"Cause if you take every single person who lacks imagination seriously, there's no end to it," says Oshima, a genderless character from Haruki Murakami's acclaimed new novel, "Kafka on the Shore."
Go to a local bookstore, browse the shelves of new fiction and see if Oshima's observation isn't correct. What that single person is bound to discover is this: it's absolutely the truth.
The novel has become somewhat more rare as an interesting form of art with the constant increase in the importance and demand for motion pictures. Most important contemporary novels are converted into movies so that they might reach a larger audience - and make more money.
It's not surprising that these facts have turned best-sellers lists into steaming piles of "The DaVinci Code" and "Harry Potter." Those who revel in these hot heaps will be excited to hear that the fourth "Harry Potter" movie is due out later this year and "The DaVinci Code" starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard is due out in May of 2006.
Murakami is obsessed with this Americanism, and as such, his story sounds remarkably un-Japanese even though the entire novel takes place there. The man has always been obsessed with American culture and name brands - not Bret-Easton-Ellis-obsessed - but he obviously likes to spend time at the mall.
"It sounds a little like a fairy tale. But it's no fairy tale, believe me. No matter what sort of spin you put on it," a boy named Crow says. Crow is the story's inner voice, telling us the most secret feelings of its main character.
Murakami's story takes place in a small Japanese town called Takamatsu, where Kafka Tamura, a 15-year-old boy, has run away from home to escape from his father, a famous artist. He seeks refuge in a private library, where he meets Oshima and Miss Saeki, a woman that he believes to be his mother.
Miss Saeki has written a song called "Kafka on the Shore," with lyrics so obtuse they would make Conor Oberst bitter with envy.
"Kafka sits in a chair by the shore/ Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world, it seems/ When your heart is closed, the shadow of the unmoving Sphinx/ Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams."
On the other side of the story is an old man named Nakata. This is a man who is unable to read or write due to a mysterious childhood accident, but has the capacity to communicate with cats. When he meets "the infamous cat-killer Johnnie Walker," his life is sent on a ridiculous path that is beyond his own control or understanding. This story intertwines with the other, always leaning closer to convergence.
"Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason - or at least they appeal to certain types of people." Schubert is the example that Murakami uses, but Schubert is a novice at imperfection compared to Murakami. The writer's style is so ridiculously simplistic, it could have been written by Kevin Smith. One wouldn't really expect for a 15-year-old runaway, an old retarded man and a bunch of cats to speak like Shakespeare anyhow.
The main problem is that Murakami feels the need to hold the readers' hands and walk them through his book as if they were buffoons. It's rather insulting that Murakami has so little faith in the intelligence of his readers. This lack of faith might be justified if you take into account the fact that he is trying to market this novel to an American public. However, if he ventures to spend a little more time in this country (he spent a short time as a professor at Tufts University and Princeton in the early 1990s) he would understand that the America for whom he seems to be writing doesn't read.
Haruki Murakami has decided to pay some kind of tribute to his favorite authors in "Kafka on the Shore." These artists most notably include Nastume Soseki and of course, Franz Kafka, but he does not refrain from putting the passages that relay the deepness of his novel in bold. In fact he doesn't even have any shame in throwing the phrase "This is profound," into any number of paragraphs or speeches, something that neither of his heroes ever did.
Haruki Murakami might be one of the premier authors of his generation - drawing comparisons to the likes of Raymond Carver and Philip K. Dick with the way he weaves a tale that begins the reader in one spot and puts them someplace that they never expected to go. In this way "Kafka on the Shore" is effective. Structurally though, Murakami lacks something that would truly put him in the company of the greatest of 20th century authors.
