Customer Reviews

Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words

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First of all, don't buy this book purely for biographical purposes, hoping to get some hidden insight on Murakami's life. It is clear that Murakami values his privacy intensely and Rubin goes to great lengths to respect that. Also, what information is given about Murakami will pretty much conform with what you probably could've assumed about him. This book, more than anything else, is a chronological literary criticism of Murakami's works up through "after the quake." Rubin does a good job of analyzing many of the running motifs and themes that occur in Murakami's books (wells, corridors, birds, and elephants, to name a few). It is clear that Rubin has a hard time being a Murakami fan and a Murakami scholar at the same time, but he seems to do a good job remaining impartial (although it is clear which books are his favorites and which are not!)

My first experience with Murakami was when I read "A Wild Sheep Chase" a year and a half ago, and before I knew it I had read every major novel and short story he'd written, finishing Pinball 1973 just last week. I read the books in an order that pretty much had nothing to do with the order they were written (beware that the order that the English translations came out in is often quite different than the original order). As a result, reading the details Rubin gives behind each of the books and about the growth that Murakami experienced along the way were among the highlights of the book for me and helped to solidify the ties that hold his books together. Murakami fascinates me because he is still growing rapidly as a writer and a person and the growing pains as well as the links to his past work are found in each work if you know what to look for.

Rubin spends the most time in this book discussing "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," which for me was an incredibly thrilling and frustrating book at the same time. Murakami had so many excellent storylines and so many running motifs, but many seemed to frazzle and die out by the end. Some call this piece Murakami's masterpiece, but I have a feeling that when all is said and done, this will be seen as a transitional piece: the first work where Murakami fully takes on the responsibility he feels towards the Japanese people. Murakami tackled so many issues with such brilliance (the Nomonhan Incident in particular) that I look forward to seeing where this new focus takes Murakami in the future. Some of his more recent work ("Sputnik Sweetheart" comes to mind) seem more of a step backwards than real progress, but there is no way Wind-Up Bird is a mere aberration.

Perhaps more so than any other writer, we as readers have the interesting opportunity to watch Murakami grow and experiment before our very eyes. If you haven't already, definitely try to get your hands on some of the earlier novels and short stories Rubin mentions ("Hear the Wind Sing" in particular) to get an even better grasp of where Murakami has started from.

If you are a serious fan of Murakami and want a better understanding of the thinking behind his works and a bit of an analysis of the works themselves (remember that as an individualist, Murakami believes his books have no one, strict interpretation!), "Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words" is a must-have companion to Murakami's works. Reliving Murakami's works through Rubin's analyses is a joy.

This book is about 50% Rubin's analysis of Murakami's work, about 30% biographical, about 10% about the translation work and differences between Japanese and English, and about 10% "interview style" where we get a few inside details on The Man Himself. This much is true: Anyone expecting a lot of information about The Man Himself should be a little disappointed. The book bills itself as granting more info than it does. I suspect this is out of Rubin's own deferrence to Murakami's privacy. He treads delicately on the info of the author's life in the biographical sections and when we do get a smattering of Murakami's own words about himself (and it's rare), it feels like nuggets culled from stray emails rather than from a sustained closeness of the translator to his author-friend. That's a shame, but it doesn't mar the book, which is a real resource for English readers without a real roadmap of his lesser works. Knowing which stories I need to seek out is so much easier, and understanding the significance of Murakami's first two novels is much better illuminated than before-- given their basic unavailability in print in English.

For me, Rubin's translations are my favorites. I simply have to disagree with the reader from the dolphin hotel. The touch that Rubin gives to his translations is very delicate and appreciated. I too have had a chance to peruse Binrbaum's NW translation, and although I can't find it directly lacking in any way, I simply prefer the Rubin version.

I really wish Rubin had gone a lot further into understanding what it takes to translate Murakami. This is the area in which he has very unique knowledge compared to the rest of us and he only rarely tells us much about it. Sure, there is a subtext in this book about what it is like to translate certain things, but it was not enough.

I rec this book highly to any Murakami fan, especially those that liked HBW&TEOTW and TWUBC --- Rubin dwells on these books plenty (in addition to NW, which sort of goes without saying ... if not for re-translating NW, Rubin would not have the credibility to get this book into print). This volume may have its flaws, but I think a career summary of HM comes at the right time, and Rubin is a good man for the job.

Jay Rubin is the English translator for such Murakami releases as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood and after the quake. In this book, he brings some interesting insight from Murakami into the novels that have captured such a level of interest in the US. While most US Murakami fans probably only first learned of this author in picking up a copy of A Wild Sheep Chase (for me, it was finding "TV People" in the fantastic anthology Monkey Brain Sushi), Rubin shows us how Murakami has developed a much more thorough career in Japan and has put out not only an impressive number of translations of classics from the English (which was the way he first received any notoriety in the US) but travel writing and even has a website where fans can actually get responses from H.M. himself.

By using a nice array of tidbits from interviews and insight from Murakami himself, Rubin provides a wonderful perspective of Murakami's simple and artistic pursuits in his writing. How Murakami uses inspiration from detective novels to provide novels that have trhe rhythm and drive of a mystery, but the mysteries themselves become unsolveable ones - the influence of Murakami's own disillusionment with the protests of his youth - the influences of jazz and other popular music on Murakami's writing - how Murakami has tried to tackle different genre as his career continued. This, as well as a small treatise on the Boku-narrative Murakami uses in Japanese, one that is far more informal than the usual first-person narratives of Japanese literature (and also a good explanation for the central mystery of my attraction for Murakami's novels, that the narrators always seemed to be the same person, and in fact are, to an extent), makes this book well worth purchasing and exploring if you have any interest in Murakami's writing.

Though it is obvious that Rubin wants to keep the tone of the book informational and biographical in broad strokes rather than critical, it seems that he cannot resist the occasional foray into psychological criticism, which are typically rather empty in nature and don't carry much weight. Also, Rubin's assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of Murakami's later works sound somewhat snooty and seem off the mark.

As an editor and compiler, Rubin puts together a fascinating collection of information of Murakami's work and perspectives from the author himself that don't feel too defensive against analysis (though it would seem that Murakami himself is), and there is an interesting appendix on translation from Japanese, but as an author in this book, Rubin typically falls short of the mark. Murakami, no doubt, was intended to shine brightly in this book, but sometimes he does so more as a competent writer holding power over his admirer.

I was a Japanese language and Lit student at the University of Washington back when Dr. Rubin started as a Japanese professor and so reading this book brings back a lot of memories for me personally. While Dr. Rubin says he first started reading Murakami's work in Japanese in 1989 (and then teaching it to his students, like me)on pgs 284 and 285. However, I still have the original translation text from his advanced Japanese language class in the Fall of 1987 at the UW.

It was Murakami's "The Windup Bird Chronicles" and I remember it vividly because I was terrified in that class by the literary text, after only translating Japanese language textbook passages before then. Dr. Rubin was witty, opinionated about Japanese language and translation, and obviously smitten with Murakami's words. All of which escaped me at the time because of my intimidated state, and finally decades later...I get it.

If anything, I went on to be a technical Japanese translator and lived in Japan for 2 years after I graduated. I can credit any translation success directly to Dr. Rubin and those fateful days dissecting Murakami's work with tiny English notes in the spaces between the kanji.

Today I read Murakami's books, and this book by Dr Rubin, with alot of appreciation and respect for the very difficult--and innate--talent both these men have for writing and translation. Translation is such a taskmaster in order to create a beautiful final version that is true to the original and that communicates across very diverse language the writer's original thought.

When it's well done, it's like poetry or some other interpretive art, such as jazz (which is how Dr. Rubin describes interpreting Murakami through translation). So thank you Dr. Jay Rubin for your insight and life's work in this very unique world of Murakami Haruki.

I'm a poor graduate student, so I usually wait for a book to come out in paperback before I purchase it. With this book I made an Exception. I started reading Haruki Murakami only little over a year ago, but I have read all of his books thathave been released in the United States. _Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words_ is written by Jay Rubin who translated Haruki Murakami's massive novel The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and other works by Murakami. Rubin gives the reader a closer look at the man and the writer Haruki Murakami. The reader learns a bit about Murakami's background, not too much, but the reader sees where Murakami got some of his ideas. The readers learns a little about Murakami back in the 70s when he and his ran his Jazz club "Peter Cat," and how Murakami wrote his first two novels Kaze no uta o kike and 1973-nen pinball at thekitchen table after a long day of chopping onions among other things. Rubin does a fine job delving, but not too deeply into Murakami's novels and short stories, several of which have not been translated into English yet. We also learn a bit of how Murakami lived at Princeton and in Cambridge, and also of his meeings with American writers. A good book for all Murakami fans.

Having been Murakami's translator for many of his best novels and stories, Jay Rubin has written a solid introduction to Murakami's work in general. There are many great insights in this book, especially dealing with the aspect of translating Murakami's Japanese itself. The most helpful of these was the differentiation of the two versions of Japanese first-person narration - boku and watashi - and problems for this kind of narration to translate properly into English. Since most Japanese literature (according to Rubin) features these first-person narration techniques and not a third-person one (a 'default' narration of western literature), Murakami's narration could seem very interior. This insight helped me understand why Murakami seemed to heavily favor such a narrative technique (which I tended to view as a monotonous trait)- it's a cultural difference, rather than a writerly one.

The biographical information of Murakami is sketchy at best, though. Much of it is regurgitated pastiche of already existent info. As I was looking forward to find out about the man who wrote about such fantastic things, I was disappointed to find out the psychological probing of any kind was absent.

But get this book if you don't know much about Murakami or his work - it's an excellent introduction.

Rubin has translated much of HM's work and has met, in this highly readable book, Murakami's American readership's desire for commentary and biographical information. Rubin takes us through the when, what, and how of the stories and novels, illuminating the connections between them and HM's own opinions of them as well as many other critics' reviews and comments. This book is almost like having another Murakami work on hand--we hear interviews, get plot summaries and interpretations, and generally feel ourselves in Murakami's presence throughout. If you read HM in Japanese, you should also check out Rubin's "Making Sense of Japanese," which is similarly readable, tongue-in-cheek and sensible, useful and informative. Thanks, Rubin, for expanding our understanding of this modern master and his language and culture!

If you're like me, you're a huge fan of Haruki Murakami, but don't know much about him other than that he's one of Japan's most famous contemporary authors. This book definitely bridges the gap. It's mostly a literary criticism of his novels and short stories, but also includes as much biographical information as the author could find. I personally learned a lot about the underlying themes of Murakami's novels, and was also gratified that someone else thought "Dance, Dance, Dance" wasn't as good as his others. The book makes it clear how Murakami has changed over time and how the characters and events in his novels are inspired by his own life.

Rubin's books has too much critique of each and every one of Murakami's pieces, and not enough about the man himself, which is what I was mislead to believe the book was about. The critique, as well, is misguided: Rubin spends way too much time with his own dissections of short stories and early writings unknown to American readers, with small notes on Murakami's life peppered inbetween (ie "Murakami was in Princeton at this time, Murakami was in Tokyo at this time"). I don't need Rubin's critique...Murakami's post-modern writings contain too vast a world of personal meanings for each reader's private analysis that a serious fan should not waste time with any one other person's interpretations. Seeing how unfortunately the book was 80% Rubin's analysis of Murakami's works, I felt it personally unforgivable that he spends a fleeting few pages on the most important book of all to me- one that I have read 15 times and counting (3 in Japanese)- Dance, Dance, Dance. I learned a few interesting facts- ie Derek Heartfield from "Hear The Wind Sing" is ficticious, and that it has been a personal decision from Murakami that his works not be made into films, some other interesting anecdotes. Also, there are a couple of paragraphs of interest, though not enough, about Alfred Birnbaum, who I consider to be a superior translator (I have had Birnbaum's translation of Norwegian Wood for over a decade, way before Rubin's translation. I compared Rubin's and Birnbaum's to the original, and find Birnbaum's to be far superior). Rubin quickly dismisses Birnbaum's translations as "too jazzed up." I can only hope that Birnbaum himself comes out with a book on Murakami- like his translations, it would be guaranteed to be better than anything of Rubin's.