How to Write a (Translated) Haruki Murakami Novel-- 1Q84 notes 2, Chapters 4 to

[9meow]

     Dreamwidth's rich text set up is killing me; the original plan was to have all of my excerpts from the novel in one entry, but it seems like the post was getting too long for rich text to operate effectively. I was messing around with the read more options after posting due to the bulk of it, but adding those in after you've already put down what you want to say is close to impossible. From now on I'll be typing directly into the cut, and refreshing my knowledge on html-- haven't used it since my Tumblr days. It might just be that I don't know how to operate these things effectively, though, so maybe there's no point in blaming the site just yet. Had a few typos I kept forgetting to fix as well-- but it's okay! Just more for me to learn, and more for me to keep a closer eye on. UPDATE: Can't have centered text under a cut, which I was using for the previous post. Consistency is more important to me than streamlining, so no read mores for this series of posts.

     At this point, I may have less to say about the quotes themselves, as well as translated Murakami's writing style. Most of his quirks and stylistic pillars have already revealed themselves in the opening chapters, and I've been relatively thorough in documenting them. One idea I had was making these series of notes less personal and into an actual tutorial for other writers-- closer to the title of the posts. Something I'll have to work on once 1Q84 has been completely covered on here, though. For now I'll stick to the more casual format of the previous post, and chime in again in red whenever something comes to mind. 

My highlighter is as faded as my patience.
 

 

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Chapter 4, Tengo: "If that is what you want to do."

"'Got it,' Komatsu declared. 'No more nighttime calls.' But his promise had not sunk deep roots in his brain. One rainfall was all it took to wash them out." (pg. 51) Murakami's metaphors make a return, this time back to back-- he's relating time and memory (concepts) to nature, in this case the roots of a tree and rainfall. Asian literature utilizes nature metaphors considerably more than western literature does, which adds to the atmosphere of the novel as a whole instead of the atmosphere of a scene (which is done through descriptive detail).

"'I filled her in on the general stuff. You're twenty-nine or thirty, a bachelor, you teach math at a Yoyogi cram school. You're a big guy, but not a bad guy. You don't eat young girls. You live a simple lifestyle, you've got gentle eyes. And I like your writing a lot. That's about it.'" (pg. 53) We get a sense of Komatsu's values here: what he thinks are the important parts of an individual. This quote also adds depth to Tengo's character; at face value, he can be described exactly as Komatsu says. When the context of his childhood is added later into the novel, however, we readers come to see Tengo as a highly nuanced character. The key here is to make your characters complex and multi-faceted, but without a sense of urgency; this can be developed and eventually attained over the course of your story. Another key: not every character is aware of every fact, detail, and backstory about another character, or their level of depth. This is similar to reality. Characters with a closer relationship can have that closeness emphasized with the level of knowledge they have about the other. 

"Tengo stared at the receiver in his hand for a while, then set it down. He wanted to get to sleep right away if possible, and to have good dreams if possible, but he knew it wouldn't be easy after having been dragged out of bed and forced to participate in an unpleasant conversation. He could try drinking himself to sleep, but he wasn't in the mood for alcohol. He ended up drinking a glass of water, getting back in bed, turning on the light, and beginning to read a book. He hoped it would make him sleepy, but he didn't actually fall asleep until almost dawn." (pg. 53) Tengo's routine breaks because of circumstances mostly out of his control. This is a slice of reality bought into 1Q84 by Murakami. His characters operate like individuals; they have a way of thinking, plans, thoughts, and feelings, but at the end of the day these "possessions" shift with the world around them, and they must adjust their way of operating. 

"Her most attractive facial feature was her deep, striking eyes. Under the gaze of two glistening, pitch-black pupils, Tengo felt uncomfortable. She hardly blinked and seemed almost to not be breathing. Her hair was absolutely straight, as if someone had drawn each individual strand with a ruler, and the shape of her eyebrows matched the hair perfectly. As with many beautiful teenage girls, her expression lacked any trace of everyday life. It was also strangely unbalanced-- perhaps because there was a slight difference in the depth of her left and right eyes-- causing discomfort in the recipient of her gaze. You couldn't tell what she was thinking. In that sense, she was not the kind of beautiful girl who becomes a model or a pop star. Rather, she had something about her that aroused people and drew them towards her." (pg. 54) Long, fascinating description of Eri's beauty. Murakami tends to spend a great deal of time discussing the appearance of his characters, and these looks correlate close to perfectly with their personalities. Excellent example of his descriptive ability and thought process here-- he's able to give each character a unique, cohesive look though his story takes place in an extremely homogeneous country. Compare to other works in more diverse settings, which spare no more than a few lines to discuss a character's hair and eye color and leave it at that.

"Fuka-Eri said nothing, but from somewhere deep inside her neutral, beautiful eyes, she looked hard at Tengo. She seemed to be struggling to understand the words that Tengo has spoken." (pg. 63) Weaving the thread here for Eri's disability. 

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[9meow]

Never finished this, so I'm making it public.