found the two books (Singular and Wild Sheep Chase) to be underwhelming. This book in particular, I almost hate. There’s too much unnecessary setting descriptions. The narrator is uninterestingly apathetic, and the characters are not compelling. But I still bought Dance Dance Dance because they say it’s his best work. Let’s see.