A Matter of Life and Death: ‘Norwegian Wood’ by Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood is the first book by Haruki Murakami that I’ve read, and I think I’m in love, which, if we take the message of the book itself, is not necessarily a good thing.
I hear from friends that Norwegian is not typical Murakami because of its realism — a story about a young man living on his own in Toyko, meandering through city streets and countrysides just as he does through friendships and love affairs. But Murakami injects magic with his fantastic imagery, and with characters that live beyond his pages. In fact, I really wasn’t expecting it to feel so real. How can one book shift in a matter of paragraphs from erotic to heart wrenching? Beware those of you who plan to read it on crowded subway trains.
The book is primarily a recollection, inspired by our main character, Toru Watanabe, hearing the Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’ over the speakers of an airplane. Toru practically faints in nostalgic grief, and the rest of the book explains the song’s meaning. Music provides a glimmer of hope in a story that grows more serious moment by moment. Toru is haunted by death, loneliness, and wanderlust, and yet Murakami clearly does not despise his characters, nor inflict pointless suffering upon them. Quite the contrary, Toru and his friends are portrayed with respect and compassion, and nonetheless each endures emotional catastrophes. Life, Murakami knows, is hard, and it’s not anyone’s fault.
Murakami reveals his first insight very early on: “In the midst of life, everything revolved around death” (p. 25). Death and life are intertwined. Those of us who have lost a loved one, or spent a long night worrying, or clung to our beloved in darkness certainly cannot disagree.
But there’s a second part of the lesson: no matter how much we learn about death, it’s still sad. Simple, profound, and scary. Not only is death inescapable, but sorrow is too. Murakami builds a fragile world full of endearing idiosyncrasies, balances life and death with love and confusion, and mourns the losses of its characters. We do too.
I will miss Murakami’s descriptions of Tokyo, and I will miss Toru and his friends. Maybe I’ll find some of them in the author’s other works. Maybe I’ll find them within myself, as I try to become an adult, like Toru did. It won’t be easy, of course, but there will be subtle magic at every turn. And Beatles songs. Not so bad, eh?
