About this title: Toru Okada is an apparently happy man - his domestic routine seems familiar and comfortable. Admittedly, he has recently quit his job, the cat has disappeared, and a strange woman has begun to bother him with explicit phone calls. Then one day his wife does not come home from work.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. 1997-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, NY
Date Published: 1998
Description: Very Good. 1.4 x 7.8 x 5.1 Inches; 624 pages; Large softcover with some edge wear, light creasing on spine. Text clean and unmarked. "Mesmerizing...Murakami's most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice. " read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780679775430ISBN:0679775439
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Clean, no marks or creases. Great copy. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 624 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780679775430ISBN:0679775439
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 624 p. Audience: General/trade. Near-perfect condition; from a private collection. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1999-04-22
ISBN-13:9780099448792ISBN:0099448793
Description: Very Good. 2003 paperback, no marks noted in text, pages tanning, All of our products are cleaned with an disinfectant for your protection before shipping. read more
Description: Fine. Trade Paperback. Vintage, 1997. Fine Book. Overall, a clean and tight, lightly read copy. Media mail packed in protective bubble lined shipping bags, Priority in a Flat Rate Envelope. Shipped quickly. Prompt response to questions. read more
Edition: New edition
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 22/04/1999
ISBN-13:9780099448792ISBN:0099448793
Description: Fair. 0099448793 Spine creased. Edges of text block marked and slightly scuffed on corners. Cover creased and scuffed at corners, and pink mark on back. Otherwise good. read more
Edition: NEW ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: VINTAGE Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780099448792ISBN:0099448793
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 624 pages. (624 pages) toru okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. then, there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. as this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of okada's vague and blameless life, are turned inside out. edition new ed (Paperback) read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this DVD supports the North Central Regional Library. Thriftbooks and NCRL have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Library ID found on DVD and case. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Edition: First American Edition; First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, New York
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780679446699ISBN:0679446699
Description: Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 0679446699. Previous owner's inscription on inside front end page. Small stain to front edge of book. Heavy rubbing and wear at board edges. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Date Published: 1997-10-21
ISBN-13:9780679446699ISBN:0679446699
Description: Very Good in very good jacket. Clean tight unmarked first american edition, first printing, not read, not ex lib, no remainder marks, dj has shelf wear at spine, hardboards like new, pgs clean tight, as new, would be graded new if not for shelf wear, excellent copy, deliv confirm u101909C. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780679446699ISBN:0679446699
Description: Near Fine. Minor rubs at edges of covers and moderate rubs on bound-in green tab. Review copy with excerpts. Publisher's slip laid in. 72 pp. read more
Edition: American ed. Illustrated.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780679446699ISBN:0679446699
Description: Very good. No dust jacket. Pages are bright and unmarked throughout, binding is good. Cover shows moderate wear with edge wear at top and bottom of spine and some white marks on rear of cover. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 611 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
"A part of me wishes that I hadn't read it yet so that I could still read it for the first time and be mesmerized.
It is quiet difficult for me to describe what this book was like. It is surreal and psychedelic. It is mysterious, something out of this world. You just need to stop questioning things and let yourself get carried away. It begins with a seemingly ordinary day in the life of a very ordinary man. But things only gets strange and stranger from there - dreams spill into reality, lines between natural and supernatural are smudged, a guy sitting deep down in a well digs into his subconsciousness, a boy's personality is stolen by the devil, a miraculous blue mark on a cheek heals people....unusual characters drift in, tell their unusual stories and leave. About 2/3rd of my way into the book I was going crazy to know where it was all going. So it was a relief to get to the end where some of these bizarre happenings were explained. But getting to the end of the book was also like being rudely woken up from the most wonderful dream. And I didn't want this dream-like experience to be over.
Amidst all of this, Murakami addresses the themes of alienation, loneliness, an individual's search for identity. He questions the national identity as well while exploring some horrifying stories about the second world war. His writing is beautiful, profound and compelling. True he leaves a lot of questions to be answered, but it is one of those books where the journey matters more than where the story finally leads you. In a few (only a few) places the prose is a bit too wordy and repetitious. May be it is a flawed masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless.
This book is... Well it is really hard to explain what this book is like. I have compared it to a David Lynch movie, but it's not exactly like that really-- it's just that there is a sense of strangeness like you are being told a story out of order and you have to put the puzzle pieces together to understand it. He is an incredible writer, and the imagery alone is just awesome.
This is certainly a book that grabs you and takes you along for the ride. It did take a little while to get totally into it. Not that it was boring, not at all. It was just a slow descent into a completely different world. But I think that slowness was necessary for you to get drawn into the story the way it was meant to be felt. Like normal life had gone askew somewhere along the line.
When I think about the kind of mind one would have to have to write this novel, it completely amazes me."
one thing that's occurred to me is the theme of the incertitude of accurate communication between human beings... the telephone becomes a major symbol here... at the time in which the novel is set, the early 80's, the telephone represented an insoluble mystery... who is it we are really talking to when the telephone rings and we pick up the receiver?... how do we know for certain they're who they say they are?...how do we know what they tell is accurate or true?... this symbolic set translates directly to the nature of other human beings and their fundamental relationship to us... how do we know for certain the person who sleeps next to us is the person they have represented to us over time?...can we trust beyond doubt that they are who they say they are?...how do we know they won't change that representation tomorrow or even a minute from now?... in essence, everyone we come in contact with, even those closest to us, is like that telephone that rings: a blank uninhabited mystery that is filled with the content provided by the essentially unknown entity that communicates to us from the inside...
murakami continues to develop this theme... the main character walks into a dry-cleaner's shop and notes the boom box playing on a shelf...he also notes the music playing and the genre of the cassette tapes that lie next to it...from these pieces of semiotic information the main character develops a complex character profile of the shop owner...he even goes as far as to conclude that only this genre of music (easy-listening) is possible for a dry-cleaning shop owner to listen to...any other form, such as hard jazz, would inevitably lead a person into another occupation...
this semiotic information, or symbolic set, is analogous to the ringing telephone...we pick up the receiver and interpret the information that is imparted to us in order to establish a meaningful depiction of the associated entity...
this is essentially one of the primary cognitive methods by which we come to "know" those people who pass in and out of our sphere of existence... the same unreliability is inherent in this system as previously noted in the answering of the telephone...
despite these examples of potent symbolism, which will usually compel me to like a book even when it is bad, i cannot seem to enjoy this novel...
i read a critic describe faulkner's 'requiem for a nun' as 'a bloated failure of a book'...that sentiment almost perfectly sums up my feelings about this text...the only thing i would add is an episode from the novel itself...the main character in the story, toru, follows a musician across town to a run down neighborhood wherein the musician attacks toru with a bat...toru takes the bat away and pummels the musician half to death with it while the musician laughs... this moment is totally emblematic of what one takes away from this book...it is a pointless journey accompanied by brutal and aimless punishment that we have to struggle mightily to enjoy...
it is my opinion that this work could have benefited ENORMOUSLY from deep revision...at least 300 pages could have been edited out with no loss to the overall program of the novel...
but is it a failure?... very nearly, but not quite...there is a lot here that is wonderful...but those good bits are strained to near breaking by the ponderous weight of the bad... so a definitive yes on the bloated part, and an almost on the failure..."
"Throughout reading this book, I kept coming back to an idea that I have been toying with for awhile. Please note that the experimental group here consists mainly of my wife and myself and a few random observations, so massive sampling error may be afoot. I'm also sure that I am not the originator of this line of thought, but I have not encountered it elsewhere as of yet.
***Warning! Broad, sweeping generalizations after the jump***
When it comes to literature and movies, males tend to gravitate more towards physical activity. This is a world where faces get punched, caps are popped into asses, and folks get their freak on. Action verbs are being committed on a massive scale, and the world is a fundamentally different place after the fact. I've taken to calling this the macrocosm of human interaction.
Females, on the other hand, tend to be drawn more towards emotional activity. This is a world of intimate social interactions between individuals that may not always explicitly occur at the verbal level. The world is still fundamentally changed afterwards, but usually in a much more subtle way. Cultural arbiters have even been kind enough to gift us with the "Chick" prefix when the situation presented revolves heavily around romantic issues or therapy through excessive shopping. I refer to this as the microcosm of human interaction.
Once again, I realize that this does not apply to every male and female across the board. I also realize that most great works of art incorporate both of these to some extent.
So what the heck does all of this have to do with 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle'?
I believe that Murakami is dealing here with the microcosm almost exclusively. Having said that, I am really drawn to it at some level. The story is very vast, as the book spans over 600 pages. A very basic plot synopsis without spoilers would be that Toru Okada is going through some massive changes in his life. These changes may have to do with emerging psychic type powers. If this is the case, he will have to master these new abilities in order to bring about positive change in the lives of those around him. That description was so generic that it sucked the life out of the book and made it sound incredibly boring, but I assure you that is not the case.
A problem that I was having with this book and also the previous Murakami book that I read ('After Dark') is that not all questions are answered by the end of the book. However, I am now starting to come to peace with this. After all, that's how the microcosm often is in real life. Quoting my Goodreads buddy Tami, "It's the journey.""
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