Boys Don't Cry Part 2: Haruki Murakami

'A Folklore for my Generation: A Pre-History of Late-Stage Capitalism' in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami (short story within the collection)

This post is about a short story from a collection by Haruki Murakami- esteemed Japanese author and surrealist aficionado. If you like books about talking cats, if you like stories entirely about spaghetti, or tales about interlacing, make-believe worlds then Haruki is your man. As a lover of all of the above, I'm a big fan. 

I know I've been a little remiss in my previous blogs about actually summarising the plot of what I'm writing about and I've discovered the subsequent ramble gets a bit confusing without it. Well allow me to remedy this. This particular tale is about two men having dinner together, having met by chance in Italy years after they first knew each other at school, in Japan. Our narrator is listening, and also editing together, his dining companion's tale about the relationship he had with his first sweetheart. Now, before I launch into my little analysis, I better define my terms as this will get a bit confusing without some clarification of who I'm talking about in this story. From our point of view there are three layers: Murakami, the author (as previously with Kerouac, the author), the unnamed writer character within the narrative (henceforth called the narrator and closely comparable to Murakami himself) and the focal character of the story, again unnamed- just to be extra-confusing), henceforth known as the protagonist.  

Instantly from this you can assume, correctly, that this story isn't going to be the self-flagellation of The Subterraneans. Rather than the narrator stumbling through his own self-assessment, as Kerouac's Leo does with the limited success I've already discussed, Murakami affords his protagonist the luxury of an epistolary voice through narrative layers- here not written but rather communicated as a tale that is then 're-worked'. Think Nick Carroway in The Great Gatsby but with more insight on the part of the narrator (in fact Murakami goes a bit meta-fictive by giving his narrator a chance to explain that he is tidying up the story as he goes along). To tie this point back to the issues I raised in the last part, this use of a third-person, and arguably more emotionally stable, narrator helps to stablise, even as it lessens the intensity of the emotional catharsis that the reader can take from the story. For me this evokes a more satisfying conclusion to the narrative as, although further removed, the results seem more honest, even if I'm not getting it from the horse's mouth.

Not unlike Kerouac, Murakami's interpretation of the breakdown of a relationship is still raw and true, while it also seems rather more evenly handed. The female character in the story, Yoshiko, has a stock phrase: 'these are two different things' which she repeats over the course of her conversations with the male protagonist. The concept of this phrase is given due consideration by Murakami and by his narrator throughout the story and the tension is created where these two different things, or people, become so disconcertingly similar (they are styled by the narrator as 'Mr and Miss Clean') that it makes their inevitable separation that much more poignant. Yoshiko tells the protagonist that she cannot marry him, and thus consummate their relationship, quite matter-of-factly and leaves him in a state of in-consequentiality- something previously unknown to him 'Ever since we were little, people had been pushing us...[and] we met their expectations'. When they meet again, several years later, it is the protagonist's inability to make the sexual contact that his teenage self so craved that finally destroys his hope of their being together. It is an unhappy and rather dark end to what starts as a sweet yarn about first love.

One way of summarising this tale is by using the title, as it is both oddly deliberate but deliberately odd. The word 'Folklore' is an interesting choice- in itself a genre based on the, often oral, re-telling and re-working of the tale to suit the needs of the teller and, by extension, the reader/listener. After the protagonist tells the narrator of the strange phrase he always has in mind when thinking of himself and Yoshiko (' "and when it was all over, the King and his retainers burst out laughing" ') the narrator gently tells his reader that 'there's no moral or lesson' to be drawn. The point of the tale, of love and loss, is simply to be read, and understood by the reader. Stories like these, for all their quirks and apparent ability to define an era, in this case 'Late-Stage Capitalism', will be told time after time through generations. The emotions they evoke and that they describe, will stay the same. And in realising that, and in reading this, Murakami provides us with the best emotional self-help there is.

Next time: the women take over the emotional development and I'll try to answer a very important question: is it socially reprehensible to honk with laughter when reading on public transport?

  

Boys Don't Cry Part 1: Jack Kerouac

The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac (novella)

Originally this was going to be a blog of two halves and I suppose it still is, but it's also become a bit of a mind-splurge so I've divided it (hence Part 1). Recently I've read something brand new while also revisiting a story in a book that I bought on a whim a couple of years ago. Polarised by their styles and forms and geographically by the nationalities of their authors, both stories nonetheless share a similar concern- the catharsis of story-telling to mend a broken heart. In this post, we're starting with the new book, and heading back to 1950s America.

Jack Kerouac is often touted as the poster-boy for the hard-drinking, hard-living Beat Generation and his novella The Subterraneans is a portrait an ultimately doomed love affair so intimately connected with his own reality that Ann Douglas gives the reader a 'who's who' character list of the Beat generation in her introduction to the Penguin edition. In terms of love affairs 'romantic' is not often a word used to describe Beat texts and this book is a case in point. In the story the volatile treatment of Kerouac's stand-in Leo Percepied towards love interest Mardou Fox borders on the sociopathic as lust gives way to irrational jealousy. Not, then, an enduring love over the course of its 90-odd pages, the extremes of emotions between desire, love (though in hindsight, writes Kerouac, 'she never did use the word love') and the final demise in the relationship between the two characters are nonetheless as important as Leo battle to write about the relationship in hindsight as a means of self-therapy. 

The hypnotic, jazz-infused language which characterizes and structures the narrative reflects the life-as-art duality of the text; it's written as a Modernist stream of consciousness for the Post-modern age. It's this tone and almost musical phrasing of language in the novella which, for me, is its strongest element. Kerouac sets himself the unenviable task of 'just... [starting] at the beginning and [letting] the truth seep out' and as the waves of happiness become riffs of insecurity and distrust through his reaction to Mardou's perceived indifference and/or infidelity, the text is punctuated like trumpets: '...in my heart, 'O why did you do it?'- sensing, in my desperation, the prophesy of what's to come'. 

Leo, and by extension I suppose Kerouac, is constantly fighting his inner self-loathing voice with the recollection of his feelings for Mardou as they become inextricably linked to, and therefore consume, all of his other relationships. This raging is characterised by Kerouac through constant asides to his (Leo's) reader and temporal jumps between 'then' and 'now'. But despite its jumpy nature, as with much all-consuming romance, the downward trajectory is almost gravitational: the relationship begins in a heady dreamlike state 'she'd turned her face to me close, it was an ocean of melting things and drowning' and ends with a clunk: 'And I go home having lost her love. And write this book'

In writing the novella Kerouac's main objective may be an exercise in finding the emotional closure at the end of the relationship. However, this seems unlikely as, through the cyclical structure of the story, beginning, as it does, at the end, Leo is trapped in perpetual misery. Emotional catharsis is definitely not attained by either protagonist or reader (and reading it this way actually makes the story downright miserable: you may need to have some kind of biscuit-based treat available after you've finished). Alternatively it may be that this is Kerouac's attempt at artistic catharsis, and in the perhaps misguided, perhaps deliberately evasive optimism that comes from creation of the work, the novella, at any cost and regardless of emotional fall-out. Ultimately though, Mardou sums it up most neatly in an admittedly hackneyed metaphor: 'Men are so crazy, they want the essence, the woman is the essence...but [the men] rush off erecting big abstract constructions'. 

In truth (and biscuits aside), The Subterraneans is not an easy read, not least because of the chauvinistic attitude which always seems to find its way into Kerouac's writing: there's definitely more than a whiff of his Madonna/Whore complex here- and this is before we factor in his views on ethnicity which make for uncomfortable reading. But whether you're on the side of love as essence, or on the side of the big abstract construction, one thing is certain: in this book love is hard and boys most certainly do cry. 

Part 2 to follow and we're heading for Italy via Japan (now might be the time for that biscuit...)    

Inspiration on the Tube

Sometimes I have little moments of creativity and this, I suppose, is one. From Bank at lunch time, where I saw the Olympic and Paralympic athletes' parade, gestated on my way from work to Warren Street and born somewhere between Oxford Circus and Green Park on my way home, this little poem was tucked in my copy of Sense and Sensibility written on the back of a map, serendipitously, of Soho. In amongst the everyday, London has just recently felt a bit special and, now at an end, I feel the weight of expectation on this city has been lifted. I didn't have my camera at the Parade so this, for me, is my Elephant-Brained moment to commemorate the special day.

London 10.09.12

Out in the mass
With confetti
Weeping onto anybody else's shoulder but
Yours
Here's closure, now it ends.

But we further descend and
Now
At half past five and Underground
Clunky, curmudgeonly- a little bereft
That whisper in the crowd takes a breath and sighs:

we did it; we were there.
And, even as the warm breath fades
And as the little strings snap
One 
              by
                          One
I'll try to hold mine all the more
Closely
fleeting as the rails 
in our palms.