Murakami's protagonists are imperfect, passive introverts pulled into situations by extroverts, not superheroes, which makes their strange journeys feel like they could be yours.
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More insights from this episode
- Magical realism has no entry barrier
Invented universes like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings keep a barrier between you and the world; magical realism plants the strange inside your ordinary environment, so it is easier to…
- Metaphors shrink what menaces you
Recasting a real threat as a metaphor (seeing it, but not taking it too seriously) makes it easier to cope with; this is the most practical gift of Murakami's fiction.
- Demanding explanations blocks Murakami
Western readers are trained by tidy, logical endings to demand explanations; accepting that strange things can simply happen, as Japanese storytelling does, is the key to enjoying Murakami.
- Women as divine messengers
Murakami's women work like Athena disguised before Telemachus: messengers who send the protagonist to discover something, usually within himself, which explains why they can seem thinly…
- Check whose eyes the story uses
Before calling a writer sexist, ask whose perspective the story is told from: a young man's thoughts (Norwegian Wood) differ from a grown man's or a woman's own voice.
- Limbo separates body from mind
Murakami's other world is a limbo between life and death where body and mind split, and a person who loses that unity loses what they stand for.