The Other World and Out Of Order Storytelling in "Sputnik Sweetheart"

By Far, Sputnik Sweetheart is my favorite story by Murakami story so far. The reason for this is that I have always been fascinated by the horror/suspense genres that explore the concept of a warped version of reality randomly pulling in unsuspecting people. There is something terrifying about how random the events are that makes me look for connections that might explain why this happened to them, but often there is no clear answer. I enjoy reading the experiences, but hearing the after effects also intrigues me as well. In most of the stories I've read that use this concept, after they escape, the characters are haunted by them, whether something from the other world comes with them and haunts them, or they are afraid of going back and completely change their lifestyles to try and avoid returning to that world (most of the time, they end up returning to the world once again and never come back). In Murakami's interpretation of the other world, he connects it to the "self" in a way that upon returning something is missing or the person is not the same.

Miu's story was a more extreme account. The other world took something important from her very being. She was split in two and was half of a person when she returned. Sadly, she lost her black hair, desire and ability to play music passionately. The other Miu took all of it with her. In other works by Murakami, the concept of another self living a different life is often a one-sided inconsequential fact in that characters see them in mirrors and are alarmed, but not affected too much. They recall the horrendous events and are shaken by them, but there is less consequence.The negative consequences in Sputnik Sweetheart fall more in line with Poe's "William Wilson" in that there is this haunting feeling and no true solutions. 

Another thing I noticed about the story was how it falls in line with horror genre modern story-telling methods. Throughout my time reading, listening and watching horror films, a common theme in the storytelling methods is authors telling the story out-of order/flashback method. Sometimes there is a narrator who has an active hand in which flashbacks within the story are told with context, but for the most part the story turns into a puzzle that needs to be solved. In Sputnik Sweetheart, the story starts after the horrifying events and to add another layer of dissociation. Another person tells the story from her accounts. This 3rd person style adds more perspective and makes Miu's emotions and actions throughout the story more vibrant. I immediately had questions as I read the beginning of the story: "How did her hair become white?" and my brain started to assume that the event Miu went through was beyond traumatic (because only a severely devastating situation would cause someone's hair to turn white) and as the puzzle pieces were put together throughout the story telling, there was a satisfaction in learning her story. I wanted to know what happened to her and could not stop reading until I did. We talked in class about this idea of "getting the reader addicted, so they'll read more." That is why I truly enjoyed the story.

Ariel

Accepting the Unrealistic in Murakami

There is almost always a sense of ambiguity in Murakami’s works, and it often leaves a feeling of confusion or questioning in his readers. This feeling has often led me to ask myself: Just how much should I be analyzing? How far should I continue to try and peel back the different layers of the piece I just read? Am I looking for meaning where there is none?

While doing research for my Murakami presentation, I read several interviews of him discussing his approach to writing. One of the biggest things he said that stood out to me was in an interview with the Paris Review: “When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story.” Murakami has always struck me as a sort of stream-of-consciousness writer, but I never realized just how much he just went with his own flow. This, combined with another interview with The New Yorker in which Murakami talks about how he acknowledges the existence of the “unreal world” in his work, even claiming that he enters that world himself when he sits down to write, made me reconsider the way I approach reading and understanding his writing. I decided that, rather than try and decipher the meaning in every strange or unrealistic aspect of his stories, I should take a page out of his protagonists’ book and simply accept what comes. 

This is not to say that Murakami doesn’t address deeper themes within his work. Murakami has said that he aims to write about difficult and complicated ideas using language that is easy to understand. It’s clear that there is more than meets the eye in many, if not all of his works. For example, the excerpt we read from Sputnik Sweetheart hints at some kind of trauma and/or battle with the self. Another example concerns our discussion about A Wild Sheep Chase and whether the characters were “functions of [Boku]’s psyche”. There was a lot of talk about whether or not the whole journey-people and all- were in Boku’s mind. Though this is definitely a possibility, for me personally it would somewhat undermine the whole story. I chose to believe that, in whatever universe in which this story takes place, all of it actually happened- the strange sheep hopping between people, the magical ears, the conversation with the already-deceased Rat, and so on. All of these mystical elements don’t necessarily represent some deeper idea individually, but come together to collaborate on some deeper purpose- maybe to drive Boku’s personal development.

For me personally, I am working on the balance of accepting that there is a deeper meaning within Murakami’s works, but that the unrealistic, magical aspects of the “other world” are not necessarily a symbol or metaphor for something. Instead, they are more like a vehicle for him to express those deeper ideas. And sometimes, maybe he just includes things because he likes them.

(“I like wells very much. I like refrigerators. I like elephants. There are many things that I like. When I write about the things I like, I’m happy.”- Murakami in The New Yorker)

-Angela Pyo

A link to 2 of the interviews, if anyone is interested:

https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/hardboiled-detective-fiction-and-haruki-murakami/

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/the-underground-worlds-of-haruki-murakami

The Bakers in Murakami and Carver - Caroline Huynh

After reading The Second Bakery Attack and A Small Good Thing, the bakery does play a big role in the stories. When I was reading Murakami’s, I felt that what happened in the past was not fulfilling to Boku. I felt that the reason why they robbed the McDonald’s was for the thrill that Boku never got to experience when he was ‘robbing’ a bakery back then. They both had boring lives and there was not much going on, I felt that they wanted to seek something with their lives. Also, the way his wife acted when they chose the spot to rob reminded me of A Wild Sheep Chase where the girlfriend told Boku, that they had to stay at the Dolphin Hotel. Was there a chance that maybe the couple wanted to act silly and be young again? The way that they acted during the robbery is very ironic. They only stole burgers, paid for sodas, and made sure the workers were comfortable when they were tied up. 

After reading A Small Good Thing, I wanted to compare the two bakers in both stories. The baker in Carver’s was a lonely man who did not have any children. He was just a baker is what he said and only that. At first, he was not as comforting until he pulled up chairs for the couple who lost their son and fed them. This scene felt warming after reading about Scotty's situation which was nerve-racking and heartbreaking. The baker seemed sympathetic after hearing the couple's problem. In Murakami’s, the baker had an odd request to allow the boys to sit in on some music and be allowed any bread they want. I felt that the man was lonely and wanted someone there for company. These bakers were just strangers yet they left a big impression on these people. Why were bakers used in these stories? Maybe because they are important for different occasions?

Loss of Innocence in Murakami and Salinger

An interesting connection that I observed between Murakami and Salinger's writing is the theme of innocence being lost or stolen. Murakami's short story "A Perfect Day for Kangaroos," begins with Boku and his girlfriend going to go to a zoo to see a baby kangaroo. Boku mentions that they saw an article in the newspaper about the kangaroo being born a month ago, but they just couldn't find the time to go see the kangaroo until this moment. He says that the month went by so fast, he could barely remember anything that he did, but hey, "that's life"(Murakami 1).

When they finally go to the zoo and see the baby kangaroo, Boku's girlfriend is disappointed because the baby kangaroo is no longer a baby. Perhaps Murakami is trying to show how quickly childhood goes by and that this period of innocence is so valued (and capitalized on) in our society precisely because it is so fleeting. People are obsessed with kittens, puppies, and baby kangaroos because they possess this pure and innocent quality that we are robbed of once we enter adulthood and are confronted with responsibilities and societal expectations that we did not have to worry about as children. 

Murakami may have also been trying to comment on how the relationship between a parent and their child changes when the child starts to grow up. Maybe Boku's girlfriend is so excited when the baby kangaroo climbs into its mothers pouch because it shows that the while the baby kangaroo is not technically a baby anymore, it still needs the warmth and protection of its mother's pouch. Perhaps Boku's girlfriend had a child of her own that has grown up, or maybe she wants a child and to have that kind of connection that the mother kangaroo has with her baby. Another theory could be that she had a miscarriage and it had a traumatic effect on her, which could explain why she was so worried before going to the zoo that the baby kangaroo had died or that the mother kangaroo had a nervous breakdown. 

If Boku's girlfriend has experienced trauma from a miscarriage, this could be an interesting connection to  Seymour, the main character in Salinger's short story, who seems to have PTSD from fighting in WWII. Seymour also is drawn to the idea of innocence, as he spends time with a little girl named Sybil and tells her a story about mythical creatures called "bananafish," which can be interpreted as a warning about both adulthood and consumerism. The way that the bananafish act like "pigs" after they swim into a hole where there's a lot of bananas, as Seymour describes it, could represent how modern society corrupts the youth and innocence of children. Seymour personally had his youth stolen from him as he was forced by the government to fight in a war and now carries the trauma of those experiences. Perhaps Seymour finds comfort in Sybil in a similar way that Boku's girlfriend finds comfort in the baby kangaroo. 

While it is quite obvious from their titles that "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" influenced Murakami's"A Perfect Day for Kangaroos," I think it is also interesting that Murakami's story ended so differently from Salinger's. Maybe Murakami was trying to send a more hopeful message.

-Penny

Memory and the Mind-Dependent World of Murakami

 Murakami regularly employs the motif of memory in his work to explore the malleable nature of reality, where the individual is the center of the universe. In A Wild Sheep Chase, we follow a detailed narrative of Boku who reveals his thoughts and feelings to the reader almost momentarily. However, the extent to which the reader gets acquainted with the other characters is solely through the eyes of Boku and how he perceives them. In his research of the Hokkaido mountain landscape, Boku reads that “it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain” (A Wild Sheep Chase 200). The mountain represents the conscious of an individual which consists of a public side which is known to the external world, a private side which is the identity (or, the ID), and the unknown subconscious which Murakami portrays to be the most turbulent, dark, and unexplored part of a person. Memory seems to fall under the latter category: a compartment in our subconscious which lays dormant until triggered by particular events, senses, and experiences. However, as we see in Murakami, memory often skews the original occurrences. However, Murakami seems to suggest that reality is mind-dependent, therefore, ‘reality’ is a construct which exists only through our perception, meaning that a memory can be understood as an accurate recollection of any given event. In Sputnik Sweetheart, Miu tells the narrator about her surreal experience in the ferris wheel. The narrator suggests that Miu’s story is fragmented, non-linear, and quite unrealistic. This could be understood as a literal malfunction in Miu’s recollection because of the trauma she has experienced. However, at the same time, what evidence do we have that what Miu remembers happened otherwise? We often rely on the presupposition that the external world is objective, real, and linear in time. However, Murakami explores this premise through the means of memory as the shaping tool of reality. In that sense, every individual has their own reality which cannot be disputed. This raises the interesting question of what happens when our realities overlap. Murakami addresses this by including the element of fantasy in his writing which elevates the narrative to reveal subsequent parallels of time and space. 

Ruska

Suter and Murakami - Katakana

        In Rebecca Suter's The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki between Japan and the United States, she brings up many interesting points about Murakami's use of language, particularly in terms of how he uses katakana in his stories. Something that I found interesting and did not know about previously was the way that katakana is perceived by the Japanese. Since katakana is a means of bringing foreign words into the Japanese language, I guess it should not be too surprising that its use brings certain connotations with it. To be specific, using a katakana word--especially if it already has a close equivalent in Japanese--conveys a "sense of cosmopolitanism and prestige" that using a regular Japanese word would not. For example, regarding their profession, in certain positions, people can choose to refer to themselves as the original Japanese title or the katakana title. If someone is a journalist, they can choose between being called a ジャーナリスト and a 新聞記者, or if they are a photographer, they choose between フォトグラファー and 写真家. By choosing to call themselves by the katakana title, these people want their occupations to seem more attractive by implying their "modern and sophisticated lifestyle." 

        I also thought that it was interesting how Murakami "parodies the use of katakana words typical of advertising in the 1980s" in some of his works. In one example, he does this by repeating commercial-like phrases, all involving the word "unity," and using an abundance of katakana words--such as "dezain (design), baransu (balance), konseputo (concept), shiriizu (series), and shinpurusa (simpleness)." A character also mentions that the word, kicchin (kitchen), is preferable to daitokoro in the context of advertising because it implies a more spacious, modern kind of kitchen. After reading this example, I realized that I have seen this kind of katakana advertisement parody in Yoshimoto Banana's works, as well. One of her works is titled キッチン in katakana when the original Japanese word, 台所, exists and is even written in the first line. This may be a decision based on the connotation of kicchin being a modern, spacious kitchen. There is also a line later in this book that talks about a German vegetable peeler and how it's "a peeler so great that even the laziest of grandmothers will have a blast peel, peel, peeling away." This specific commercial-sounding phrase does not contain katakana in itself (besides the ドイツ part), but it is surrounded by a list of other kitchen appliances written in katakana, which infuses this same kind of ad-like tone and makes it stick out in the text as "foreign."

-Melody

The Desire to Forget

 A number of stories that were gone over so far seem to deal with a person's trauma or haunting of a past, but it isn't always fully clear as to the details of what happened, parts are forgotten or are tried to not be acknowledged by the recounter. In The Year of Spaghetti, the protagonist seemingly is in a state of cooking spaghetti as an excuse to get away from real world commitments or the business of people he knew in the past. The Second Bakery Attack has the protagonist recount his odd feelings towards his strange burglary, but those past quarrels are not immediately linked to the current oddities happening to him now, almost like he doesn't want to consider it to be relevant in the present and bury it in the past. The Zoo Attack has the woman recounting her experiences coming back to Japan from oversea territories but it is explained that during a crucial interaction with a U.S. submarine she fell unconscious for a time, until the traveling boat reached docked. These all have a connection of trying to not acknowledge the past, not necessarily move on from it but to not think that it even existed, which seems very much along the lines of trauma and the brain trying to erase the source as a precautionary measure. It's very interesting that this theme comes up so often from Murakami, the past coming to haunt the present day was also the case in A Wild Sheep Chase, with Boku's friend the Rat. What makes this theme so alluring to Murakami? It probably isn't a message of getting people to face their past traumas and overcome them, as the stories of A Year of Spaghetti and The Zoo Attack don't have those missing memories or past grievances cleared up, they're merely explained and left like that. Although it could be the case with those stories that they're meant to show that not facing past trauma leaves one to end up being a bit of a hollow person, that this is what can come of people if trauma isn't dealt with, being an indirect message to get people to face trauma. I'm unsure of how personal this theme of past grievances is to Murakami, but I can imagine one connection with his thoughts on Japan's World War II actions and subsequent actions of not fully apologizing or acknowledging the crimes Japan committed during the war, but whether this is an overarching idea for him or coincidental connections is something that I do not know.

-David Barnes

Blog Post 2 - My understanding of the "other world"

Reading Murakami’s writing always leaves the reader asking questions. In my experience with his writing, most of his works (short story or novel length) end with fantastical occurrences that could not occur in real life. Mentions of this other world can be implicit or explicit, depending on the needs of the story. In The Wild Sheep Chase, the events transpiring at the cabin after Boku’s girlfriend leaves are a good example of an implicit experience of the other world. In The Year of Spaghetti, there is an explicit example when Murakami writes “Sometimes I wonder what happened to the girl - the thought usually pops into my mind when I’m facing a steaming-hot plate of spaghetti. After she hung up, did she disappear forever, sucked into the four thirty p.m. shadows? Was I partly to blame?” This example shows the reader the narrators acknowledgement of the other world, while in The Wild Sheep Chase, Boku's finds himself interacting with the other world but does not acknowledge this fact. It is clear that in either case, the other world is a real occurrence that must be recognized. There are similarities between each mention - characteristics like darkness, cold, and physical response to the other world (like Boku getting sick) all accompany every interaction. Often, mirrors serve as a portal into (and out of)  this world, as in Where I’m Likely to Find It. In Sputnik Sweetheart, it seems it was the mirrors within the binoculars that opened up this other world.

The question I am always left with - what is the purpose of this other world? While it is undoubtedly good at keeping readers coming back for more, this seems to be a poor explanation for its existence. The consistent experiences throughout all of Murakami’s works make it seem real to dedicated readers. It presents itself as an intermediary between literature that is uncompromising real-world (Think To Kill a Mockingbird) , and complete fantasy (think LOTR). The omnipresent cloud hanging in the back of every story, the “other world” can be interpreted to mean many things. At times, it seems to be the deep part of every consciousness that is either too difficult or too painful to navigate and understand. At other times, it seems to resemble an alternate universe dictated by similar laws but inhabited by antithetical characters. It can even seem as a scapegoat for all inexplicable phenomena found in the natural world. It is nearly impossible to analyze it as a separate entity from the story it visits, and I cannot for the life of me comprehend its meaning. The most perplexing quality of the other world to me is that it maintains a similar composition, but impacts characters in wildly different ways. I am motivated to read more of Murakami’s works after the class is over, because I want to keep interacting with the other world. Despite the relatability of Boku and his toils in everyday life, it is the overarching theme of wonder that impressions me when reading Murakami’s work that I relate to most. I am still waiting for my letter from Hogwarts, and am perpetually confuddled by the world around me, so the other world is an entity whose existence I hope for. Reading Murakami’s works makes it seem discoverable. 

Andrew

Murakami's Female Characters

While reading Murakami's writings and his potential source of influence in pairs during the past few weeks, one thing that jumps out the most to me is how different Murakami portrays female characters when compared to other writers. Most, if not all, female characters in Murakami's stories we've read so far lack personality or individuality. The female characters in the other non-Murakami stories each have their individual passions and desires, pains and worries, which is very hard to detect in Murakami's writings.

The female characters in Murakami's books only occasionally help the lonesome male protagonist push the plot forward, then disappear to the background as the male protagonist goes on his journey to search for something to "complete" himself (for lack of a better term). The girlfriends in A Wild Sheep Chase and "A Perfect Day for Kangaroos" are portrayed to be bizarrely naive so that they can spark Boku to say something philosophical. Boku's girlfriend with beautiful ears in A Wild Sheep Chase is even given psychic ability that she cannot command, so that she can only passively wait for the hints and assist Boku in his journey to find Rat and the sheep, but disappears completely from the story when Boku reaches his destination. The wife in "Where I'm Likely to Find it" and the prostitute in "South Bay Strut" are also like non-player characters in a game, who the protagonist gets a task from or submit a task to, but are ultimately unimportant in the hero's quest.

The female characters of Murakami also seem to lack a voice of their own. It's the natural limitation of a first-person narration from male narrators that the inner psyche of other female characters, or any other characters at all, can rarely be explored. Boku in A Wild Sheep Chase is especially portrayed to have difficulties expressing and noticing emotions, and most of Murakami's other male narrators also seem to only be observant of factual details, such as the brand of clothing or the number of objects, but they rarely make conjectures about the surrounding characters' emotions based on their observance. In chapter 12 of Sputnik Sweetheart and chapter 9 of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, there are two female characters who recount their traumatic experience to the male narrator. Even when it is made clear that the narrator hears the story from the female characters during verbal conversations, neither stories are presented to the readers directly as they were told by the females but rather as a summarized / paraphrased version retold again by the narrator.

- Crystal

Reality and Unreality in Fitzgerald and Murakami

One of the main themes that we have discussed in class in the recurring idea of different worlds that Murakami discusses in his novels, specifically when his characters are traveling in between them. I also noticed this theme Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald and wanted to discuss how Fitzgerald's explanation of this other world is similar and different to Murakami's. 

In Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald writes a scene in which he describes Dick's wife, Nicole as "an ochre stitch along the edge of reality and unreality" (Fitzgerald 212). This is in the midst of a psychotic break that she is having while they are traveling with their children, and brings about a picture of Nicole living in some kind of unreality other than her own, and maybe it is significant that these are "unrealities" and not two realities. But she still remains in one body and one situation, and is able to subdue herself at one point once she realizes that she is going through a schizophrenic episode.  Even though she is in both realities, the reader is able to see both and react to both from one perspective, specifically Dicks. We never get to see her mind or what she is experiencing during her episode.

It is interesting to contrast this example to some examples from Sputnik Sweetheart and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. Firstly, there is no mention of any type of specific mental disorder in Miu and Nutmeg's situations, unlike when Fitzgerald specifically brings up schizophrenia, so the reader does not initially have any preconceived notions of what is happening. When Miu is on the ferris wheel, she writes that "I was still on this side, here. But another me, maybe half of me, had gone to other side." (Murakami 157). Similarly to Nicole, she recognizes what is happening to her, and that she is going into the "other side" but she is not able to stop it, only to simply watch herself. Except, this time the reader is able to go into the mind of Miu and experience what it is like to be split into two personalities/bodies, making it all the more interesting. 

The experience of Nutmeg is similar to Miu's as we can see what is happening in this other world in the Zoo. We can also feel what is happening to her through her mothers eyes, when Murakami writes "She might as well have sunk to the bottom of the sea...but when the ship arrived in Saesbo, she woke without warning, as if some great power had dragged her back into the world" (Murakami 413). So now we have somewhat of an idea of what is happening to her and the involvement of another power that was previously not mentioned in either Miu or Nicole's case. Even though only Nutmeg's body is not physically in the Zoo, her conscious is still there, and she is witnessing horrific events despite the fact that she is on a boat about to be attacked by a submarine. The fact that she remembers these events later on proves that there was some other world she was living in, that she was dragged out of by something else.

It is clear in both Sputnik Sweetheart and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles that there are two realities, not just Miu and Nutmeg having psychotic breaks. This is a fascinating portrayal when comparing it to Nicole's, and brings up the question of whether or not Nicole's schizophrenic mind in Murakami's novels would have been explained away as an "unreality".

-Audrey 

Dissociative Disorders & Murakami

        After class on Friday, I could not stop thinking about how different types of dissociative disorders could explain some of the enigmatic features of Murakami's stories. Verywellmind.com defines dissociation as "a disconnection between a person's sensory experience, thoughts, sense of self, or personal history. People may feel a sense of unreality and lose their connection to time, place, and identity." There are multiple types of dissociative disorders, a couple of which I will discuss in two of Murakami's short stories.

    The discussion we had on Friday concerning Miu in "Sputnik Sweetheart" reminded me of a condition called depersonalization. Healthyplace.com describes depersonalization as a "feeling that one is detached from one's own life and mental processes or that one is viewing one's life as if it were a movie." As we know in the short story, Miu shares her experience of watching herself in her apartment with Ferdinando. I learned from a class last semester called "Abnormal Behavior" that depersonalization often occurs when people are experiencing, or have experienced in the past, a traumatic event. Clearly, this event left Miu traumatized since she kept this secret for over a decade and it caused her hair to turn white.

    Another short story we read that could describe yet another type of dissociative disorder is "Where I'm Likely to Find It." In this story, the protagonist is looking for a husband that went missing. At the end of the story, the wife calls the protagonist to inform him that her husband was found in another city, with no memory of how he got there. This situation is eerily similar to a condition known as dissociative fugue. Healthyplace.com describes dissociative fugue as a dissociative amnesia that "is associated with confused and bewildered wandering or a journey of some sort." Again, I learned about this condition in the class "Abnormal Behavior" and it was mentioned that in dissociative fugue, a person leaves unexpectedly and travels to another place, typically without telling other people that they are leaving. When they leave their dissociated state, they have no memory of how they got there or why they left.

    There are more examples I could discuss concerning other stories by Murakami and other dissociative disorders, but I found these two to be the most interesting. I'm not sure if Murakami knew of these disorders and intentionally wrote them in because of their unique characteristics, or if it was a coincidence. Either way, I found this very intriguing.

Works Cited

Matthew Tull, P. (2020, July 19). What does dissociation mean? Retrieved February 27, 2021, from https://www.verywellmind.com/dissociation-2797292

Tracy, N. (2015). Types of dissociative disorders, list of dissociative disorders. Retrieved February 27, 2021, from https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/dissociative-identity-disorder/dissociative-disorders-types-list

Corrina

The Zone

In all the Murakami’s works we have read so far, I constantly came to perceive to a feeling of a “different zone” for all the characters, especially the protagonists. To me, it felt like Murakami is purposely placing them into this zone that separates them apart from the rest of the world and disconnect his relationships with everyone surrounding them. This is especially conspicuous in The Wild Sheep Chase, where the protagonist Boku is not only physically separated from the mundane world at last, but also mentally he was alienated from the surroundings. Boku was enticed to look for the sheep which made him detached from his work, and his divorce with his ex-wife and the death of the “girl who sleeps with everyone” are the demarcation between his seemingly normal life and the absurd adventure of the searching for the sheep. Further, at the end of the book, Boku was again separated from his girlfriend and eventually ended up being physically himself, but he entered a “world” that only himself was allowed to be entered, with the Rat. In fact, the character Rat was in that even deeper zone already as he was possessed by the sheep, but Boku was on the brink, which is a quite subtle position to be placed in, and this is where he differs from everyone else.

Other than The Wild Sheep Chase, in Chapter 12 of the Sputnik Sweetheart, the protagonist even experienced a sudden aging in one night where she couldn’t even tell the reason herself. It all happened in the gondola which acted as another zone that all things happened remain in that space. Other than the Sputnik Sweetheart, in Where I’m likely to find it, Murakami describes the character who vanishes from the stairs and reappeared after a (or two?) months. To me, the stairs is an analogy to the gondola, that not only people outside don’t know what happened in that space, neither does the person who experienced it know.

In addition, in The Year of Spaghetti, Murakami describes a period of his life when he spent with cooking spaghetti. To me, the apartment he lived in, the process of making the spaghetti and the time when he was remembering things when he was eating form another space that Murakami intentionally created for himself. Which he implied they all represent a sense of “loneliness”.

The point I attempt to make here is that, most characters Murakami created are normal people living a life that can’t be more normal, whether the guy working in Meryl Lynch, Boku, or Miu. However, the more insignificant Murakami makes these character, the more fantastical, miraculous and eccentric life and experiences he puts on them, as if to prove the world that no matter how normal and ordinary a person may seem, they could be experiencing or experienced something that you cannot imagine and will never know. To create something randomly out of air may be abrupt, but there are always significance and reason behind, and the zone may only be part of the process.

 

Alice

The Literary Memory of Murakami

     Written for The New Yorker and translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami tells a story from his childhood emphasizing his relationship with his father. Through these tales, he shares glimpses of what his father's life was like, who his mother was, Murakami's childhood and growing up, and the pets he had along the way. But what I found most interesting about reading this piece of nonfiction was how much of Murakami's fiction came through. It made me wonder how his writing has been affected by his memory, but even more how his memory has been affected by his writing. 

    Murakami's father served in WWII in a variety of positions but rarely spoke of his time in service. Murakami tells us of one of these rare moments where his father recounts the story of his regime beheading a captured Chinese soldier. Murakami emphasizes the weight of this story and its impact on both of them, writing "To put it another way, this heavyweight my father carried—a trauma, in today’s terminology—was handed down, in part, to me, his son. That’s how human connections work, how history works. It was an act of transference and ritual". Immediately I thought of the sheep professor and his dolphin-hotel-owning son. The transference of grief and its impact on a relationship. And just like the two characters in A Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami and his father barely spoke for about 20 years during Murakami's adult life. In this way, I think it's clear that Murakami's relationship made its way into A Wild Sheep Chase. Murakami goes on to write about rekindling his lost relationship with his father while visiting him in the hospital. On his deathbed (the father), Murakami feels closer to his father than he has in many years. In many ways, this also reminded me of the sheep professor and his son, whose relationship was saved by the death of the sheep.  

    Murakami speaks about the difference between himself and his father in terms of academia. His father, who taught for most of his life, excelled in school and put time and effort into what he enjoyed learning. Murakami was unable to do so and writes "I’m the type who eagerly pursues things I’m interested in but can’t be bothered with anything else. That was true of me when I was a student, and it is still true now." I think this is him further exemplifying this idea around his stream-of-consciousness style of writing. He follows his interests, which could be transferred to following the thoughts that he is most interested in.

    Although Murakami admits to his lackadaisical mindset in school, he doesn't do so proudly. He emphasizes that this in part caused a lot of turbulence between his father and him, noting "This disappointed my father, who I’m sure compared me to himself at the same age. You were born in this peaceful time, he must have thought. You can study as much as you like, with nothing to get in the way. So why can’t you make more of an effort?". In many parts of this piece, Murakami talks about the realities of war and its ties to his family. Just like in his fiction, he takes a very critical standpoint, but not in favor of Japan or favor of the enemy. Just very thoughtfully lays out the realities of the experiences familiar to him. He talks about his father praying every day for the soldiers who he fought amongst that died in the war, mentioning how this took a toll on his father. I think in many ways Murakami's relationship with his father must play a huge role in his desire to talk about war so critically in his work.

    Though Murakami is critical of himself for not taking the opportunities that his father wasn't lucky enough to have, he writes "All we can do is breathe the air of the period we live in, carry with us the special burdens of the time, and grow up within those confines. That’s just how things are." I think this is something that also resonates in many of his works. Although we spoke about how his characters can disconnect from time and its constraints, I think this quote still works. Because even in those moments, where time has changed on a conceptual level and the characters are watching how time is passing differently for them (Boku in the dolphin hotel watching the office workers out the window come and go while time is passing differently in his alternate dimension), his characters adjust and adapt to the new confines and air of the space and time they find themselves in. 

    Murakami's piece on his father starts and ends with the talk of cats, pets from his childhood. Speaking to the first memory he shares, Murakami recalls "the sound of the waves, the scent of the wind whistling through the stand of pines. It’s the accumulation of insignificant things like this that has made me the person I am." This resonates with the majority of his characters. Characters who find themselves out of nowhere in absurd circumstances, but who have lived exclusively in insignificance up until the story starts. This is quite remarkable to think about when reading it in such blatant terms. Because when it comes down to it, to me this suggests that Murakami is building all of his characters on a foundation of insignificance. There is something so appealing about the type of insignificance he creates in his characters, which must be due to his closeness and familiarity with the feeling.

    In many ways, it is obvious to me that Murakami's relationship with his father has laid deep roots in his writing. But in many ways, I think because of his writing he can access these memories and reassess what they mean and how they can function. I don't think one can exist without the other.

Bergen

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/07/abandoning-a-cat

Self in A wild sheep chase

 

A Wild Sheep Chase presents the reader with a cast of characters living through an incredibly chaotic world, where miraculous events happen regularly and yet it is hard to say if there is any connection or significance for any of the things that happen. Through such a chaotic lens, we are able to see how the characters interact with the world, and thus how they see themselves internally.

The first person who presents a clear sense of self is the girlfriend. She does not present the things she must do to get by in the world, such as her prostitution and copywriting, as integral to her character, instead insisting that it is her miraculous ears that are the key to her identity. Since the ear’s strange abilities are what the girlfriend wishes to present as her true self, she is telling the world that she wants to be perceived as unusual, as while anyone can be an escort or copyist, not everyone can tell the future with their magic ears. She goes on to prove her status as extraordinary when she optimistically sticks with Boku through all the strange happenstance that befall him, far past what could reasonably be expected of her. When she leaves the sheep man says that she has lost her ear powers, perhaps indicating that this uniqueness was bestowed by the sheep itself to assist Boku in his mission. Either way, while she presents herself as unusual, when things began to get strange in the Rat’s house, she was not considered “special” enough to stay.

Where the girlfriend presents herself as extraordinary, Boku seems insistent on presenting himself as incredibly ordinary, as can be seen in the scene of their first date. It is hard to pin down exactly why Boku does not want to be noteworthy, but a worthwhile train of thought might be how he as the narrator handles names. In all the opportunities given to Boku to reveal himself to someone, he turns it down, both literally when he gives a fake name at the hotel and figuratively in the cold persona which he presents to people. By the end of the novel the weight of denying his unique personhood has taken such a toll on Boku that in the nightmare chapter after he says goodbye to Rat, he sees the limo driver say to him, “Names change all the time. I bet you can’t even remember your own name,” (288). As far as the reader is aware, Boku might have truly spent so long denying any shred of personhood, and thus personal responsibility, that he simply has forgotten his name by the end. Whether or not something in the experience taught him to stop self-sabotaging in this way, I don’t feel qualified to say.

The Rat offers the most surprising self-definition, as he is willing to kill himself rather than let what once was his body and mind be corrupted by the unstoppable power of the sheep. The Sheep Professor and the Boss were but two in a long line of people who were willing to let the sheep feed upon them until they were nothing but an empty husk without it, all for the promise of power. With such a deal offered to the Rat, it is surprising that he turns it down and instead opts to kill himself with the sheep still inside of him. When explaining why he did it, the Rat says, “I guess I felt too attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of the breeze, the sound of cicadas- if I like these things, why should I apologize? The same with having a beer with you… I don’t know why,” (284). This explanation seems counter intuitive at first, as it seems like the things that might make someone dislike themselves, such as their weaknesses, are actually what made the Rat wish to keep his individuality. Having seen the effect of the sheep on the former holders, it makes sense why the Rat might feel that his weak self is better than becoming nothing but a drone. The Rat suggests that even if the main thing that defines his self is weakness, at least he can claim it as his own. Once he is aware of his true self, he is able to appreciate the mundane pleasures of the world, such as the feeling of a pleasant breeze or warm sunlight.

It is hard to say if any of the characters in the novel are necessarily in the right or wrong for living as they do, but it is more likely Marukami merely wanted to present the various ways in which people might choose to live in a world that often defies explanation.

-Luke Ptak

A Disillusioning Labyrinth

     The endings of neither The Long Goodbye nor A Wild Sheep Chase are satisfactory in a traditional sense. Both Marlowe and Boku's quests turned out to be rather pointless: no evil was punished, no justice was attained, no meaningful reward was given, and both were left alone by themselves with several unrepairable broken relationships. The characters in both books seemed trapped in a labyrinth, and after the readers think they've finally found a way out, it turns out that there is yet another layer of existential labyrinth out there with no escape.

    Throughout the book, the impression Marlowe gives me is that despite of his occasional reckless behavior, he is never disorientated and always in control of the situation, like the protagonist of a detective fiction is expected to be. He seems to have successfully disentangled himself from the crimes and complicated relationships among the Wades, Lorings, Potters and found justice for his friend until he realized that the friend he devoted so much for has emotionally betrayed him from the very beginning. Similarly, the impression Boku gives me is that he can usually examine situations quite objectively because he seems to be disinterested in human (and cat) emotions in general, which makes the final scene of him breaking down by the beach more striking. During his sheep chase, he seems to have spontaneously come across clues and decided to follow them to travel up the mountains and stayed there out of his free will, only in the end did he realize that his spontaneity is really part of an elaborate and incomprehensible set-up and has all been calculated.

    To me it feels like that both Marlowe and Boku are doomed from the beginning. Neither of them have personally done anything "wrong" to end up being trapped in the situation they found themselves in, yet they still each fall into an elaborate plan and end up being emotionally exhausted just because they are who they are and will make the choices they make. It's also interesting to note that both books have some sort of "evil" and powerful organization threatening to harm the protagonists, yet neither Marlowe nor Boku showed any desire to battle the "bad guys" and these deeper larger forces are not even too relevant to the endings of the stories.

    I'm wondering if this overarching sense of disillusionment is a reflection of the World Wars. The lives of every ordinary individual has been negatively affected by the war, and they can neither do anything to prevent it nor to combat the larger forces behind it.

Crystal

Free Will in A Wild Sheep Chase

After finishing Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, I was stuck on the idea of free will. The phrase “free will” comes up when the secretary admits to Boku that “‘I wanted you to come all this way spontaneously of your own free will’” (Murakami 346). The irony behind the secretary’s statement is that he threatened Boku in order to push him into pursuing the journey; thus, it can be said that Boku would not have pursued the sheep chase if he weren’t approached by the secretary first. The illusion of free will, in this case, points to a larger idea that perhaps we are not in control of everything we do.  Without knowing what was at the end of the search, Boku embarks on his sheep chase, only to find out at the end that the secretary already knew everything about the sheep and was using Boku in order to catch the sheep. While Boku thought he was leading the search, it turns out that he was just a tool used to carry out an already complex plan. Boku’s lack of knowledge about the situation was actually his greatest strength, even though he himself thought it was his greatest weakness.

The secretary also associated “free will” with “blank slate”—  this reminded me of the  famous philosophy “tabula rasa,” which states that everyone is born without pre-determined traits and knowledge and our self is developed solely based on our experiences.  From all of this, I started to wonder if the ending of A Wild Sheep Chase was a sort of rebirth for Boku.  While searching for the sheep, his sense of reality is altered as he learns and experiences  magical elements that don’t seem to fit into his knowledge of the world. While looking at the mirror in the Rat’s house, Boku brings up the concept of “free will” and contemplates who is “real”: the person looking at the mirror, or the person looking back in the reflection (Murakami 319).  His brief identity crisis with his reflection in the mirror shows how the sheep chase has driven him to question even his own sense self. A reflection in the mirror supposedly has no free will, as it only exists to mimic our real self. Despite this, Boku wonders if our free will is only an illusion, and if the reflection in the mirror is what is “real.” The ending of the novel struck me as quite odd as well, since Boku was not one to be emotional about anything, yet the book ends with him crying by himself. This surprising show of emotions perhaps suggests that we as readers don’t truly know the “real” Boku, despite having followed him on this journey. 

-Michelle Han

A Wild Sheep Chase- Grasping at Reality

One aspect of A Wild Sheep Chase that really jumps out to me is the contrast between Boku’s plain acceptance of seemingly magical elements and the mental exercises he does to ground himself in reality. The first major instance of this for me was when his most recent girlfriend predicts that Boku will receive the call that launches him on the “wild sheep chase” down to the timing and subject matter. Though he does briefly question her after the call comes, he shows no dissatisfaction over the lack of answer. Another instance is when she insists on staying at the Dolphin Hotel with no other reason than her intuition. Though Boku would prefer to stay at a nicer hotel, he easily agrees to their stay without demanding an explanation of any kind and doesn’t seem particularly surprised when the hotel leads them to their next major breakthrough in the search. I would expect most people to be more surprised or affected by their significant other’s seemingly prophetic abilities, but Boku takes them in stride without much of a second thought.

On the other hand, Boku seemingly engages in several mental exercises throughout the novel. For example, he takes special attention to note numbers. Occasionally, he groups numbers in a sort of counting pattern (one… two… three…). He also seems to especially mention numbers involving 3 (3 cranes at his hometown, 3 ten yen coins, drawing 13 stars, counting above the number 3), though I am not quite sure if there is any significance here or if it is pure coincidence. Boku also attempts to calculate impossible numbers in his head, such as the rotational speed of the earth or the total number of times he and his ex-wife had sex throughout the course of their relationship. In both cases, he seems frustrated with the lack of a satisfactory answer and even states, “Accurate figures give things a sense of reality.”

Based on this context, the best reason I can think of for these thoughts and behaviors is that he uses them as a way to keep a grasp on reality. This especially makes sense with the context of the Rat’s letter where he states he can no longer count above the number 3. It makes for an interesting contrast when Boku doesn’t seem particularly phased by mystical, unreal events that would typically stand out to anyone else based in reality, yet he regularly engages in behaviors commonly associated with grounding oneself in reality, suggesting that it might be something he worries about or struggles with unconsciously.

-Angela Pyo

_______

[I don't have anything insightful to say so I just wrote some stupid shit that popped into my head that may or may not make sense. Apologies in advance.]

• Chandler's Marlowe was given a name and Murakami's protagonist was not, but they both start and end their adventures nameless.
• The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase are both works of supernatural fiction. For one, they both end with a ghostly encounter.
• Both protagonists would be good at running tech startups.
• Both writers must have had some weird dreams.
• Both protagonists have god's phone number.
• [Insert other surface-level similarity here]

As others have already said, a lot of similar story b(l)eats, similar characters, similar pacing, similarly  blea(t)k undertones --- it woold not be surprising if Murakami took inspiration from Chandler's The Long Goodbye as he was writing A Wild Sheep Chase. Try swapping the titles around; I think they would still be fairly well representative of the stories they're attached to, although it might help one to squint a little bit. Does this constitute literary theft? I would think not, but I'm also inclined to believe that the question of what does and does not constitute originality and how much recognition or credit should be given to creators for their work is probably too messy a question to even bother with these days. The following is a quote I found on Reddit around two years ago in a discussion thread about originality in digital music that I think might apply to the discussion of intertextuality and originality in literature as well.

"I thought using [drum] loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I then thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I then thought that programming it was cheating, so I learned to play drums for real. I then thought using bought drums was cheating, so I learned to make my own. I then thought using premade skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I then thought that that was cheating too, so I grew my own goat from a baby goat. I also think that is cheating, but I’m not sure where to go from here. I haven’t made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all."

- An unnamed Reddit user, circa February 2019

 

Dylan

Queer Coding in The Long Goodbye

After discussing the potential of Earl being queer in The Long Goodbye, I wondered about the portrayal of a queer character written in the 1950s. In class, we couldn't pinpoint where Earl was explicitly described as queer, and that's because he wasn't—he was queer-coded.

Queer coding is when a character’s sexuality isn't explicitly stated or confirmed but is inferred through the attribution of stereotypical, often exaggerated traits associated with queerness. Many villainous or otherwise “unsavory” characters are queer-coded; some queer-coded villians you may recognize from your childhood are Ursula, Jafar, Scar, Maleficent, and many other Disney villains. Queer coding became especially popular after the 1930 Hays Code in the US, which dictated what could and could not be portrayed in films. One example of this was “sexual perversion,” including “homosexuality.” Thus, queer coding was used to get around this by alluding to one’s sexuality through stereotypes and exaggerated character traits without any direct mention. Queer coding also intrinsically linked the idea of queerness and immorality, hence why many villains were queer coded. This technique was seen not only in films, but in most, if not all, forms of media.

In The Long Goodbye, Earl’s character is linked with classically feminine traits. For example, he's described as having “delicate” features and “graceful” behaviors. Marlowe spends significantly more time discussing Earl’s clothing than other characters’ clothing, and derisively asks Dr. Verringer if Earl thinks he’s Valentino. He's depicted swinging his hips, filing his nails, and repeatedly calling Marlowe “sweetie,” indicating a subversion of the traditional masculine (and even hypermasculine) behavior that other men in the novel exhibit.

Marlow’s perception of Earl is that he’s a “nut” and he wonders whether Dr. Verringer is running a sanitarium after Earl threatens Marlowe with brass knuckles. Marlowe further classifies Earl as “manic-depressive,” and even Dr. Verringer describes Earl as “unstable.” This reinforces the idea that queerness is perverse and linked with mental illness, a detrimental belief that was institutionalized until 1973 when homosexuality was removed from the DSM.

Queer coding can be harmful by perpetuating stereotypes and linking the idea of queerness with violence and instability. It also reinforces the damaging yet persisting belief that queerness stems from mental illness and is inherently subversive and dangerous.

- Christa (she/her)

The Mysteries of our Protagonists

     The Long Goodbye could indeed be considered the hypotext to A Wild Sheep Chase; there are certainly borrowed elements that the latter morphs into its own story. In particular, the two protagonists, Marlowe and Boku, are unwillingly sent on quests by authority figures that seem to operate at a higher level than our middling protagonists. In both cases, the result is preordained: Marlowe has been following the requests of Eileen Wade, a woman who created the inciting incident by killing Sylvia Lennox, and Boku discovers that the secretary who sent him on the quest already knew everything. This is a tried and true formula: a person who has made the protagonist dance turns out to have knowledge of everything, and in the most cliché fashion, they are the villain. It works particularly well because we experience everything from our protagonist's perspective; we share their knowledge and make our own guesses, which works especially well in a mystery novel. Sherlock Holmes does this with Moriarty, James Bond does this with innumerable "crime organizations." In all four cases, our protagonist operates as a cog in a machine with little knowledge of more powerful forces at play. Thus, it is all the more spectacular when our protagonist succeeds.

    In these two novels, however, our protagonists' mysteries seem to be preordained. Marlowe, who has routinely shown a disinterest in justice and the law, only wants to clear his friend's name. He comes into contact with Harlan Potter and Menendez, who operate as the aforementioned more powerful forces. He's ultimately only successful due to disinterest from Potter, and he is deus ex machina'd from Menendez's harm. Boku, who has consistently been dealing with a lack of information, is blackmailed into finding a sheep by someone who already knows the situation of the sheep. In both cases, the protagonist is in relatively the same spot as when they started, with only their discoveries to award them any merit. In Sherlock, he solves the case. In Bond, he gets the girl. In these two novels, they're left empty-handed. Well, they're given money as recompense, but neither character seems to interested in a monetary reward. That's where they differ from the stereotypical detectives: they're ordinary people who don't possess any special skills.

    Ultimately, these two protagonists are starkly similar: both are disillusioned figures on the fringes of society with their own guide for what's right and wrong, both find an old friend who's not the same as he once was, and both fail to find meaning in their quest. 

 James

Murakami and his conciousness

     It is evident that Haruki Murakami's "A wild sheep chase" draws inspiration from Raymond Chandler's "The long goodbye". From searching for a mysterious figure that leads the main character into the adventure, having ruffians and millionaires being playing a role in the story and the mysterious figure taking an alternative identity. However, what makes Murakami's work different from Chandler's is the use of surreal and odd elements. For example, Boku's girlfriend has magical ears capable of captivating people, and the main character is able to have conversations with Rat's ghost. These surreal elements and odd details seem to show subconscious thoughts Murakami has, as he has mentioned that he likes to free-write, letting his story flow from his consciousness. This type of writing captivated me as I was always on edge trying to figure out what he was trying to say/its meaning. One particular element that stood out was the whale penis. He talked about how he saw a whale penis in the aquarium and felt sad for it as it seemed like it was trapped there forever without being able to be free. This was very odd to me at first, but I believe that it was foreshadowing Rat's encounter with the Star pattern sheep that had him trapped in the isolated mountain home. In conclusion, I think his writing style really helped me immerse myself in the story as it made me try to think more like Murakami to figure out how the odd things fit in the story.

 

Zion

The Long Goodbye & A Wild Sheep Chase

I ended up enjoying both of these stories. Initially, I liked The Long Goodbye more than the wild Sheep Chase. I perceived The Long Goodbye to be more grounded in reality, which seemed to make a more cohesive, and Marlowe was an interesting flawed character who put up a bravado of being a tough guy detached of emotions, which is clearly the exact opposite. I had first thought the A Wild Sheep Chase’s Boku was a little of a bland character who seemed to be going with the flow. But once he reached the end of his wild sheep chase it seemed that Boku had some form of emotional awakening. Because it seemed as if everything he had experienced had finally caught up to him. His company closing down, losing his girlfriend, his close friend dying in order to stop a sheep bent on dominating the world. Which really started when he looked himself in the mirror. 

    I noticed that the scene in which Loring leaves Marlowe and the emotion he experienced was similar to what Boku had experienced when his girlfriend had just upped and left him without a word. Though in the case of Boku, it left him in a touch of deep melancholy. Murakami also seemed to have included a reference to his story Mirror. As the mirror in A Wild Sheep Chase played a role in the story, allowing Boku to gain some semblance of self but also to see that sheep man was not real. 

    Overall both were interesting reads because The Long Goodbye had elements of noir and a hard-boiled detective, which were genres I’ve heard about but never read. A Wild Sheep Chase was a story that seemed to parody noir and the hard-boiled genre mix with a supernatural aspect to it.

Michael A. Landestoy

Thoughts of Wild Sheep Chase

The one part of The Wild Sheep Chase was similar to the short excerpt that we read which was The Mirror. I felt like after looking at himself in the mirror, he was dissociated with himself up until he left the place. Boku would mention how it would look like him but it was not him but another person who looked like him. Boku went into lots of details of every movement and thought when he was in front of the mirror, I wonder what his thoughts were and why he felt that way. 

The ending was somber and now that Boku has lost everything and had to start over, it also reminded me of Terry Lennox when he created a new identity for himself. This might be a long stretch but the relationship between Boku and the Rat is similar to the relationship between Marlowe and Terry. I felt that Boku and the Rat can be true to themselves compared to any relationships they had with other people where they had a different front which is similar to Marlowe and Terry's. Technically the relationship between the characters is still there but it feels like they also ended in some way.

I am still confused as to what happened in the ending as well as the significance but it felt like it was about self weakness or reflection? Why did the secretary send him out when he knew all along. Why did the Rat not come out to the secretary? Was it because he was not pursuing him out of his own free will unlike Boku's? 

- Caroline Huynh

Hypotextuality and the Sheep Man

     While reading and discussing A Wild Sheep Chase in class we often spoke to the words as being Murakami's writing. What is so easily forgotten, and done so purposefully, is that these words are the work of two writers; one being Murakami and the other being Alfred Birnbaum who translated the novel for us. There are many moments in this novel where it is so easy to forget the influence that Birnbaum may have on what we are reading and how it is laid out, where we do not question that these are the words of Murakami himself. In this sense, the words of Murakami are so easily seen through the writing of Birnbaum. 

    Although we discussed areas where the translator's fingerprint is visible in the text, such as the title and the name "rat" replacing the Japanese original of "mouse", as well as moments that do not change that lead an English speaking reader down unfamiliar rabbit holes such as the black and white goats eating each other's letters. But there is one example that makes me wonder whose touch was most directly involved in the English translation: the speech pattern of the Sheep Man.

    In Daniel Chandler's article Semiotics for Beginners, he defined the term hypotextuality as "the relation between a text and a preceding 'hypotext' - a text or genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends (including parody, spoof, sequel, translation)." with the extra emphasis being on the translation side of things during my thought process. In the translation, Birnbaum removes the spacing from between practically every word spoken by the Sheep Man, including the spacing that would follow punctuation. This has a very interesting effect on how I perceived the Sheep Man. Dialogue along with cadence are so conducive to emotional portrayal in speech, and this lack of spacing removes these key aspects from the Sheep Man. On page 320, Birnbaum writes "Youwereplayingguitar," said the Sheep Man with Interest. "Welikemusictoo.Can'tplayanyinstrumentsthough." Not only is this a little off-putting to read (and to type), but it also removes a lot of the comfort and familiarity that can be found in words since they become so conjoined. It feels almost dystopic in a way, forcing the reader to live in the world of the Sheep Man.

    I highlight this writing style because with my knowledge of the Japanese language I am quite unsure how an effect similar to this could be created, so I am unsure who to give credit to, but it is a decision that I admire and enjoyed reading very much. Either way, I think it is important to thank both writers and keep both in mind when reading the words of the sheep man. Because ItmademespendmoretimewonderingaboutthesheepmanthanIthinkIwouldhaveotherwise. 

Bergen

Similarities and Differences in Chandler and Murakami

    After finishing both The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase, I feel like I can point out many similarities, as well as many differences. For me, one major difference between these novels is that The Long Goodbye did not leave me with many questions at the end, whereas A Wild Sheep Chase answered many of my original questions, but left me wondering what exactly happened. I believe that this has a lot to do with the supernatural elements of Murakami's story. Since Chandler's story is rooted completely in reality (or at least set in the real world), the crime, reason behind the murders, etc. all made logical sense to me when the truth about them is revealed at the end. With Murakami's story, you cannot use logic to understand the truth to the mystery that he sets up. Even after many questions that Boku had were answered by the Rat, the Boss's secretary, etc., there are still so many aspects of the story that remain unresolved. For example, I am still quite confused about the sheep with the star on its back and I feel like very little about it was actually revealed. There was enough information given about it to understand the brain cysts, eternally searching "sheepless" people, and other aspects of it that were relevant to the plot, but what was its grand plan after all? Also did it have something to do with Boku's girlfriend losing her powers or whatever was special about her? And who is the Sheep Man and why is everyone so normal about that fact that he walks around in a full-body sheep costume all day?

    In addition, on another note, the similarities between Terry Lennox and the Rat became quite clear to me at the end of The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase. They are both friends with the protagonist and needed a job done that only the protagonist could do. Also, they reunited with the protagonist at the end of the novel in a plot twist (Lennox is alive when he was expected to be dead, the Rat is dead when he was expected to be alive) and came to them in a different form (Lennox had surgery and came to Marlowe as another person; the Rat came to Boku both as a ghost and a possessed Sheep Man). Additionally, at the beginning of the story, they both go off to far away, secluded places (Otatoclan and Junitaki), and they are also generally considered "weak" men (based on their own words).

- Melody Sweeney

Chandler and Murakami's Detachment from Reality

     It was incredibly fascinating to read The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase simultaneously. Although I had read this Murakami novel in the past, I had never considered its relation to detective novels, but Raymond Chandler's influence on Murakami became increasingly clear as I read through these books. Both Chandler's character of Phillip Marlowe and Murakami's protagonist, Boku, have a noticeable detachment to the events and other characters surrounding them. This aspect of both characters seems to allow them to perform extremely time-consuming or stressful tasks, such as Marlowe's late night visits to the Wade household to deal with familial issues or Boku's treacherous journey up to and subsequent multi-week long isolation in the mountain home. It is also clear that Murakami either admired or was at least inspired by Marlowe's disinterest in receiving payment for these tedious and difficult jobs. While Marlowe never spends the money that Terry Lennox sends him or accepts any checks from his clients, Boku responds similarly by gifting his check to J after the Boss's secretary pays him. 

    Although the influence is clear, Murakami strays so far off the beaten path of the search-and-find detective novel genre through his mind-bending metaphysical story elements. In the same way that Marlowe will describe a beautiful blonde woman as being intoxicating and enticing, Boku will spend pages on the description of his girlfriend's ears and how every person in the restaurant becomes entranced by them and their "special powers". In the final chapters of A Wild Sheep Chase, entire known rules of reality are broken when The Rat finally arrives at the house and reveals that he died several weeks earlier and took the form of The Sheep Man whose reflection was starkly missing from the living room mirror. Because of the juxtaposition of these elements with the grounded familiar reality of The Long Goodbye, these twists hit even harder than they did for me when first reading Murakami. Although the similarities are many, the major genre differences between the novels were what made me enjoy both of them even more than I would have reading them separately. 

- May Painter