I wondered why I would write about Murakami’s After Dark when I did not write about either Norwegian Wood or Kafka by the shore but the 12th work of fiction of this novelist-Haruki Murakami.
The answer is the real time of the book was living through it over a night, from a little before midnight, this dark novel was spread over eight hours in Tokyo. The intercuts in the novel were sublime yet profound and as some reviewer said it had the Murakami's signature magical-realist absurd coincidences. And most importantly I felt the immediate urge to pen down thoughts.
After Dark concentrates on themes of loneliness and alienation through characters crafted beautifully, the tit bits of moving away from East Asia and having western references (all-night Deny's where Hall & Oates plays in the background kept the worldly appeal at bay.) The Murakami specialty of story telling as if it is a film did reach a level where I felt like a captive audience looking into the rough cut of an institute film. The chapters where Eri was sleeping and an invisible eye was watching, the way it was framed to the reader who felt guilty in the void of claustrophobia was an aspect that made the chill run down the spine. My google secondary research says that the Los Angeles Times felt that Eri's dreamlike scenes were…"For the unfamiliar, it's the perfect appetizer. For the established fan, it's a quick work that is over far too soon" and that is something I agree to completely, it was like a buffet that was over even before it began.
Now for the story - Mari Asai, 19, in an plain attire,hardly noticable was sitting by herself when trombonist and soon-to-be law student Tetsuya Takahashi walks into a late-night Denny's,and proceeds to talk himself back into her acquaintance. Tetsuya was once interested in plain Mari's gorgeous older sister, Eri, whom he courted,once upon a time. Murakami then cuts to Eri in the next chapter, Eri is asleep in what turns out to be some sort of menacing netherworld. Tetsuya leaves for his practice when soon a large, 30ish woman, Kaoru, comes into Denny's asking for Mari; Mari speaks Chinese, and Kaoru needs to speak to the Chinese prostitute who has just been badly beaten up in the nearby "love hotel-Alphaville" Kaoru manages. Then one after the other the author looks at the lives of the sleeping Eri and the prostitute's assailant, a salaryman named Shirakawa, who has a wife waiting back home.Mari is sketched as a vague yet a character with lots of depth and that is reflected in her interaction with has with Tetsuya, Kaoru and a hotel worker named Korogi. Later when she almost assimilates with Eri in the bed the ambiguity takes a new dimension and the book ends.
The immediate feeling when the book ended was that of a hushed ensemble piece built on the notion that very late at night, after the logic lights have been snuffed and rationality has been blinded, life on earth becomes blurred. Individuals who have separate identities during the day lose uniqueness and melt into an uniquely common psychic collective.
The book does live upto Murakami's creation of not just geographical space uniqueness but the wavering space of realism,surrealism and often hyper-realism.
In this context the simplicity with which Mari is introduced implies the deatiled dissection of characterization Murakami believes in.... “On her table is a coffee cup. And an ashtray. Next to the ashtray, a navy blue baseball cap with a Boston Red Sox ‘B.’ It might be a little too large for her head. A brown leather shoulder bag rests on the seat next to her. It bulges as if its contents had been thrown in on the spur of the moment. She reaches out at regular intervals and brings the coffee cup to her mouth, but she doesn’t appear to be enjoying the flavor. She drinks because she has a coffee cup in front of her: that is her role as a customer.” or when it cuts to Eri the smoothness of the transition. The 19-year-old female coffee drinker, Mari, whose attachment to the Red Sox goes unexplained and probably doesn’t bear explaining — no more than do the lyrics of the pop songs that sprinkle down out of the ceiling of the diner — is killing time with an unnamed book. It’s a bit of a mystery why she’s up so late but it may have to do with her lovely sister, Eri, who’s at home in the suburbs, mired in a slumber that has been going on, unbroken, for months. Mari is awake because Eri is asleep — some sort of twinned homeostasis is at work, perhaps.
The book’s short chapters swaps back and forth between Mari’s ramblings with her new acquaintances and a prolonged, poetic yet thrilling setting of a bedroom (and that is caught between frames) her sleeping-beauty sister, who lies in bed in a bare room next to a wormhole of a TV screen on which her image occasionally appears and into which her soul is being absorbed. One wonders what shall be the mood but then the onset of a passive collection of interesting identities after dark sets one at peace. However I am still wondering how did Murakami design the book so novice,seeming almost caught up in the glocal politics,and struggling to find ones identity. Maybe thats why it was safer to title it after dark.
Though I cannot deny that inconspicuous is Murakami's widening perimeters of a nocturnal urban habitat. In the hours when colours vanish,women fall prey for the most part particularly the poor and the unmarried.(even if it is by choice the rights of a human being are violated. Men venture forth more boldly.
The interesting bit that remains irrespective of the sense of un-fulfillment is how Murakami detects the light without the appreciable heat everywhere in the urban space of Tokya and withing the soul of the characters,even if they are asleep. The light,he infers, glow brightest at night,and once light embarks on the face of earth,this phosphoric light fades, when we go our separate way in search of our own niche.
The answer is the real time of the book was living through it over a night, from a little before midnight, this dark novel was spread over eight hours in Tokyo. The intercuts in the novel were sublime yet profound and as some reviewer said it had the Murakami's signature magical-realist absurd coincidences. And most importantly I felt the immediate urge to pen down thoughts.
After Dark concentrates on themes of loneliness and alienation through characters crafted beautifully, the tit bits of moving away from East Asia and having western references (all-night Deny's where Hall & Oates plays in the background kept the worldly appeal at bay.) The Murakami specialty of story telling as if it is a film did reach a level where I felt like a captive audience looking into the rough cut of an institute film. The chapters where Eri was sleeping and an invisible eye was watching, the way it was framed to the reader who felt guilty in the void of claustrophobia was an aspect that made the chill run down the spine. My google secondary research says that the Los Angeles Times felt that Eri's dreamlike scenes were…"For the unfamiliar, it's the perfect appetizer. For the established fan, it's a quick work that is over far too soon" and that is something I agree to completely, it was like a buffet that was over even before it began.
Now for the story - Mari Asai, 19, in an plain attire,hardly noticable was sitting by herself when trombonist and soon-to-be law student Tetsuya Takahashi walks into a late-night Denny's,and proceeds to talk himself back into her acquaintance. Tetsuya was once interested in plain Mari's gorgeous older sister, Eri, whom he courted,once upon a time. Murakami then cuts to Eri in the next chapter, Eri is asleep in what turns out to be some sort of menacing netherworld. Tetsuya leaves for his practice when soon a large, 30ish woman, Kaoru, comes into Denny's asking for Mari; Mari speaks Chinese, and Kaoru needs to speak to the Chinese prostitute who has just been badly beaten up in the nearby "love hotel-Alphaville" Kaoru manages. Then one after the other the author looks at the lives of the sleeping Eri and the prostitute's assailant, a salaryman named Shirakawa, who has a wife waiting back home.Mari is sketched as a vague yet a character with lots of depth and that is reflected in her interaction with has with Tetsuya, Kaoru and a hotel worker named Korogi. Later when she almost assimilates with Eri in the bed the ambiguity takes a new dimension and the book ends.
The immediate feeling when the book ended was that of a hushed ensemble piece built on the notion that very late at night, after the logic lights have been snuffed and rationality has been blinded, life on earth becomes blurred. Individuals who have separate identities during the day lose uniqueness and melt into an uniquely common psychic collective.
The book does live upto Murakami's creation of not just geographical space uniqueness but the wavering space of realism,surrealism and often hyper-realism.
In this context the simplicity with which Mari is introduced implies the deatiled dissection of characterization Murakami believes in.... “On her table is a coffee cup. And an ashtray. Next to the ashtray, a navy blue baseball cap with a Boston Red Sox ‘B.’ It might be a little too large for her head. A brown leather shoulder bag rests on the seat next to her. It bulges as if its contents had been thrown in on the spur of the moment. She reaches out at regular intervals and brings the coffee cup to her mouth, but she doesn’t appear to be enjoying the flavor. She drinks because she has a coffee cup in front of her: that is her role as a customer.” or when it cuts to Eri the smoothness of the transition. The 19-year-old female coffee drinker, Mari, whose attachment to the Red Sox goes unexplained and probably doesn’t bear explaining — no more than do the lyrics of the pop songs that sprinkle down out of the ceiling of the diner — is killing time with an unnamed book. It’s a bit of a mystery why she’s up so late but it may have to do with her lovely sister, Eri, who’s at home in the suburbs, mired in a slumber that has been going on, unbroken, for months. Mari is awake because Eri is asleep — some sort of twinned homeostasis is at work, perhaps.
The book’s short chapters swaps back and forth between Mari’s ramblings with her new acquaintances and a prolonged, poetic yet thrilling setting of a bedroom (and that is caught between frames) her sleeping-beauty sister, who lies in bed in a bare room next to a wormhole of a TV screen on which her image occasionally appears and into which her soul is being absorbed. One wonders what shall be the mood but then the onset of a passive collection of interesting identities after dark sets one at peace. However I am still wondering how did Murakami design the book so novice,seeming almost caught up in the glocal politics,and struggling to find ones identity. Maybe thats why it was safer to title it after dark.
Though I cannot deny that inconspicuous is Murakami's widening perimeters of a nocturnal urban habitat. In the hours when colours vanish,women fall prey for the most part particularly the poor and the unmarried.(even if it is by choice the rights of a human being are violated. Men venture forth more boldly.
The interesting bit that remains irrespective of the sense of un-fulfillment is how Murakami detects the light without the appreciable heat everywhere in the urban space of Tokya and withing the soul of the characters,even if they are asleep. The light,he infers, glow brightest at night,and once light embarks on the face of earth,this phosphoric light fades, when we go our separate way in search of our own niche.
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