April 21, 2009

Question time

I am reading Norwegian Wood by a Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and many a time I caught myself wondering why I was still holding the book. I have never been to Japan and I have only talked with one or two Japanese neighbours, yet I found the characters lifeless and surreal, the story rather trivial and the translation even worse (or should it be the other way round?).

The opening, though sentimental, is enticing enough for me to carry on reading but the conversations between characters - which are used to carry the story through - fail to reflect the differences of age, gender, culture and characters. The protagonist - who is 19 turning 20 feels almost like an middle age salary man who has experienced all and rather disillusioned. Sometimes I thought this novel was more like a bad taste porn movie than a real piece of 'literature' that seems to have gained such a popularity with its home audience.

I have no idea why I would think the characters surreal. Is it because most of my recent 'knowledge' about Japan has mainly come from watching works of Yasujiro Ozu and to a less extent those by his contemporaries before the 1960s?

When I searched on the net to find out more about the novel, I was dismayed to find that it is now being made into a film by a Vietnamese French director... I wonder what I have missed in the book that is so great for a director whose debut was The Scent of Green Papaya.

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