1Q84

[Kirby]

After succumbing to the hype that erupted from Steve Jobs's recent passing and reading his biography by Walter Isaacson, I finally broke through the boundary of frugality and bought an iPad. I was proselytized into the Apple kingdom, despite my apprehension to paying so much money for a silly gadget.

In any case, since crossing over to the dark side, I have been doing a lot of reading, and in particular, found a story called, 1Q84 by 村上春樹 (Murakami Haruki) to be quite fascinating. It's a series of three books (or if you get the English version, I think it's a single book with three parts), with a title that plays off of Orwell's 1984 - most are probably aware that you can pronounce "9" as "kyu" in Japanese, which sounds an awful lot like the letter "Q".

I have to say that the story is much different than Orwell's 1984, but I think that I actually liked it better. The story mainly focuses on two characters, Tengo and Aomame. At first, their roles are distinctly separate, but as the story progresses, we find that their roles are intricately intertwined.

The reason I brought up this story is for two reasons. First, I enjoyed it, and recommend it to anybody that's looking for a good fictional story to delve into (beware, though, it's pretty long!). Second, though, I wanted to open up discussion for anyone that may have read the story, to see if they thought that any parts were interesting - or confusing - as the case may be.

Spoiler:

Personally, I felt that the ending of the story was rather abrupt and anti-climatic. Just when it seemed that things were getting interesting, it felt like the characters ran away from everything. What do you guys think?

[RBerenguel]

I have it pending to read (and also Jobs' bio, I'm with the Apple ][ now). Murakami is one of my favourite writers, I love Tokyo Blues (also known as Norwegian wood) and Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world.

I'll come back to the thread when I finish it

[Jedo]

Murakami is one of my favorite authors, and I finished the book a few days ago (in english). Although I enjoyed it and it's definitely a good read, I don't think it's one of his best (see The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Hard-Boiled Wonderland, both of which I would recommend). The other way in which I was surprised was that there's really not much of a connection with 1984 at all, and I certainly don't think it qualifies as a sci-fi dystopia. Bad marketing?

Thoughts:

I agree about the ending, there was never any confrontation with Sakigake or the Little People. As always with Murakami, there are many answered questions, but there were a few here that I was a little unsatisfied with.
1. What's the deal with Tengo's mother and Aomame's friend both being murdered the same way? My reading was that his mother's lover killed her, and then the little people killed Aomame's friend in the same way for some reason.
2. What's with the married girlfriend being irretrievably lost? I guess the LP disposed of her.
3. When they talk about Akebono, they always mention how there was one dude who escaped capture at the end. I always assumed this was foreshadowing, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. Red Herring, or is someone actually an Akebono grad?
4. Exploded dog. LP i guess.
5. The air chrysalis of Aomame/Ushikawa.

Murakami works in mysterious ways.

I felt like the first book was a little slow, but the second one was great. Two of my favorite scenes was when Aomame meets/kills Leader and when Tengo goes to see his father for the first time.

On to 11/22/63...

[Kirby]

...

1. What's the deal with Tengo's mother and Aomame's friend both being murdered the same way? My reading was that his mother's lover killed her, and then the little people killed Aomame's friend in the same way for some reason.

Interesting. I overlooked this. I wonder if it had some intended meaning.

2. What's with the married girlfriend being irretrievably lost? I guess the LP disposed of her.

I had guessed she was killed by the little people. I also wondered if the being her husband spoke of could have somehow been a dohta (sp?) of Kyoko, but that seemed less likely.

3. When they talk about Akebono, they always mention how there was one dude who escaped capture at the end. I always assumed this was foreshadowing, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. Red Herring, or is someone actually an Akebono grad?

Seemed never to come up to something meaningful, huh...

4. Exploded dog. LP i guess.

I assumed this was almost positively the case.

5. The air chrysalis of Aomame/Ushikawa.

I found it odd, too, that Ushikawa had moss on his tongue. It reminded me of the smaller moon.

In addition to this, I found it odd that it seemed to suggest that Tengo had drawn Aomame in to 1q84, or that it was a joint effort... What do you think of that? My impression was that Aomame initiated the world change for everyone, but Fuka-Eri, for example, only exists in 1q84.

[Jedo]

As for who pulled whom into 1q84, that's a tough, perhaps impossible, question to answer I think. It did seem like Aomame took the first action by climbing down the stairs on the expressway, but there are other things to consider. For one, there's the fact that the world of 1q84 seems to conform to Tengo's novel, like the two moons being exactly how he described. Is tengo actually creating the world? There's the whole theme that runs through the book about re-writing history, and Tengo talks to Fuka-eri about how in 1984 it was some people's jobs just to rewrite history, which then became fact. Is that what Tengo is doing?

[Kirby]

As for who pulled whom into 1q84, that's a tough, perhaps impossible, question to answer I think. It did seem like Aomame took the first action by climbing down the stairs on the expressway, but there are other things to consider. For one, there's the fact that the world of 1q84 seems to conform to Tengo's novel, like the two moons being exactly how he described. Is tengo actually creating the world? There's the whole theme that runs through the book about re-writing history, and Tengo talks to Fuka-eri about how in 1984 it was some people's jobs just to rewrite history, which then became fact. Is that what Tengo is doing?

You know, at first I thought that Aomame initiated the change, amd that with this change came Fuka-Eri, her history, and that whole world. I felt Tengo simply described that world as it existed in 1q84...

That seemed consistent to me, but you bring up a good point that makes me change my mind a bit. Namely, Tengo described the moons, for example, in great detail - detail that was not present in Fuka-Eri's account. How could he have done this accurately if it were a prior reality? It stands to reason that Tengo and Fuka-Eri's joint effort created reality... But if this is the case, what was the reality of 1q84 prior to Tengo's writing? If Tengo created the reality of the two moons, what were the moons like prior to this when Fuka-Eri saw them?

Or, maybe Fuka-Eri's account, as a perceiver, was fiction until Tengo, the receiver, made it a reality. When Tengo made it a reality, perhaps the little people and their history began to exist, and "switched the tracks of reality"...

Another thing puzzles me, though. The little people lost interest in Fuka-Eri and Tengo upon Leader's death. Why would this be? This may provide insight toward the world of 1q84...

[hyperpape]

I keep looking at this thread whenever there's a new post even though I know that it's just going to be full of spoilers that I can't read.

...I need to get out more.

[Kirby]

I keep looking at this thread whenever there's a new post even though I know that it's just going to be full of spoilers that I can't read.

...I need to get out more.

You are free to read the spoilers if you'd like. They just hit on items discussed in the book.