Customer Reviews

Almost Transparent Blue

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It's 1976, and a group of Japanese teenagers living near an American airforce base indulge their appetites for drugs, alcohol and bi-curious group sex. Like most sensual quests for liberation and vision, these only lead to the annihilation of consciousness and a confusing desire to escape back into bourgeois life. Getting high is one thing. Connecting with reality is something else. In 126 pages of orgiastic indulgence, drug-induced catatonia and suicide attempts, there are three moments of transcendence in which Murakami's case is made: the memory of a beautiful piece of music; the experience of almost being killed by an aircraft taking off; and the narrator's climactic desire to communicate a personal vision of the world, himself and their possible unity. Murakami's call for connection and creativity in the face of mortality and post-war nihilism is a familiar one in twentieth-century literature, but the way he goes about it is refreshing. Firmly realist in his approach, Murakami stays on the surface. Sticking with the physical details he refuses to burrow into the minds of most of these youths where he might have interpreted or psychoanalyzed their inner lives for us. Ironically, this works. Their own halting attempts at self-expression are so much more poignant, and so much more credible for being vague and incomplete. If the bulk of this narrative strikes you as tedious, pointless, repetitive and occasionally appalling, then Murakami has succeeded in capturing the reality of a life devoted to escapism. It's only in such a context that the moments of incipient self-awareness and transcendence can have such a powerful resonance for these characters, and for the reader.

This book won the Akutagawa Award, changed modern Japanese literature, and is a favorite of Japanese college students (...or so I hear). This book makes Requiem for a Dream look like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Seriously some of the descriptions get pretty intense, but nonetheless retain some sort of elegance. Murakami puts graphic scenes of sex and drug use next to scenes of quiet reflection (watching rain, childhood memories) to create a sense of youthful hopelessness. However, taken in the proper context, this book will leave you uplifted rather than depressed. One of my favorites.

When Almost Transparent Blue came out in the late seventies, it was an important piece of literature and an important milestone in Japanese fiction. Almost Transparent Blue is not simply about drugs and sex; in fact the chilling but fascinating aspect of Murakami's writing style is how remarkably detached his protagonist is from the actions that he and the people around him are doing. This is a significant change from Coin Locker Babies, a book with similar themes, but much more proactive and passionate characters. This rift between what is real and surreal becomes more in focus as the story continues, and the book reaches its climax when the protagonist, in a self-induced semi-hallucinogenic state, realizes that the reality that exists in the surreal world (primary, the Bird's world) is much more real and urgent than the drugs and sex in the "real" world around him.

While this book is still relevant today, as there is still an unnamable but nevertheless constant pressure on the youth of Japan (and around the world), the context it exists in has changed quite a bit. Ryu's world is not quite the world of today, and ATB is beginning to show its age. Nevertheless, Almost Transparent Blue is a very enjoyable book, and by the end it becomes clear that it is a much deeper and mature book than first meets the eye.

Somebody told me I should read a book by Haruki Murakami...At the book store all of his works looked long and menacing...Then I saw Almost Transparent Blue...It sounded interesting, noticed it won an award, and it was rather short, so not much of a commitment if I didn't like his writing after all. So I read it, and I was expecting something in the realm of hardboiled fiction as his works were described to me. It wasn't until after I read the book that I discovered it was written by Ryu Murakami and not Haruki...DUH

The scope of the novel seems to cover a drug/alcohol/sex binge over the course of a few days. There are lots of characters to keep track of and I had a bit of difficulty following which character was speaking from time to time. The plot drags in some spaces as the story jumps from orgy to shooting up and back again.
The characters are interesting but not very well developed. The author does take a bit of an interesting side look at how this lifestyle affects the relationships between several of the characters, but with the lack of much backstory on any of the characters it isn't easy to sympathize with them.
I enjoyed Almost Transparent Blue mostly due to Murakami's writing style, and use of very vivid imagery.
All in all I found the story interesting and I would recommend to anyone who doesn't mind gratuitous sex, drug use and the occasional rock and roll reference.
Read it and judge for yourself. If you like it you might want to read his much longer and more in depth second effort Coin Locker Babies.

Porn-like with bloody needles and every forty pages or so a pause for an "epiphany". Not the "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" epiphanies, which intimated the real thing as well as words can be expectd to, but the feeling of drug hazes, a chance to rest from the intensity of the main story and perhaps make it all seem of socially redeeming value. But does transcendence have socially redeeming value any more than drug and sex escapisms do? May depend on what you make of silver negligees. Almost no one here seems to have a job except for the cops and the serviceman but the former might be better occupied with real criminals and the latter are off-duty. It may be that only the nurses, as always, do necessary work. The character Ryu and his friends seem also in need of psychologists but there is no context in the book of how the characters became this way or of how they may find help before self-destructing.

Forceful writing, for sure. Seemed somewhat choppy but that may have helped move it along quickly.

"Almost Transparent Blue" is not at the level of Burroughs either in style or at all for the issues raised. It's probably asking way too much to expect that. Burroughs "Naked Lunch" and his trilogy "The Cities of the Red Night", "The Place of Dead Roads" and "The Western Lands" have plenty of sex and drugs, if that is what you are after, but with broad contexts and much deeper explorations of how it connects to all of us. No one may have understood and expressed the role of addictions in social control the way Burroughs did. But it seems unfair to compare Murakami with Burroughs based on just this first and short novel of Murakami, so you may want to read later and longer works (e.g. "Coin Locker Babies" and "In the Miso Soup")

It's hard to tell when reading "Almost Transparent Blue" whether one should feel sad or manipulated. I wasn't comfortable with Ryu the character or Ryu the author. Maybe comfort isn't the point. Maybe Murakami is effectively raising social concerns and without glossing over the creepiness of what can happen.

For a less shocking, probably more compassionate and more fully developed presentation of youths lost amidst drugs and sex that don't go off the deep end as Murakami (and Burroughs) may seem to do, I suggest Frank Daniels "futureproof", which still lingers with me constructively a year after I read it.

P.S. Murkami directed a 1980 Japanese movie derived from this novel but apparently tamer. It was nominated for a best sound award by the Japanese Academy. I'll leave it to our imaginations what the well-done sounds were.

John Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat." Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" William S. Burroughs's "Junky." The semi-autobiographical novel of disaffected youth and their abusive love-affairs with drink, drugs and sex is certainly not without literary precedence. Over the years, it has become a genre, one which shocks people with its honestly, and lures with its romanticism of the life of a fringe wastrel, who looks no further than the next drink or fix, living life in pursuit of pleasure.

Joining their ranks is "Almost Transparent Blue," the debut novel by Japanese virtuoso Ryu Murakami. This first novel, written while still in collage, won the prestigious Akutagawa award and skyrocketed Murakami to fame and financial independence. Telling the semi-connected tales of young junkies Ryu, Kazuo, Yoshiyama, Moko, Reiko, and Kei, the book is a decent into the underbelly of 1970's Japan, fresh with Jimmy Hendrix music, exotic black men from the local military base, and the numbness of emotion that comes from living in a drug-haze.

Like his predecessors, Murakami has detailed the life of the Bohemian as an attractive and repulsive existence. Attractive, due to the seductiveness of a life lived for base pleasure, animalistic sex and a constant supply of drugs. Repulsive, in the vomit and blood and pain that of necessity accompanies such a lifestyle. You wonder which characters will escape, which ones will die, and how much of this did Murakami experience first hand. He never makes it quite clear, naming the lead character "Ryu" after himself, and leaving the reality of the elusive "Lily" up in the air with the last paragraph.

Very much a product of its time, both the music and the stereotypical "otherness" of the black people are striking time stamps. Unfortunately, the translation is dated too. With Japanese literature, you can always tell how old a translation is by how the translate tofu. Here, it is called "bean curd," since tofu had not entered the standard English language yet. Also, some strange choices were made by the translator, such as changing Kei's Osaka dialect into an American Southern accent.

However, flaws aside, "Almost Transparent Blue" is a powerful milestone in Japanese literature, and a good book as well. A short, quick read, it will linger long after the last page is read.

In all honesty, I stumbles uon Ryu Murakami's work by accident. The cover of Coin Locker Babies looked cool, so I read it. Ever since, I've been in love with Murakami's work. This novel is no exception. He has this gift of being able to describe a setting in so few words, yet he invokes so much emotion and provides the reader with a clear visual. I recommend this book to anyone that is a fan of incredible writing.

This book reminded me of Brett-Easton Ellis's book Less Then Zero. A man will tell you of his lost years as a young man. His first person narritive is carefully paced and well thoughtout you almost think that you stumbled on somebodys private diary and you are sneaking a peek. This makes it all the better to read, like you are privy to some private confession that on one should hear. You strangely feel no sympathy for him and his friends mistakes, but you are very curious about them and what becomes of them. The chacters are well written alomst like they could be people that you might have met in your life. All I have to say is if you like first person narritives like I do read this book

What happens when forms of escapism become one's whole exisitance. Takes one into the insipid world of a Japanese drug addict the group he flocks with, and the depraved world he lives in. Shows modern Japan the escapism pervading much of its culture today. The main character becomes so lost it takes a symbol of nature to see how hopeless ever being found is and the unnaturalness of his life. Drugs are boring but hard to escape which is why there are so many avid salesmen selling their foray into quicksand. What they can't return to is the natural world. A trip.

I found this story to be very sad but a great story about despair and the quest to find meaning in one's life. I'm not sure that the characters in the story ever find stability, but they do glimpse at authenticity at moments. The story is a bit disturbing by its sense of hopelessness and consistent passivity, but then most good existentialist (nihilistic?) tales are like that. I recommend this book because of the author's great ability to show us the inner emotions (or lack thereof) of his characters. It is a fast read (I read it in a night), but readers will most likely reread the ending a couple times and still won't be sure of it.