Guys have you read this? I just did and I tought it was really

it's shit. fuck you

>tfw no virgin Naoko gf

>>10022018
Super comfy. It could have been written about college today. I really liked the little trips he took just to get away from everything. Really made me want to do something similar. The fucking protestor though, bloody hell interrupting class for their stupid bullshit that they're not even sincere about. It's nice to know
I'm not alone in that feeling.

I'm ordering Kafka on the shore as my first Murakami book. Is that okay or should I start with something else?

>>10022018
>tfw you realise those aren't trees

I really liked this book. I liked the depressive mood, the characters that were really flawed human beings and the way the book ended. Pls /lit/ gimme another book like this

>>10022018
i really enjoyed the scenes from the narrator's college. very vivid: the awkward roommate, the routine, the coffee and the music. it was also a very sexy book. desu i wasn't interested much in sex until after i read this book.

>>10022055
It's garbage.

>>10022046
>>10022316
I thought I was on reddit for a moment, which is weird because I don't browse reddit.

>>10022341
maybe you should sort yourself out, bucko.

Just started reading it, went through the first 50 pages on my commute. Comfy so far.

>redditors sucking jap cock
go back to r/books and kys

>>10022371
I know right? PRAISE KEK and SHADILAY my fellow pede!

Can't be reading non-white literature!!!

>>10022395
murakami is an american author who happens to be writing in japanese and has a japanese name. his stuff is right on the border of being just the right amount of "exotic" while actually being very accessible and "safe" middlebrow literature. it's housewife tier/pretentious college hipster tier for namedropping.

he has a handful of decent works but the more you read (both of murakami and of other authors) the less you appreciate him

murakami deliberately breaks with the japanese literary tradition so its very funny when he gets hailed up as "japanese lit"

start with
kokoro (soseki)
snow country (kawabata)
short stories (akutagawa)

and then move to
no longer human (dazai)
something by oe

but you're not actually gonna do any of this cause you're a shitposting pseud

>>10022316
That rape scene with the music teacher and her student. wew. Had to have a fap after reading that.

>>10022138
Murakami's first book "Hear the Wind Sing" is a very nice cozy slice of life tale

>>10022402
You're the outdated one that insists on literature corresponding to some sort of national ideal. No other author writes about the postmodern construct of Empire better than him. Murakami is on a completely different level than you. Don't post again.

With all those classic books, why do people risk reading potential hacks?

>>10022526
"Your penis is hot."
Wow never heard of that saying before I read this book.
I dropped it right when the wood porn scenes started.
It was not just porn. It was romance porn. That's pretty YA.

>>10022018
I'm kind of ambivalent on Norwegian Wood. I liked that it was completely different than his other works considering one Murakami novel is virtually indistinguishable from another. I also felt that it was a deeply personal book and that came through.

I liked the scene with the old man and the cucumbers, a lot.
Wind up Bird Chronicle is 1000x better though, way less John-Greenesque and some really cool magical realism

>>10022670
What's wrong with describing sex scenes in a book? Are you anti-realism?

>>10022761
The fact that he just magically gets laid after being undersocialized virgin male.
If I wanted sex scenes I'd pick up another book honestly.
The fact that it started with mysterious suicide and escalated into this.

>>10022018
it's literally his worst book. His written some amazing ones though so continue on your journey

Anyone actively shitting on this book is a contrarian faggot

>have Yukio Mishima, still read Murakami
>>10022544
> No other author writes about the postmodern construct of Empire better than him
No author writes at all... people think people are good because they have nothing to compare them with.

>>10022803
How was it magic? He was with that girl for a while. I don't see why you have problems with sex scenes in a novel about college life.

>>10022544
go back to r/books

>>10022858
What? I'm very familiar with 20th century Japanese literature, and am still able to recognize the genius in Murakami's novel "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". You are aware that many Japanese literary critics praise Murakami for the advancements in narrative form he's made? And no, not just the "middle-brow" ones. Because you think that Murakami doesn't write literature that reflects his national identity he isn't any good just shows that you don't even understand what he's trying to do in the first place.

>>10022055
The prose in that book is a slog. NW is better overall, translation.

>>10022907
>rightfully shit on middlebrow pseud author
>"y-you just dont GET IT, man"
kys

>>10022920
When you bring up examples of Mishima and Soseki it shows that you don't understand the historical lineage of the jun-bungaku literature that Murakami is writing in. How can I argue with someone who clearly even hasn't done a close reading of his work? And Murakami is highly critically acclaimed, even by "highbrow" critics in Japan, if that's the sort of game you want to play.

>>10022923
Psued BTFO

>>10022945
Ok then. I'm assuming you can't read Japanese judging by your ESL but if you could I could link you some good writing on Murakami in Japanese literary journals. Murakami's work depicts the post-modern reality of the globalization of Empire shorn from the frame of the national mythology. The inner worlds that his characters inhabit go underneath the cultural imagination of the Japanese identity.

>>10022923

did you just wikipedia some shit and hope to pull a fast one an anime imageboard?

murakami is deliberately breaking from junbungaku you fucking mongrel. do you even speak japanese? i'm 100% sure you don't. also high brow critics, with a couple of exceptions, strongly dislike murakami. stop pretending to be some expert on jap lit when it's obvious you only read murakami in english and no one else

>>10022986
Yes, Murakami started as a jun-bungaku writer but he obviously breaks from it. His work is a hybrid and is clearly different from all other jun-bungaku works, which is part of what makes his critical appraisal and immense popularity so interesting as it places him in a completely different context from the rest of the Japanese literary scene. But you have to understand the lineage in the first place if you want to understand him. Many high-brow critics like Murakami's work. Not that I care, it's just that the other poster seemed to be playing the status game. Also, Oe himself praised Murakami for "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle". Murakami has won almost all of Japan's top literary prizes.

File: Soseki.jpg (19KB, 220x316px) Image search: [Google]

19KB, 220x316px

ウェwぁdぉおかてぇせとぉふぁっごtstりぃんgとぢsくss;ようどん<tsぺあkじゃぱねせ!、の、ようどん<tsぺあkじゃぱねせ。。。

印s手アドfれふぇっりんgと案火gへらうとりty、whyのttryとぢsくssてぇおbじぇcちヴぇえぇめんつぉfひsのヴぇls?

>>10022018
NW, despite not being as ambitious as the GOAT Murakamis, is actually pretty layered, well-constructed, and super comfy.
>>10022055
Philip Gabriel's translation is pretty meh. Rubin and Birnbaum are much better. You should still be able to enjoy and understand the thing, though.
>>10022402
You actually learn to appreciate Murakami more *after* reading other Japanese lit. Murakami is still undoubtedly a Japanese writer stylistically; his work is fairly reminescent of Soseki (another heavily westernized Jap) and, to a lesser extent, Kawabata. How his prose (especially in Japanese) reflects and comments on contemporary Japan is great. That's why so many people appreciate Hardboiled so much -- because of how he plays with the Japanese language.

His latest books have been somewhat meh, but the books he wrote in the Hardboiled-Kafka period are almost all brilliant. Memekami is GOAT at semiotics and conceptual writing, and he's like a cultural sponge since he's influences from everyone and everywhere (Japan included), and still retains a unique style.

tl;dr: learn to read murakami