About this title: Hajime, a middle-aged Tokyo bar owner with a wife and children, is unexpectedly reunited with the girl he loved many years ago when she walks into his establishment. Permeated with the images to popular culture that are a trademark of Murakami's fiction, this novel is less wildly fantastic, more grounded in reality and human relationships, than his previous works.
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Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 2000-03-01
ISBN-13:9780679767398ISBN:0679767398
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780679767398. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780679767398ISBN:0679767398
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: Later printing
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage, New York
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780679767398ISBN:0679767398
Description: As NEW. 213 pp. Octavo. Illustrated covers. Born in 1951 in an affluent Tokyo suburb, Hajime-beginning in Japanese-has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career as the proprietor of two jazz clubs. Yet a nagging sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens Hajime's happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780099448570ISBN:0099448572
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Edition: NEW ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: VINTAGE Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780099448570ISBN:0099448572
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 192 pages. (192 pages) growing up in the suburbs in post-war japan, hajime and shimamoto had been childhood sweethearts. the two eventually lost touch but now, in their thirties, they meet up again. hajime, now a father and husband, finds himself catapulted into the past, risking all that he has in the present. edition new ed (Paperback) read more
Edition: First American edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780375402517ISBN:0375402519
Description: As New in as new jacket. An advance copy with compliments of the author's card laid in. Published in Japan as Kokkyo no minami, taiyo no nishi in 1992. 8vo, 213 pp. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Kodansha, Tokyo
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9784062060813ISBN:4062060817
Description: 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. First edition, first prnt. Satin pagemarker, Spine ends lightly pushed; dustjacket with minimal shelfwear, three corners with little loss and flaps' topedges with tiny wrinkles. Bright copy in Near Fine condition in a Very Good+ dustjacket with an archival cover. Text in Japanese. Precedes all other editions. Image is of the book described; not a stock photo. read more
"So it comes down to the missing Nat King Cole record and envelope full money for me. When you get to the end of a novel and Hajime, the first person narrator, starts going on about 'alternate reality' and how because the senses and memory are so unreliable that you need external objects to confirm reality, but that this raises all sorts of problems because then you need other 'realities' to support the 'alternate reality' of the objects supporting the first reality and that this leads to an endless chain -- a chain that has been broken by the disappearance of the envelope full of cash. Now Hajime looks over the chasm of the broken chain and can't figure out which side he is on -- well, this reader knew he'd better start questioning what is real in this novel. Most particularly is the adult Shimamoto, the mysterious fem-fatale, real?
I don't think she is 'real'. By that I mean real in the sense that other characters in the book could see her. Yes, I'm talking Bruce Willis and Haley Jole Osmond/The Sixth Sense kind of deal here. The narrator in this book is fundamentally screwed up and playing a very odd game in his head - one that he isn't aware of but I believe the reader is suppose to clue in on by the end.
I've read other people's reactions to the book, questioning why there are so many loose ends and vagaries, and perhaps SOTB, WOTS is open ended and 'romantic'. But I like my interpretation, which seems to show the book as deadly sharpened and anything but romantic.
I don't think Murakami is trying to portray mental illness, but rather playing with the consequences and selfishness of his main character's nostalgic desires -- and by making Shimamoto his character's hallucination showing how anti-life this force is. While Shimamto is the seductress/succubus manifestation of his hunger for the life of others, Izumi (the horrific vision of her at the end, who is also a hallucination, way too much of a coincidence that she suddenly shows up in a taxi) is the hungry ghost the void that lies within him. It all leads up to a bleak portrait of a monomaniacal egotist.
I'm sure there is nothing new in this interpretation, and a lot wrong, but it's my first pass at sinking into the book."
"I'll preface this by saying that Murakami is currently my favorite fiction author and has been for more than a year now, since I read "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" in summer 2008. I bought this one randomly on my way to see Murakami at the New Yorker festival last year in case he was signing books (he wasn't), and finally got around to reading it. It's toward the realist end of his spectrum, with more weird stuff happening than in "Norwegian Wood" but less than in "Kafka on the Shore" or "Wind-Up Bird," and way less than "Dance Dance Dance." Because of its length (short) the characters aren't as well developed as in some of those other works. But it touched on a lot of interesting things, mainly the nature of material success and the role of imagination in human decisions. It also really made me want to run a bar."
"This book is the literary equivalent of cloud paintings. I'm not talking John Constable's clouds, which are dense with specificity from a keen and earthy eye; but rather New Agey cloud paintings, which are designed to be innocuous and calming, to not stimulate the eye, to induce a meditative state and readjust the spirit and turn one away from the tangible.
So South of the Border, West of the Sun is not all bad - it does satisfy all the above criteria for New Agey cloud paintings - and I have no beefs with calmness and spirit clarifying, but that's not typically why I turn to art, whether it be paintings or literature. I typically turn to art to be engaged with the materials of that art. Of course I'm also interested in the overall effect of those materials, in the work of art per se, that unquantifiable essence of what has been accomplished; but I like this essence to be composed of tangible things, things I can chew on and wrestle with, things I can be viscerally engaged with.
This book is all essence and forced me to readjust my reading habits. I had to actually remove my focus from the words themselves, and to let them pass intact - like cloudy kidney stones painlessly through my urethra - through my reading eyes and brain and straight into my conceptualizing mind, where they formed something quite small for a novel of over 200 pages. The essence of this book is that "All things with form can vanish at any moment, but emotion abides", an admirable enough concept that I wholeheartedly accept; but is that why I read, to ingest thousands of words that instantly vaporize in my mind leaving a paltry residue such as that? Zen koans can perform that feat in ten words or less. Again, I turn to art to be engaged with the materials of that art.
In his essay on marathon running Murakami refers to himself as boring, and now I'm inclined to believe him. The protagonist of this book is clearly a stand-in for Murakami, and is numbingly dull. He's a "successful" family man who likes jazz and to have his balls licked, not much of a Curriculum Vitae that, so it's augmented with a fixation on a girl he was friends with when he was 12. Granted, this is the "meat" (or rather tofu) of the plot, and is sweet and somewhat moving as it morphs through the vicissitudes of his life, though some of its impact was lost on me because now I don't quite believe Murakami. I don't believe he's in touch with an inner purity aglow with a spiritual innocence. I don't believe his romantic idealism. I don't believe in the transcendence of his imagination. I don't believe there are women who like to lick his balls. And not believing these things about him substantially lessened the impact of the main character's final transformation into the first stages of a complete and interesting being.
Which begs the question - who wants to read a book whose main character doesn't become interesting until after the final word?
But then is that possibly the point of this book? Given the delicate and profound beauty of the final image, and given the vapidity of the preceeding 200+ pages, is it possible that the book itself is an embodiment of the essence I previously pointed out; that the bulk of the novel itself represents the form destined to vanish and that the final emotionally charged image is what abides? I applaud Murakami if that is the case, at least for his conceptual gumption; but still I'd rather read a book that wasn't designed to be innocuous. Give me some meat on my words."
""Wir waren, sie ebenso wie ich, noch fragmentarische Geschöpfe, die gerade erst begannen, die Existenz einer unerwarteten Wirklichkeit zu erahnen, die wir uns noch würden aneignen müssen, die uns ausfüllen und vervollständigen würde."
"Gefährliche Geliebte" ist für mich, sicher beeinflusst durch die Dauthendey-Lektüre, ein Roman über unterschiedliche Ausformungen von Liebe. Der Erzähler Hajime ist in der Nachkriegszeit als Einzelkind ein Außenseiter. Er freundet sich mit Shimamoto an, einem Mädchen aus der Nachbarschaft. Die beiden durchleben eine tiefe Freundschaft, eine Ahnung von Liebe. Doch im Alter von zwölf Jahren verlieren sie sich nach einem Umzug aus den Augen. In seiner Jugend ist Hajime mit Izumi zusammen, doch er betrügt sie und die beiden trennen sich kurz vor ihrem Schulabschluss. In den darauffolgenden Jahren, während seines Studiums und danach, vereinsamt Hajime zunehmend. Er sucht das Gefühl, sein Innerstes offenbaren zu können, wie er es bei seiner Freundin Shimamoto gehabt hatte, findet aber ihre Magie in keiner anderen Frau. Erst kurz bevor er dreißig wird verliebt sich Hajime in Yukiko. Er heiratet sie, gibt seinen unbefriedigenden Bürojob auf und eröffnet mit der Hilfe seines Schwiegervaters einen Jazzclub. Doch obwohl er erfolgreich und sogar verliebt ist, schwindet die Erinnerung, die Sehnsucht nach Shimamoto nicht aus seinem Bewusstsein. Was mir an japanischer Literatur immer wieder auffällt ist eine besondere Verbindung zur Natur. Ich mag diese Romane gerade für ihre Urbanität, für die Global City-Atmosphäre Tokyos; aber sie befindet sich in einer Wechselbeziehung mit der Natur. Gefühle, gerade die Liebe werden immer wieder verknüpft mit Landschaften, Wolkenbildern, Wetterlagen; es ist gar nicht recht klar, von welcher Seite die Verbindung ausgeht. Jetzt hatte ich kurz vor "Gefährliche Geliebte" Dauthendeys japanische Erzählungen gelesen, und auch hier waren wieder verschiedene Formen der Liebe das Thema. Da ist es verlockend, nach Landschaftsbildern Ausschau zu halten. Und in der Tat verknüpft Hajime seine Emotionen mit Naturerscheinungen: Es ist vor allem der Regen vor seinem Lokal, der ihn an seine Liebe erinnert. "Gefährliche Geliebte" hat mir als erstes Werk von Murakami, das ich gelesen habe, sehr gefallen; ich möchte sagen, es war das bisher befriedigendste Buch in diesem Monat, obwohl oder gerade weil es angenehm leicht zu lesen ist. Es entführt in eine emotionale, manchmal fast magische und trotz aller Härten in ihren Schilderungen weiche Welt. Weich wie Licht, nicht Kissen: Etwas schattig, unergründlich vielleicht, und niemals blendend."
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