Murakami’s main characters in Norwegian Wood were all of university age and this naturally placed growing up among the book’s main themes. A consistent idea this book returns to is that for most young people growing up means a painful realization that our actions impact those closest to us far more than they impact ourselves. It’s an interesting lesson to juxtapose alongside the new freedom that many experience when they reach these first years of adulthood – at the exact moment we leave home and find ourselves slowly taking more responsibility for each of our basic needs, we also become more aware of a certain responsibility to consider how our decisions affect others.
I liked how Murakami brought this lesson along in the book. First, he placed the main protagonist alongside a series of characters who remain fixed at various points along this progression. As the story progressed, the protagonist’s feelings toward these characters changed in ways reflective of how this lesson was sinking in and shaping his perspective. A good example is an older peer the protagonist looked up to at the start of the novel. This older peer gradually showed himself incapable and - more importantly - disinterested in suffering the pain of growing up, instead choosing to live by a boyish ideal of doing things only for himself. As the protagonist drifts away from this character, we recognize how it represents a step toward taking responsibility for grown-up considerations like considering the impact of our actions on others, remaining strong for those in need, and resisting the urge to feel sorry for ourselves.
Life isn’t so simple that everyone can seek a personalized version of justice or happiness. As Murakami noted, this approach would only result in chaos. People instead must challenge themselves to think beyond the self and consider how others feel. The worst result for any one person is to become indifferent to how others perceive or understand them. Therefore, it’s vital to grow up into the sort of person who can understand others and use empathy as a way to bring others together in pursuit of shared ideals and common goals.
Footnotes / endnote
0. BRUCE!!!
Can TOA use the words ‘growing up’ without thinking about this song?
No.
Showing posts with label books - norwegian wood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books - norwegian wood. Show all posts
Monday, August 26, 2019
Monday, August 19, 2019
rereading review - norwegian wood (how to lose)
One consistent theme of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood was about how to live well in the face of life’s eternal challenges. What is the best way forward when life taps us on the shoulder and reminds us of the ever-present threat of loss, grief, or regret?
A promising approach grows out of the reminder that people who pass up opportunities for happiness will regret it for the rest of their lives. It’s a foundation for thinking about general guidelines for the good life – if passing up happiness means regret, we should try to help ourselves (and others) find happiness. It also presents an insight into those leading misguided lives – people who reinforce strength, energy, or resolve despite failing to make themselves or others happier must reevaluate their chosen path in life.
Of course, this conclusion runs the risk of oversimplifying the complexity of loss. A loss at the end of a long struggle is sometimes like a reprieve, especially if this entailed a daily and consuming effort for an indefinite period of time, but this reprieve hardly represents an invitation to seek new opportunities for those drained and grieving after the struggle. A sudden loss can work in much the same way if survivors are left feeling robbed of what was anticipated or expected, especially regarding upcoming life stages that many others happily experience without them. Again, the grief after such a loss is hardly fertile ground for sowing new seeds and establishing new foundations.
One of the lessons I liked from this book was that people who use themselves in unnatural forms become depleted. It applies to the above, I think, because moving forward too quickly after a loss is a good example of an unnatural step. The grieving and suffering should find ways to recover their strength and renew their energy so that they can open their hearts in the process of growing beyond their hurt and once more seek new opportunities for happiness.
A promising approach grows out of the reminder that people who pass up opportunities for happiness will regret it for the rest of their lives. It’s a foundation for thinking about general guidelines for the good life – if passing up happiness means regret, we should try to help ourselves (and others) find happiness. It also presents an insight into those leading misguided lives – people who reinforce strength, energy, or resolve despite failing to make themselves or others happier must reevaluate their chosen path in life.
Of course, this conclusion runs the risk of oversimplifying the complexity of loss. A loss at the end of a long struggle is sometimes like a reprieve, especially if this entailed a daily and consuming effort for an indefinite period of time, but this reprieve hardly represents an invitation to seek new opportunities for those drained and grieving after the struggle. A sudden loss can work in much the same way if survivors are left feeling robbed of what was anticipated or expected, especially regarding upcoming life stages that many others happily experience without them. Again, the grief after such a loss is hardly fertile ground for sowing new seeds and establishing new foundations.
One of the lessons I liked from this book was that people who use themselves in unnatural forms become depleted. It applies to the above, I think, because moving forward too quickly after a loss is a good example of an unnatural step. The grieving and suffering should find ways to recover their strength and renew their energy so that they can open their hearts in the process of growing beyond their hurt and once more seek new opportunities for happiness.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
rereading review - norwegian wood
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (January 2019)
Haruki Murakami’s regular position atop worldwide bestseller lists owes much to his first major success, Norwegian Wood. This 1987 novel put the Japanese novelist on the international map and has left readers over the ensuing three decades eagerly awaiting his newest release.
It was challenging for me to determine exactly what I thought about this book. It wasn’t my favorite of his works, my conclusion based mostly on how little I recall about the book just four months after rereading, but I did zip through the novel and that’s usually a good sign regarding my reading experience.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a handful of good insight tucked into the notes I took on Norwegian Wood. Those should be enough for an additional post or two over the next few days. For today, I thought I would be too clever for my own good and use some thoughts from Norwegian Wood to tear down the fourth wall of these reading reviews.
One up: Norwegian Wood starts with the protagonist reminiscing about a time from two decades ago. Murakami notes here that in addition to all the standard losses in life such as friends, times, and places, memories are also subject to eventual disappearance. This thought ties closely to the point of these reading reviews – without them, I fear I would lose some of the lessons and ideas I experienced while reading.
One down: Murakami writes in one scene that people sometimes develop habits and routines as a survival technique. For these people, change forces them to confront their fear of losing control. A similar thought pointed out that someone going on in great detail about the trivial or inane might simply be avoiding another topic. I thought both of these insights suggested the danger in a routine reading review because using a regular structure is a convenient way to hide my ignorance or discomfort in writing about certain ideas that emerged from a given reading experience.
The fourth wall: The one major ‘behind the scenes’ insight about a reading review is the difficulty of removing ideas from the final draft. It is like one of Norwegian Wood’s many lessons – being surrounded by endless possibilities means it will be very difficult to pass any of them up.
The fourth law: It’s easy to think too much about these reading reviews and ask myself – what is the point? What is the point of hammering these out while the rest of the world passes right on by, drinking and carousing in the streets of Beacon Hill? I’m reminded of a thought from this book about grammar – although it has no concrete daily purpose, it does equip students to think systematically about large, complex concepts. My goal is something similar – although the reading reviews alone are pointless (and are doomed to remain so), the process of sorting, selecting, and synthesizing my notes is good practice for applying certain vital skills in my life outside TOA.
Just saying: The key to being a good conversationalist isn’t much different from figuring out these reading reviews – the task is to the find the most interesting things someone said (or wrote) even if that person isn’t saying (or writing) anything interesting.
Haruki Murakami’s regular position atop worldwide bestseller lists owes much to his first major success, Norwegian Wood. This 1987 novel put the Japanese novelist on the international map and has left readers over the ensuing three decades eagerly awaiting his newest release.
It was challenging for me to determine exactly what I thought about this book. It wasn’t my favorite of his works, my conclusion based mostly on how little I recall about the book just four months after rereading, but I did zip through the novel and that’s usually a good sign regarding my reading experience.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a handful of good insight tucked into the notes I took on Norwegian Wood. Those should be enough for an additional post or two over the next few days. For today, I thought I would be too clever for my own good and use some thoughts from Norwegian Wood to tear down the fourth wall of these reading reviews.
One up: Norwegian Wood starts with the protagonist reminiscing about a time from two decades ago. Murakami notes here that in addition to all the standard losses in life such as friends, times, and places, memories are also subject to eventual disappearance. This thought ties closely to the point of these reading reviews – without them, I fear I would lose some of the lessons and ideas I experienced while reading.
One down: Murakami writes in one scene that people sometimes develop habits and routines as a survival technique. For these people, change forces them to confront their fear of losing control. A similar thought pointed out that someone going on in great detail about the trivial or inane might simply be avoiding another topic. I thought both of these insights suggested the danger in a routine reading review because using a regular structure is a convenient way to hide my ignorance or discomfort in writing about certain ideas that emerged from a given reading experience.
The fourth wall: The one major ‘behind the scenes’ insight about a reading review is the difficulty of removing ideas from the final draft. It is like one of Norwegian Wood’s many lessons – being surrounded by endless possibilities means it will be very difficult to pass any of them up.
The fourth law: It’s easy to think too much about these reading reviews and ask myself – what is the point? What is the point of hammering these out while the rest of the world passes right on by, drinking and carousing in the streets of Beacon Hill? I’m reminded of a thought from this book about grammar – although it has no concrete daily purpose, it does equip students to think systematically about large, complex concepts. My goal is something similar – although the reading reviews alone are pointless (and are doomed to remain so), the process of sorting, selecting, and synthesizing my notes is good practice for applying certain vital skills in my life outside TOA.
Just saying: The key to being a good conversationalist isn’t much different from figuring out these reading reviews – the task is to the find the most interesting things someone said (or wrote) even if that person isn’t saying (or writing) anything interesting.
Monday, July 29, 2019
december reread – notes lookback (threads, and summaries)
Threads (original notes from November 2017)
Of my seven rereads from December, Threads had the least variation in notes files. This is understandable given that the gap between readings was the shortest among my seven rereads – just over one year. I was surprised to see that my second set of notes had shrunk in comparison to the original, however, for it had seemed based on my comparisons thus far that my notes – like any good bureaucratic process – were expanding without limit.
I identified two factors that caused my notes file to shrink after my second read. The first reason is that I learned a lot from Threads in 2017 and wrote these observations into my notes. I learned, for example, that what Americans call duct tape is known in the UK as ‘gaffer tape’. I could hardly be expected to learn this again just a year later and therefore skipped writing it down.
The second reason is that much of my notes from 2017 described conclusions while in 2018 the focus shifted toward reasons. This suggests that perhaps I expanded on thoughts from 2017 in my 2018 notes and in theory this would increase the size of my more recent notes. In practice, though, I found that some of my 2017 observations did not require added explanation and these were the thoughts that disappeared in my 2018 notes file.
Last but not least...
Norwegian Wood
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimmage
100 Years of Solitude
Let’s bring my lookbacks to a close by highlight the three books notable for the lack of original reading notes. This sounds about right – I vaguely recall that it wasn’t until sometime early in 2017 that I first kept notes for fiction and I read all of these works prior to that start date.
I considered using the original TOA posts as a substitute for a notes file. However, when I looked up any mentions of these books from the TOA archives, I was disappointed to find almost no mention of them beyond their inclusion on a ‘here is what I read recently’ list or two. The closest thing to insight was my comment that ‘if you can read, you can cook’ was among the better quips from Colorless Tsukuru (this thought did not make it into my most recent notes from the book). Let’s hope for more interesting reflections when my reading reviews for these books – and all of my December rereads – finally come around in the next few days.
Of my seven rereads from December, Threads had the least variation in notes files. This is understandable given that the gap between readings was the shortest among my seven rereads – just over one year. I was surprised to see that my second set of notes had shrunk in comparison to the original, however, for it had seemed based on my comparisons thus far that my notes – like any good bureaucratic process – were expanding without limit.
I identified two factors that caused my notes file to shrink after my second read. The first reason is that I learned a lot from Threads in 2017 and wrote these observations into my notes. I learned, for example, that what Americans call duct tape is known in the UK as ‘gaffer tape’. I could hardly be expected to learn this again just a year later and therefore skipped writing it down.
The second reason is that much of my notes from 2017 described conclusions while in 2018 the focus shifted toward reasons. This suggests that perhaps I expanded on thoughts from 2017 in my 2018 notes and in theory this would increase the size of my more recent notes. In practice, though, I found that some of my 2017 observations did not require added explanation and these were the thoughts that disappeared in my 2018 notes file.
Last but not least...
Norwegian Wood
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimmage
100 Years of Solitude
Let’s bring my lookbacks to a close by highlight the three books notable for the lack of original reading notes. This sounds about right – I vaguely recall that it wasn’t until sometime early in 2017 that I first kept notes for fiction and I read all of these works prior to that start date.
I considered using the original TOA posts as a substitute for a notes file. However, when I looked up any mentions of these books from the TOA archives, I was disappointed to find almost no mention of them beyond their inclusion on a ‘here is what I read recently’ list or two. The closest thing to insight was my comment that ‘if you can read, you can cook’ was among the better quips from Colorless Tsukuru (this thought did not make it into my most recent notes from the book). Let’s hope for more interesting reflections when my reading reviews for these books – and all of my December rereads – finally come around in the next few days.
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