To enter into the best Murakami novels- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, Dance Dance Dance-is to fall under a spell that seems all the more magical for its outward ordinariness. Yet to the legions of fervent Murakami fans, and I count myself among them, none of this really matters. (Indeed, Murakami started his first book Hear the Wind Sing, in English, then translated it back into Japanese to help achieve the disassociated, detached style that has since become his trademark.) Murakami has cited hard-boiled detective fiction as an early influence on his style, but at his leanest he can read like Raymond Chandler without the whiskey. Some of that may be due to the static of translation, but even in his native Japanese Murakami can sound as if he’s already been translated.
He’s not an especially nimble writer, and you’d be hard-pressed to pick out a passage of his work that can survive quotation. And there is absolutely no logical reason for this. Follow Murakami may be the world’s most popular working literary author.
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