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This really isn’t a novel to be rushed. This is a novel to be savoured and appreciated, and I think this quote here captures a large part of the book:

"She reads with great concentration. Her eyes rarely move from the pages of the book- a thick hardback. A bookstore wrapper hides the title from us. Judging from her intent expression, the book might contain challenging subject matter. Far from skimming, she seems to be biting off and chewing it one line at a time.”

The words and the language seem very simple, but there’s much meaning here. This girl is more interested in this book than her surroundings; it is more stimulating that the people around her. The title remains hidden; it’s a suggestion that just because we can see the outside it doesn’t necessarily mean we know what is on the inside. We can observe, and we can see, but we can never truly perceive something in its exact form. This a theme Murakami carries throughout the book.

For example, take the man who abuses the prostitute in the love hotel. He seems like an ordinary man, functional, capable of going to work and able to maintain a relationship. But hidden in the depths of his ordinariness is a secret darkness, a need to hurt people. But what is the need? We never truly know. Surveillance can only tell so much. We know he speaks of a need, but whether or not that is some malevolent desire or a choice he has to make because someone has some leverage over him, we will, again, never actually know.

Night-time Tokyo is captured through a camera lens; it’s forever gazing on the symbolic surface level of the character’s existences, through which Murakami slowly begins to reveal their inner workings. But he never comes to any conclusions. We can only glimpse and peer in. As the hours approach ever closer to dawn, we see a little bit more.

"Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”

“Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.”

We can look at a city at night, and we can see the intertwining threads of existence, but we will never see existence in its full form. So the book takes on an almost movie like feel, akin to something by Quentin Tarantino. Sure, we don’t have the dramatic bursts of action and the spraying blood LOL but what we do have is conversation. Long drawn out dialogue that reveals much about the characters and how they perceive the world and each other. And it’s intense at times, and it really pulls you into to the story. The exchanges are well written and feel natural, as they’ve not been forced on the page.

I did really enjoy this book, but somehow I feel that Murakami can do better. For all the interesting elements here, I know he was purposely holding back for effect. I really do need to read some more of his books, perhaps next time one that has a little more plot.

-Sean

 

Good ol' Murakami.
Every time I read him, I feel my reasons for choosing a book as company over a real person, legitimized again.
What is reading, but, a singular form of one-sided communication? An author sends us an encoded message.. crafted with precision and a deep empathy arising out of their understanding of the world and humanity at large. And we, in turn, decode it and instantly feel a pull on the invisible umbilical cord linking us to this person we have never met and, possibly, will never meet.

 

Murakami makes me feel exactly this way. I will never meet him or get to make his acquaintance. But then, don't I know him already?

Few other writers speak to me the way he does. Every time I open a book by him, I feel at home. I let the surrealistic worlds of his creation engulf me in a warm embrace and sweep me away into an unknown abyss of turbulent feelings.

I know I can latch onto his hand and take a walk inside the darkest recesses of my own mind, that I wasn't even aware existed. I know I can let him become my guide, my own personal magician with a wide range of tricks up his sleeve. I know I can nurture an unshakeable faith in the illusions he begets. Because as always, he will unveil the grand truth of the matter in the end and offer enlightenment of a unique kind.

After Dark reinforces this unadulterated, pristine devotion that I feel for this man. Through the bizarre events that a set of individuals go through all in one night, Murakami explores the seedy underbelly of a city and, perhaps, our existence. Love hotel managers, Chinese prostitutes and gangsters, a young college going girl struggling with a vague identity crisis, her beautiful, older sister who lies in a state of perpetual somnolence but doesn't die, an optimistic, young man who plays the trombone in a band, an ordinary office worker who turns violent under the helpful cover of the night - these are the wonderfully strange people he designates as our guides to his kaleidoscopic landscapes.
Like the master of imagery that he is, he creates one seductively beautiful vignette after another and pastes them together into a mesmerizing collage of the collective human consciousness.

He fishes out the soul of a city so bereft of life and substantial movement after the sun has set. He unleashes all the inglorious impulses and unholy emotions that bob up to the surface of our consciousness when the dazzling light of the day is no longer there to help keep them in check and lets us witness how his characters grapple with them. He analyzes and dissects our darkest nocturnal human tendencies with astounding sensitivity. He goes deeper yet and tries to reveal the paradox of dualism in any individual - the stark differences between our daytime selves and darker, nighttime selves and how effortlessly both can co-exist in harmony but are separated by an unbridgeable rift."

-Samadrita

There is something about Murakami that ignites connections in my brain that I don't know what to do with. Such as the scene with the man on a television screen staring into a real room with a girl lying on the bed. He is said to be looking in from the "other side". Murakami uses this same phrase when a main character is looking into a mirror. When she gazes at herself in the mirror she is said to be looking in from the "other side". There are several scenes which beg for some kind of interpretation because they connect in some kind of way. So I tried my best to link two major ideas that struck me at first.

This book seemed to me to occupy itself with the phenomena of observance. His comparisons of the narrative lens to an actual camera lens is obvious. His prose even reflects that of a screenplay. Most chapters start with a sentence fragment of the location (like a screenplay Int. Denny's or what have you). The book is heavy on the dialogue and it's in the present tense. Obviously the idea of a screenplay informing the way we see a movie is being drawn into this story.

Another major idea stemmed from an argument of the effects of such observance upon the subject being observed, "eye's mark the shape of the city". I felt the usage of the first-person plural, (i.e. "we see this... now we move into this place") was an argument for how the book itself smashes a world into a single view. As if there are these multiple people trying to look into this world, but we are restricted to the author's single view of the world. So he uses we to refer to our collected view into this world.

As you can see, these were all very abstract and loose interpretations. I tried my best to develop it. I went to town on the first 50 pages with a pen, but slowly the book slipped away from the analytical side of my brain. I somewhat accepted that I wasn't going to understand every last supernatural detail or musing in this book. Instead, I let the mood and feelings evoked within guide me through it.

In interviews, Murakami often discusses his writing style. He calls it "dreaming". He will wake up at early hours of the morning to "dream" into the page, then he goes to a strictly regimented routine of running and other daily chores. He sees this repetition and "dreaming" as a way to mine into the inner recesses of the subconscious.

There is something beautiful about this in my opinion. This way in which Murakami delves into this type of writing always stimulates emotion from within me. It is like a dream where you wake up and can't really describe anything that has happened to yourself, yet you are undeniably left with a deep, pensive attitude superseding all of the quotidian aspects of the morning.

I like that Murakami does that to me.

I like that he connects two completely unrelated things that I can never make much sense out of."

-Stephen

 

reviews from goodreads.com