← The History of Literature
The History of Literature
733 Haruki Murakami (with Mike Palindrome | To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (#17 GBOAT) | A Letter from Tehran
01:24:11
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello dear listeners and my friends. This is Jack Wilson reminding you that the History of Literature Podcast is going on tour. It's still a few months away, but the deadline is this month, September. That's your chance to put down your deposit if you would like to go. Let me tell you a little more about the trip. In May of 2026, I will be accompanying a small group of travelers on a trip through London, Oxford and Bath. With stops at literary sites, houses of authors, restaurants where they ate and so on. It will be a chance to meet some like minded people as we all enjoy literature and life. Nice hotels and restaurants, lots of meals and fellowship, traveling together in the land of Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Dr. Johnson and more. And some special guests, people you've heard on the show will be joining us to shake our hands and answer our questions and generally participate in this celebration of books and writers and all the things we like best here at the podcast. As I said though, the signup is only open through September. That's so we can plan the trip. That's right, you have until the end of the month to secure your spot. So head over to John Shores Travel, that's our partner who's taking care of all the logistics, and put down your deposit. That's John Shores S H O R S. Or you can go to historyofliterature.com and follow the links there. Join us for an experience you can't get anywhere else because you deserve it.
- [01:53]
Mike Palindrome
This episode is brought to you by State Farm.
- [01:56]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
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- [01:57]
Mike Palindrome
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- [02:19]
Jack Wilson
Today on the podcast we recover another episode that has fallen, or should I say had fallen into oblivion. It was gone from the archive for years and years, but now it's back. Mike Palindrome and I look at the life and works of Haruki Murakami. Plus, we continue our countdown to the greatest book of all time with number 17, to kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. All that plus a letter from a listener in Tehran today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson, your host. We Start today with an email from a listener email in Tehran Babak who writes Dear Jack, My name is Babak and I'm writing this from Tehran to let you know how much warmth your podcast has brought to my heart at times I most needed it. I stumbled upon your podcast while I was searching for Joe Pera interviews. Now it is my companion in many walks and times when life's rhythm slows down or gets too fast and I need a voice who speaks of things like melancholy and vulnerability along with the tales of the human condition. I am by no means a literature buff. I haven't even read many classics, but I very much enjoy your personal stories along with short stories you share with your honest and sometimes witty takes. Many examples come to my mind, but the paragraph on Trees by Herman Hess and Joyce's the Dead were exceptionally beautiful. Thank you Babak. Oh Babak, thank you for such a beautiful email and I hope things are going well for you and Tehran. You might not be a literature buff, but you are living in a great literary city and culture. Not that I need to tell you that, but we definitely need to do more on Persian culture and poetry in particular here at the History of Literature Podcast. In any case, I'm glad you're listening there in Tehran and the best word in your email is that word Sometimes you're honest and sometimes witty takes. Well, I couldn't ask for a more honest assessment, for which I'm very grateful. Your whole email put a smile on my face. Speaking of smiles on faces, listeners, I would like to see your face with your smile in May of 2026 and you can see mine. We're traveling together on our very first History of Literature podcast tour, headed to England, the land of Shakespeare and Tolkien and C.S. lewis and Virginia Woolf. And we'll have stops in all those places to see where those luminaries and plenty of others spent their time, and we will enjoy some conversation and conviviality of our own. Check out the itinerary at John Shores Travel, that's Shores with no E. Or@historyofliterature.com We will be very glad to have you join us. But act now. The signup is only open through September so we can see who we have and make our reservations, etc. Accordingly. Traveling by train together, eating our meals together, generally spending time in a small group with downtime too and chances for you to go off exploring in splinter groups or by yourself if you want. Let's say you want to check out the Roman baths while we're in Bath or Go to some old bookstores when we're in London. The schedule is designed for you to do that for maximum convenience, flexibility and enjoyment. So please do consider it for yourself, or maybe as a nice retirement gift for those parents of yours who are ready to start Act 3. Or maybe as a mid career treat for yourself, or maybe you're turning something next year like a big round number. Or maybe it's a graduation gift for that literature lover in your life. We would love to have all of you. Okay, now we move on to number 17 on our list of greatest books of all time, which is a great book. I'm a little surprised to see it here, this high on the list. But guess what, guess what. This list and the way they put together this list, which I pulled from the Internet. There's a. It's a compilation of lists, a list of lists. And there's a bias toward books that people have read, and this one has been read by a lot of people, especially in America. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the childhood friend of Truman Capote. And in fact, she put Capote in the book in the form of the character Dill. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of America's great books on race and race relations, accepting as we must, that it is from the perspective of a white person. And the character of Atticus Finch could be fairly viewed as both the most amazing lawyer you could ever know and a kind of idealized white man's version of a hero. But no matter. Let's just say Atticus was one of the world's better angels, as was Harper Lee, and leave it at that. Like him, or raise your eyebrows at him, and maybe you raise your eyebrows at the people who love him. In any case, we can all agree that if we had more Atticus Finches in the world, the world would be in better shape, I think. In the movie, Atticus Finch is played by Gregory Peck. And in both the movie and the book, which was published in 1960, he's a lawyer in a small Southern town who agrees to defend a black man accused of raping a young white woman. Merely representing the man raises the anger of the town against Atticus and his children, including the narrator, Scout, a young girl who is six at the start of the book and nine when it ends. At the heart of the book is a trial where it becomes increasingly clear that the accused man is innocent and also that the white jury is not going to see beyond their hatred and prejudice that in this justice system, justice will be abused, not served. Harper Lee based the story on her recollections of her own father, Amasa Coleman Lee, who in 1919 defended two black men accused of murder. The story in real life mirrored the tragic outcome in the book. Lee's father, who was broken by the case, became a newspaper editor and publisher instead. The story is brilliantly told. It's an incredibly readable and engaging novel, warm and humorous at times, penetrating and persuasive at others. It's a book with staunch defenders and I was going to say passionate critics, but that might be putting it too strong, dismissive critics. It's a dynamic that's been there almost since the beginning. Yes, yes. Give us this integrity of Atticus Finch. Give us this hard look at prejudice and the attitudes that prevail in the South. Give it. Give it all to us through the eyes of a child, because that's the right angle to treat this with the appropriate confusion. We grown ups look at entrenched attitudes and say things like, this is how the world works and some things never change. A child, though a child, looks at the system and says, why? Why this hate? Why are good people being punished, innocent people? Why can't people get over their prejudice? Why do churchgoers wear their finest garb on Sunday mornings and white sheets on Saturday night? Critics, on the other hand, say, well, that's all well and good, maybe, but this is an unusually precocious little girl, isn't it, this narrator, Scout, who sees and relays things to us like a grown up might. And that's a disconnect that violates the sacred principles of novel writing. And Atticus Finch, said a Wall Street Journal critic who happened to be from Alabama is a repository of cracker barrel epigrams. End quote. And the whole story is a sugar coated myth. It is time, said the critic, to stop pretending that To Kill a Mockingbird is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature. Its bloodless liberal humanism is sadly dated. End quote. The novelist Thomas Mallon more recently said, atticus is stiff and self righteous. And that beloved narrator, Scout, the plucky girl, you know, the one that millions of readers fell in love with. Well, says Mallon, she is a kind of highly constructed doll. By the time the book is over, Mallon says, it has begun to cherish its own goodness. In response to his criticism, Mallon received hate mail and he refused to engage in any more debate about the book, saying he didn't want to be the skunk at the garden party. Because others do praise the book. It was A runaway bestseller, and it's still a staple on the reading lists at high schools and middle schools around the country. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie compared the book's view of race with the views of Faulkner. In Faulkner, she said, racism is an inevitability. With Harper Lee, there's nothing inevitable about racism, and its very foundation is open to question. As Adichie put it, Lee writes with fiercely progressive ink. The novel has been honored and ranked. In 2003, it was number six on the BBC's Big Read Year long survey of the British public, the highest ranking non British book on the list. Those in favor of banning it can come at it from all sides. Hardly anyone says it should be banned because it argues against racism. Instead, they point to the instances of the N word or the use of sexual assault as a plot device. These days, who knows? People probably are going to claim that it doesn't belong, since we're now in an America where the Smithsonian Museum is asked to take down references to slavery because it makes certain people feel bad. And I would ask, who does it make feel bad?
- [13:29]
Mike Palindrome
You.
- [13:30]
Jack Wilson
Are you a slave owner? Presumably not in 2025. So why do you identify with them? Why not identify with the proud tradition of people who fought against slavery or who fought against prejudice? Why identify with the people who are prejudiced? Those are questions that no one ever bothers to ask, let alone answer. Maybe we need a six to nine year old to ask them. In the end, to Kill a Mockingbird's effect on racial prejudice is hard to measure. Political pundit James Carville was among those affected by the novel, and he gave one of the more stunning pieces of anecdotal evidence about what it meant to be reading the novel in the south right after it came out. He was born in 1944, and he grew up in Louisiana in a town called Carville that was named after his grandfather. And, and he later wrote, quote, integration was the searing issue when I was a kid. After the Brown v. Board of education decision in 1954, people in Carville, which was 85% black, stopped talking about football and the weather. All they wanted to do was scream about race. Like most whites, I took segregation for granted and wished the blacks did. Just didn't push so damn hard to change it. But when I was 16 years old, I read To Kill a Mockingbird and that novel changed everything. I couldn't put it down. I stuck it inside another book and read it under my desk during school. When I got to the last page, I closed it and said, they're right and we're wrong. The issue was literally black and white and we were absolutely, positively on the wrong side. End quote. That is a powerful reading experience. And To Kill a Mockingbird is a powerful book. It's number 17 on our list of the greatest books of all time. We turn now to another type of writer in another time, another place. This is another one of the episodes that fell out of our archives several years ago. It first ran on April 1, 2018, as episode 137. Mike Palindrome was here to talk about his lifelong love of Murakami and his works. Since then, Murakami has published a few more books and he's won many more prizes and honors, although he still has not won the Nobel. Checking the odds, he's tied at the top of the list 6 to 1, a joint favorite with Romanian author Mircea Katarescu. You gamblers might want to jump on that before October when the prize will be announced. Or you might not want to. Murakami has been at or near the top of the list for at least the past 10 years. The Nobel committee gets a lot right, but they have also missed some heavyweights over the years. Murakami also has a new book out in paperback, the City and Its Uncertain Walls, which came out a couple of years ago in hardback and includes. Oh. It was translated into English last year. It tells the story of a middle aged man recalling his teenage love. A young woman who imagined a mysterious town where she says the real her lives. A town that's made up of stories and contradictions. Her descriptions of it entrance the young man. And then in a second narrative, the middle aged man visits a town just like this where the teenage girl is still a teenage girl. It's a place with unusual creatures and unusual laws of nature. Maybe it's his unconscious. Maybe it's a symbolic place. Or maybe it's. Well, you can read the rest for yourself. Love and the passage of time. We oldsters know how that goes. So let's take a jump back in time ourselves. Not to when Mike and I were teenagers, quite. But when we were closer to being teenagers than we are now. We're just going to run the full episode as is. But you should know one thing. We have a special guest from a visitor in there and we say that you can support the show by going to historyofliterature.com shop. And that is no longer a possibility. The link still works, but now we're only taking donations at that link. There's no swag currently for sale. Instead, let's put in a plug for our literary tour with John Shore's Travel. Join us in May of 2026. We would love to have you. We'll be going to some great places like Dr. Johnson's house, the pubs where he and Dickens and Agatha Christie like to take their lunch and have a pint or two, and the Jane Austen center in Bath. You can sign up through September at John Shores Travel. That's Shores without an E. Or you can go to our website@historyofliterature.com and follow those links only in September, folks. Don't miss out one more thing or two more. One is I made a mistake in this episode. I ran across. I was doing research. I ran across a post about Murakami and a hot air balloon and I thought it was real. It turns out it was a satirical post. A listener brought it to my attention and I subsequently corrected the error in a later episode. So when you hear me talk about that, just ignore it. Or just think that this is a moment where Jack was fooled, hmm, Even Homer nodded, etc. And we have a new offering for our Patreon members, which I don't mention in this, but it's a low ad version of the podcast. If you'd like to sign up as a Patreon, donating a small amount each month to the history of literature, you will receive a version of each episode without the inserted ads. So when I say, for example, after this, which I'll be saying in a few minutes, a few seconds here, and then you hear a little music. Well, you'll just hear the music and then go straight to cheesecake. As my youngest once said, talking about his plans for what he was going to do after his nap. That's patreon.com literature. I should call it patreon.com cheesecake or offer a cheesecake tier. Anyway, think of it that way. You're buying Emma and me a slice of cheesecake each month, which we will split. One dessert, two forks. That's the best way to go. And we'll smile with gratitude to you, our patron. And now, without further ado, the long lost episode on Haruki Murakami. After this. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Hey folks, if you're like me, you find yourself looking for help in some strange places. Like the woman who cuts my hair. Very nice person. But if you're dealing with serious problems like anxiety, depression or other clinical issues, you need guidance from a credentialed therapist at BetterHelp, you fill out a short questionnaire and they match you with one of their more than 30,000 online professionals. They have a strong track record of getting the match right, but of course you can always pause your subscription or switch therapists at any time and at no extra cost. It's a system designed to help you fit therapy into your busy life. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of Expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month via@betterhelp.com Literature that's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com Literature Race the rudders.
- [21:57]
Mike Palindrome
Raise the sails.
- [21:58]
Jack Wilson
Raise the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.
- [22:01]
Mike Palindrome
Over Roger, wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution?
- [22:05]
Jack Wilson
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- [22:25]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the Internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler.
- [22:37]
Mike Palindrome
And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's.
- [22:43]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Newest arrival Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store. Hello.
- [23:10]
Jack Wilson
He was born in kyoto, Japan, in 1949.
- [23:13]
Mike Palindrome
Since then, he has won just about.
- [23:15]
Jack Wilson
Every literary prize there is to win, with one major exception.
- [23:20]
Mike Palindrome
His books and stories have been translated.
- [23:21]
Jack Wilson
Into 50 languages and have sold millions of copies around the world.
- [23:26]
Mike Palindrome
His grandfather was a Buddhist priest.
- [23:28]
Jack Wilson
His mother and father both taught Japanese.
- [23:30]
Mike Palindrome
Literature, but he himself fell in love with Western influences classical, popular, and above.
- [23:37]
Jack Wilson
All, jazz music and European and American writers like Kafka, Flaubert, Dickens, Vonnegut, Dostoevsky, Kerouac, Carver, Salinger, and Chandler. Although he's loved and admired by readers.
- [23:50]
Mike Palindrome
And writers alike, there are plenty of critics, too.
- [23:53]
Jack Wilson
For every essay on his frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic novels, there's another describing the frustration and at times disaffection with the hermetic, unknowable events and symbols in his fiction.
- [24:10]
Mike Palindrome
His name is Haruki Murakami. We'll talk to Mike Palindrome about His.
- [24:14]
Jack Wilson
Lifelong love for Murakami. Today on the history of literature.
- [24:37]
Mike Palindrome
Okay, here we go.
- [24:38]
Jack Wilson
We have a great show today.
- [24:40]
Mike Palindrome
Mike is here. El Presidente himself. Back to talk about haruki Murakami once again. 99 of what Mike says is interesting and insightful and 1% is a complete fraud. I'll let you guess what that is. Maybe I'll give you some clues at the end. Speaking of clues, we subject Mike to a quiz today. Or a couple of them. Let's see how he does. So, Haruki Murakami.
- [25:06]
Jack Wilson
It's hard to imagine a more beloved and respected contemporary author.
- [25:09]
Mike Palindrome
Remember the story, I think we've told this before, of John Grisham on Charlie Rose. And Charlie Rose said, you started out.
- [25:16]
Jack Wilson
With ambitions to be a literary author, a prize winner. And Grisham said, well, yeah, I wish I won more prizes. But I bet a lot of prize.
- [25:24]
Mike Palindrome
Winners wish they'd sold as many books as I have.
- [25:27]
Jack Wilson
Haruki Murakami is someone who has both.
- [25:30]
Mike Palindrome
He's a huge bestseller. He has a devoted following, and he has the respect of the literary community. He's one of a kind. And yet he isn't exactly. He has influences. He comes out of traditions. Maybe fuses a few of them together. Once you see them, they're hard to unsee. Though in some ways they don't really matter because he makes them all his own. Okay, I know some of you, probably. Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. There's someone at the door. Hello?
- [26:04]
Jack Wilson
Hello, it's me, Lady Macbeth. I'm here to ask you. Now, now, stop. Sorry. That's my dog, Spot. His favorite dog walker hasn't shown up yet, and he's refusing to.
- [26:16]
Mike Palindrome
Out.
- [26:17]
Jack Wilson
Out, you damn, Spot. He's simply refusing to leave the castle without his favorite dog walker. What happened to the dog walker? Funny story, actually. I had my husband kill him. I can't remember why. Something about a dagger. Anyway, our desperate and sweaty minion, Jack Wilson, is going to procure a new dog walker.
- [26:37]
Mike Palindrome
That's a little harsh, Spot. If you don't get out now, I.
- [26:41]
Jack Wilson
Shall kick thee all the way to Dunsinane Hill.
- [26:44]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
You know I would.
- [26:45]
Mike Palindrome
You know I would.
- [26:46]
Jack Wilson
To duns a name.
- [26:47]
Mike Palindrome
I would.
- [26:47]
Jack Wilson
To duns a name, Mr. Wilson. Secure a few funds, Spot, and I shall be ever so grateful.
- [26:54]
Mike Palindrome
Oh, boy.
- [26:56]
Jack Wilson
It's the wicked somnambulist herself arrives.
- [27:01]
Mike Palindrome
Who arrives.
- [27:04]
Jack Wilson
Bringing the weather? I wish we had the milk of human kindness to spread around here.
- [27:09]
Mike Palindrome
We could use some in the studio. Poor Spot. You can join the daggerous vixen herself.
- [27:15]
Jack Wilson
By heading on over to patreon.com literature.
- [27:18]
Mike Palindrome
And supporting the history of literature there. Or you can go to historyofliterature.com shop for all your swaggish needs.
- [27:27]
Jack Wilson
Buy me a coffee, Buy me a beer. Buy a tote bag, buy a mug.
- [27:33]
Mike Palindrome
What beverage do we have?
- [27:34]
Jack Wilson
How about a little green tea?
- [27:36]
Mike Palindrome
I would love a hot cup to go with my Murakami. And you and I can discuss books.
- [27:42]
Jack Wilson
All night while jazz music plays in the background.
- [27:45]
Mike Palindrome
And once in a while, when the.
- [27:48]
Jack Wilson
Conversation fades, we shall get immersed in the books we have open at the table. I have Norwegian wood and you have the wind Up Bird Chronicle.
- [28:00]
Mike Palindrome
How's that for a good image?
- [28:02]
Jack Wilson
Very lovely.
- [28:03]
Mike Palindrome
Meet me there. Here's another plug for Murakami. I think I told you about one of my mentors, an American who's been living in asia for about 30 years. He's not a literature mentor, he's a life mentor. He was a great reader, one of the smartest people I've ever known.
- [28:19]
Jack Wilson
And smart in a completely unusual way. Some might call him eccentric or bizarre.
- [28:25]
Mike Palindrome
I think he was probably just too brilliant for those around him. But in any case, here's what he told me.
- [28:31]
Jack Wilson
He used to read a lot of fiction, and then one day he was trying to recall something from an Updike novel.
- [28:38]
Mike Palindrome
One thing, something or other from an Updike novel. Nicholson Baker did this brilliantly in the book you and I. By the way, if you haven't read that, that's one of the great books about reading a particular author. One of the favorite ones I've ever read. So anyway, my mentor said that he.
- [28:56]
Jack Wilson
Read 10 or 12 Updike novels, maybe more, and the only thing he could remember, the only detail, was that in one of the books the aging protagonist regretted that he could no longer piss in a stream. It was just a trickle now. Sign of age, I believe.
- [29:15]
Mike Palindrome
This was probably rabbit at rest is my guess. In any case, that was enough for my mentor.
- [29:20]
Jack Wilson
He thought, if I've read that many novels by an author and I only recall that minor detail, then what good is fiction doing me? And he switched to nonfiction and never looked back.
- [29:35]
Mike Palindrome
With two exceptions. One is, he said whenever he went.
- [29:41]
Jack Wilson
On one of his travels, and he.
- [29:43]
Mike Palindrome
Was a world class traveler, one of the great travelers, someone who's been everywhere and done everything.
- [29:50]
Jack Wilson
Whenever he was on his travels, he always tucked away in his bag. Graham Greene. Loved to read Graham Greene while he was traveling.
- [29:58]
Mike Palindrome
And the second thing he told me, the other, the second exception is he said. I read everything Murakami writes.
- [30:05]
Jack Wilson
He's my favorite author. There we go. The incredible Haruki Murakami, author of Norwegian.
- [30:12]
Mike Palindrome
Wood, Kafka on the Shore, the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase.
- [30:17]
Jack Wilson
1Q84 and many others after this.
- [30:37]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Sam.
- [31:12]
Mike Palindrome
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- [31:27]
Jack Wilson
Like the F150 Explorer and Mustang Mach.
- [31:30]
Mike Palindrome
E available feature on equipped vehicles Terms apply. Does not replace safe driving. See Ford.com BlueCruise for more details.
- [31:43]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
When did making plans get this complicated?
- [31:47]
Mike Palindrome
It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together.
- [31:52]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Use polls to settle dinner plans, send.
- [31:55]
Mike Palindrome
Event invites and pinned messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com okay. Joining me now is our old friend Mike Palindrome, the president of the Literature Supporters Club. Mike, welcome back to the History of Literature podcast.
- [32:19]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Hey Jack.
- [32:21]
Mike Palindrome
So Mike, I want to say at first I wrote down Mike is a lifelong fan of Haruki Murakami, although I know you probably didn't read him when you were a child, but in some ways I wonder if you feel like your whole life was building toward reading Murakami other than Thomas Mann and the Magic Mountain. Would you say Murakami is your second favorite author?
- [32:46]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Maybe. Second maybe. Favorite living author.
- [32:49]
Jack Wilson
Favorite living author.
- [32:50]
Mike Palindrome
Okay. I thought maybe you'd end up saying he was top five or top ten, but favorite living.
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Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. And I definitely look forward to reading him in a way that probably people look forward to eating dessert or going to a new restaurant if they're foodie.
- [33:11]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. So. Oh right, you hear that one opens up. That's like you when you read the news that the latest Murakami has been published.
- [33:21]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah.
- [33:22]
Mike Palindrome
So it's interesting because one of my questions for you was going to be, do you think it's the same for people who binge read him? It sounds like you space it out so you have a year or two in between each time you read one of his novels. But I know people who have kind of burned out. You think your reading experience has been helped by the anticipation?
- [33:45]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. I mean, for instance, I haven't read 1Q84, so I'm saving that.
- [33:53]
Mike Palindrome
What are you saving it for.
- [33:55]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I don't know, maybe I'll read it this year. We're thinking of going to London in the summer, and I always like to pick up a copy of the book in a foreign city, get a different edition and just see, you know.
- [34:12]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [34:13]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Which books of his they carry. But, yeah, I mean, I've tried to reread his works and I think, you know, one of the things he does is he uses, you know, he goes like any great writer, goes back to his strengths and uses the same motifs and subplots, mysterious cats or these weird backstories that have a supernatural element. And I think if you actually read all of his stuff, if you binge read him, like you said, it might wear on you a little bit. The way that books like Philip Roth, I mean, I think he's an excellent writer, but story after story of these domestic male dramas, you know, balanced with kind of like, not exactly a forced plot, but a really in your face plot. And after a while you can just see the patterns. And it wouldn't hit you the way it would if you had taken a break from them.
- [35:17]
Mike Palindrome
Right. I found one critic, Stephen Ems, who was writing in the Guardian, and I pulled out a bunch of quotes from him because his article on why he no longer reads Murakami, I thought was really interesting. And one of his quotes was his surreal tales about lost souls with their inevitable choices between two different women blur together.
- [35:43]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
But you see, you could say that. I mean, who is this Stephen M. What's his.
- [35:48]
Mike Palindrome
I think he's like a cultural critic in Britain.
- [35:51]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
You know, as Marnema says, all critics should get the hell out of the way of the quotes from the text. I mean, you know, Moravia. Moravia. If you read him, which I did, I binge read Moravia. Barta. Moravia, essentially, is about a guy who is lucky enough to have married a beautiful woman, but is convinced that she doesn't love him. Almost every novel has some element of that.
- [36:21]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [36:21]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And it has to do with the insecurity of a male. Any critic can tear down any great writer. I mean, that's why. I mean, nothing against Stephen Ems, but, you know, I just. I hate these things where they say, like, well, why does he. Why is he trying to write the same novel? And it's like, well, have you ever tried to write a novel?
- [36:50]
Mike Palindrome
Okay, so you're really throwing it down here. How about this one? Kazuo Ishiguro.
- [37:00]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah.
- [37:00]
Mike Palindrome
You know him, right?
- [37:02]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Sure. I love his work.
- [37:04]
Mike Palindrome
Love his work. He said, quote Haruki is one of the three or four most exciting and important writers working right now. But harder to explain just why.
- [37:19]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I guess the hard part is the important. Because the easy part is the readability.
- [37:27]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. The exciting part.
- [37:29]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. And the fact that he is a lover of American culture. He's a lover of Pulp Fiction, Raymond Chandler. He loves jazz. He loves America. I mean, in a way that a lot of Japanese writers or intellectuals either don't or don't care to talk about.
- [37:50]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [37:51]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
But that aside that cultural accessibility and the readability, you know, I think Ishiguro is saying is, like, why. Why does he matter? But maybe the issues that he grapples with are not capital. I important. I mean, maybe the same way people knock Alice Munro and say, well, what is she actually writing about? These little insular relationships. Is that important in the way that people who write about the American frontier, like portrait McCarthy, that's, like, essentially American. That's something that is historical. But is Monroe historical? Clearly not.
- [38:38]
Mike Palindrome
Right. Or the famous example of. Is Jane Austen important? How can she be so central to so central a figure in her age if she wasn't writing about Napoleon and his battlefields?
- [38:53]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. I mean, you could say Edith Wharton is more important historically about her depiction of New York society than Henry James depicting dilettante Europeans vacationing in Italy. What is Henry James really saying? Yeah, that people are exploring themselves when they go to a foreign country. Okay. So, I mean, like. But I much enjoy. I guess that's my setup for why I. But I still enjoy Henry James far more than Edith Wharton. But I am going to reread Edith Wharton because that one fan and said that it was. She said that Age of Innocence was her favorite novel. Right.
- [39:38]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [39:39]
Jack Wilson
Oh, yeah.
- [39:39]
Mike Palindrome
A lot of people.
- [39:40]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Very guilty.
- [39:41]
Mike Palindrome
A lot of people say that. Yeah. As a New Yorker, you sort of owe it to your hometown.
- [39:49]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And, you know, I love society novels. I'm a big fan of Evelyn Waugh. I was actually rereading Vile Bodies the other day, and I just love the shenanigans of society people. I mean, talk about not important at all.
- [40:11]
Mike Palindrome
I'm reminded of. I think it was John Gardner who said, if Mark Twain had been given Henry James's set of characters to work with, he would have quickly maneuvered them all into Wells. Okay, so let's back up and talk a little bit about your experience with Murakami. So when did you start reading him? Where were you when you discovered him?
- [40:37]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
All right, So I was seven years out of college. I was. I was 29, and my girlfriend who's now. My wife was reading him and she finished Wind Up Bird Chronicle, which many people consider to be his best work. It's over 700 pages long. And I've gotten a lot of good recommendations from her over the years, and also recommendations of what not to read. So I decided to read what Wind Up Bird. And it's so readable, I was thinking teenagers must love him because it somehow reminds you of genre fiction. But then there are these, you know, these craters that open up.
- [41:27]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [41:29]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
So this is the beginning of Wind Up Bird Chronicle. When the phone rang, I was in the kitchen boiling a pot full of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's the Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. I wanted to ignore the phone, not because. Not only because the spaghetti was nearly done, but because Claudio Adubo was bringing the London Symphony to its musical climax. Finally, though, I had to give in. Could have been somebody with news of a job opening. I lowered the flame, went to the living room and picked up the receiver.
- [42:06]
Mike Palindrome
I mean, it's that, you know, it's funny that you picked that passage because in some ways that might be the quintessential Murakami passage. The combination of lovingly detailed life in suburbia, cooking, listening to music, getting simple tasks on. He revels in that stuff. And then it's interrupted by something that's mysterious and leads him into something that is somewhere between fantasy and reality, or science fiction and reality, or some mystery that needs to be unraveled, or some. Some journey or quest that he's on that he's kind of pulled into by some mysterious caller or, you know, a puzzle that the narrator is somehow forced to untangle.
- [43:05]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And the pacing. So the beginning is kind of a little bit of a slow very. It's a little bit like an opera. And then the pacing. He always. His characters often go for walks and they often run into strangers who turn out to be more interesting than the narrator. And so this is what happens. A few pages later. The narrator is on a walk. I turned to see a girl standing in the garden on the other side of the alley. She was small and had her hair in a ponytail. She wore dark sunglasses with amber frames and a light blue sleeveless T shirt. The rainy season had barely ended and yet she had already managed to give her slender arms a nice smooth tan. She had one hand jammed into the pocket of her short pants. The other rested on a waist high bamboo gait, which could not have been providing Much support. Only three feet, maybe four, separated me. Hot, she said to me. Yeah, right, I answered. After this brief exchange of views, she stood there looking at me. Then she took out a box of Hope regulars from her pants pocket, drew out a cigarette and put it between her lips. She had a small mouth, the upper lip turned slightly upward. She struck a match and lit her cigarette. When she inclined her head to one side, her hair swung away to reveal a beautifully shaped ear, smooth as if freshly made, its edge aglow with downy fringe. You live around here? She asked. And then she becomes his friend, despite the age difference.
- [44:39]
Mike Palindrome
Right.
- [44:40]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
The entire novel, over 700 pages, is pretty much like that.
- [44:44]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. We're pulled in. We experience it along with the narrator. A lot of it. Right. The surprises and the mysteries. And I think Murakami even said that something about his characters experience the novel along with Murakami, that he was surprised when he was writing it.
- [45:06]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, I mean, I think. I think I would have picked him up earlier had he. Had he been writing in English. I think it was because. I mean, I'm trying to remember what I was like when I was in my 20s, but I. I definitely did not think I should be reading contemporary writers in translation, that there were so many writers writing in English that I should be reading.
- [45:32]
Mike Palindrome
Well, it's funny because, you know, one of the things I was going to say when you mentioned getting the recommendation from your girlfriend, now your wife. I got a recommendation from you that came from her. She recommended a book to you, and then you recommended it to me. Do you remember what it was? This would be the first book that I ever read that she had originally recommended.
- [45:55]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I don't. I don't remember.
- [45:57]
Mike Palindrome
It was White noise by Don DeLillo. So she was putting you on the track of some good stuff.
- [46:06]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, yeah. You always get such credibility when you make a wreck and the person comes back and says they loved it.
- [46:15]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [46:16]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. Sometimes a friend will say, I liked it, but I didn't love it like you. And you're like, oh, oh, that's horrible.
- [46:26]
Mike Palindrome
Right?
- [46:27]
Jack Wilson
Oh, I didn't like it as much.
- [46:29]
Mike Palindrome
As I think you do. They're trying to be nice, you know, they hated it.
- [46:40]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I don't know, but hated it.
- [46:41]
Mike Palindrome
They don't want to hurt your feelings. Oh, is that something you would say? You would say it just in the interest of being brutally honest?
- [46:51]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I think I just give up on a book and never bring it up.
- [46:56]
Mike Palindrome
Right. Okay. So you mentioned that he feels American. This is something that Murakami is often remarked upon. Is that he's this maybe the most Westernized writer in Japanese. And people point to a lot of the pulp pop. Sorry, pop culture references and Kentucky Fried Chicken and things like that. And I found it really interesting when I was doing some research for this episode, that he attributed part of that to a reaction against his father, who's a professor of Japanese literature, which I didn't know.
- [47:34]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, I didn't know that either. I mean, he worked. You know, he's translated. His English is excellent. He's translated Raymond Carver and J.D. salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald into Japanese.
- [47:47]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. And you can kind of tell by the authors that he chooses to translate what his style is and what he's interested in. Yeah, those are good examples. There are some others I have here. Paul Theroux, John Irving, Truman Capote and Chris Van Allsburg, who wrote the Polar Express. So those are interesting people that he's chosen to translate. He's not a translator for hire. He gets to choose what he wants to translate. So selection is pretty revealing. But there's an interesting thing. I think it goes beyond the Kentucky Fried Chicken and know Beatles songs and stuff like that. I think he actually, maybe from his. His translation or from his commitment to reading, he went through a period when he was responding or reacting or rebelling against his father where he only read American novels. And I think he developed a sort of outlook or style from Raymond Chandler and some of the other mystery authors. He was reading some of the narrative voices. I think that even if it's hard to put your finger on it in any individual sentence or passage, I think it does kind of hover over all of his work, that it feels American in a way.
- [49:16]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I mean, just the writing about sex is remarkable. The adolescent sex and Norwegian wood. The narrator's best friend is this guy who has this incredible girlfriend, and meanwhile he just sleeps with whoever he can. And he persuades the narrator to go with him to meet up with. Pick up these girls. And then in the middle of the night, he knocks on the. He taps the guy and says, can we switch girls?
- [49:46]
Mike Palindrome
Hmm.
- [49:47]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And it's just kind of out of nowhere. And then they wake up the girls and switch beds and have sex with the other girl.
- [49:56]
Mike Palindrome
Now, what does this do? I mean, what you say. His writing about sex is remarkable, but is it that it comes with an air of mystery and surprise?
- [50:06]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
He's fascinated by our need to socialize and whether solitude is a viable way to live.
- [50:16]
Mike Palindrome
Oh, yeah.
- [50:17]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
To me, that's the existential bleakness in his fiction, that people are Constantly telling the narrator, like, you know, what's wrong with you? And he's like, I don't know, but I know there is something wrong with me.
- [50:31]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [50:31]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
You know, everyone else is socializing, eating noodles, late night, drinking a lot of beer. And the narrator is sort of going through the motions a little bit, but he doesn't quite like it. And I think that must appeal to teenagers and to people in young adults in their 20s and 30s too, but especially to a Japanese audience.
- [50:57]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. Here's a quote I have from Murakami that really goes at this. I double starred this in my notes. He says, because family plays a significant role in traditional Japanese literature, any main character who is independent becomes a man who values freedom and solitude over intimacy.
- [51:23]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Wow.
- [51:23]
Mike Palindrome
And he almost seems to be saying it's against his will. It's against. It's not necessarily what Murakami has planned or believes, but that literature itself is driving him toward that because what readers expectations will be. He knows the way that novels will typically work. Family will be so valued that if you're trying to be different, what you actually end up doing is rejecting intimacy.
- [51:57]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Huh. There are real types in his fiction. The, the, the. The company man. And there's, you know, people who get their hair cut every two weeks and, you know, get all their clothes pressed and. And then you have these characters that come in and out and they have such freedom.
- [52:20]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [52:21]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
It's invigorating.
- [52:23]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [52:23]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Watching them move about. Yeah. I mean, the Japanese sexual repression and the Japanese relationships. I'm not Japanese and I've never been in, you know, a relationship with a Japanese woman or a man, but I just have this idea that there's such a right way to woo somebody. Murakami just kind of tears open the COVID and lets everyone see. There's a scene in Norwegian Wood where the narrator meets this girl, Midori, and she kind of complains about a relationship, and then she talks about her parents and she says, and the narrator, who's a bit robotic, says, do you think you weren't loved enough? And she goes, she tilted her head and looked at me. And then she gave a sharp little nod. Somewhere between not enough and not at all. I was always hungry for love. Just once I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it. To be fed so much love I couldn't take anymore. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never. Not once. And then the narrator later asks, are you waiting for perfect love? And she goes, I mean, just the fact they're having this Discussion. But she goes, no, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake, and you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy from me. And then you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me, and I say, I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for. And he goes, I'm not sure that has anything to do with love. I said with some amazement, it does. She says, you just don't know it. And that's like. That's so Japanese to me. You know, I understand it. I understand that impulse.
- [54:12]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. What's interesting, that even though I read that quote about that, basically by searching for freedom and solitude, you were, in effect, rejecting the tradition of a family and rejecting intimacy. Being on the other side of intimacy. He still has characters who are longing for love, who are devoted to love or the idea of love, or they have very particular, sometimes almost sad versions of love. If you remember me only, that will be enough. You know, that kind of thing. Everyone else can forget me, but if you remember me, that will be enough for me. And you feel like as characters are looking for love, it's just the universe is kind of stacked against them.
- [54:57]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, I mean, it's. You know, the novel Norwegian Wood is ostensibly about suicide. There are five suicides in it. But it's really, at its core, about trying to find love and trying to find a perfect love.
- [55:16]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [55:16]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And it's the novel that turned him into a rock star and forced him to move. He had to actually move and leave Japan. He lived in Berlin, Germany, for 10 years after the book came out because he had become so famous.
- [55:33]
Mike Palindrome
Wow.
- [55:33]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
They said something like 10% of Japan had read it.
- [55:36]
Mike Palindrome
Is that the place you would recommend that readers would start?
- [55:40]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, I mean, I reread. I've read this book five times.
- [55:46]
Mike Palindrome
Norwegian what?
- [55:47]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. Never mind the fact that there's a subplot in here about a sanitarium, which. And there is actually a reference to Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann.
- [56:02]
Mike Palindrome
Oh, boy, that clinched it. So what's ahead now? A Heart so White or Norwegian Wood?
- [56:12]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I don't know.
- [56:12]
Mike Palindrome
Which one have you read the most?
- [56:14]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Oh, Norwegian Wood. I think probably because a heart so white, it's a more intense book. And Norwegian Wood you can kind of pick up and put down and kind of sink back into it whenever you want.
- [56:29]
Mike Palindrome
Right.
- [56:30]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And it's the readability I think, you know, that probably speaks to how Murakami is very readable in a way that Maraues has these one sentence paragraphs that span three pages.
- [56:43]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. Murakami goes down very easy. Yeah.
- [56:47]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I mean, the dialogue. So one of the strengths of his fiction is clearly his dialogue. And I think the rhythm between people is just perfectly captured, the way someone is at an advantage and someone isn't. Like in Norwegian Wood, when the narrator first meets Midori, she goes, you enjoy solitude, traveling alone, eating alone, sitting off by yourself in lecture halls. And he goes, nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends. That's all. It just leads to disappointment. She mumbled, nobody likes being alone. I just hate to be disappointed. You can use that line if you ever write your autobiography. Thanks. I said, do you like green? She asked, why do you ask? I asked. You're wearing a green polo shirt. Not especially. I'll wear anything. Not especially. I'll wear anything. I love the way you talk. Like spreading plaster. Nice and smooth. Has anyone ever told you that? Nobody, I said.
- [57:49]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. You know, I had written down that quote, nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends. That's all. It just leads to disappointment. And I wrote freedom, intimacy, Question mark. Isn't that exactly the crux of what he's talking about there, where he. It's the misunderstanding of somebody's just searching for freedom, you know, but you don't know exactly where he stands. Is he. Does he wish he were more free? Does he. Is he longing for intimacy? Is he trying to act it out? Because that's what's expected of him. What does he believe there?
- [58:29]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
It's the fact that you can't have such a great time by yourself, no matter how much. How intellectual. And, you know, one thing that's probably under understated in his books is how intellectual his characters are.
- [58:44]
Mike Palindrome
Mm.
- [58:45]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
They're super smart and they get sick of people without being too snide and too snobby about it. But he has a number of scenes where people are out having fun and everyone's having fun except for the narrator. And the narrator's just thinking, like, you know why I'm not having fun? Because I can think of other things I'd like to do. And he's like, I'm not being judgmental. I'm just being truthful.
- [59:18]
Mike Palindrome
What was. What was the thing you had described when you were about to take a trip? You talked about this on the podcast. Maybe A listener can jump in. Maybe someone's listened to this episode recently. If you don't remember the details, because I don't remember them. But you talked about the way you like to read when you were traveling and it had something to do with. You wanted to travel with family members, but you knew you were going to sort of resent their presence. But if you were reading. But if you were reading and they were kind of in the room but you were all just enjoying your own thing, that would be sort of perfect. Was that what it was?
- [60:00]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
It was that I like to reread books when I travel because if I'm reading something new and, you know, a family member friend interrupts me, you know, which they should do because you're traveling with them and you're enjoying traveling with them. But to be interrupted, you're just like, ah. So there's something about rereading a book where you feel like, ah, well, I already know what's going to happen. I know the suicide's coming up, but I can still enjoy it.
- [60:31]
Mike Palindrome
See, that's kind of what I meant at the beginning when I said I felt like you had been training or preparing to read Murakami all your life. That seems like a very Murakami kind of sentiment to have.
- [60:42]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. I mean, I think maybe Murakami also appeals to a lot of people who love literature because, I mean, literature requires spending a lot of time by yourself. And David Gates also does this. I mean, a number of writers do this. There are characters in Gates's fiction and in Murakami's fiction where they have had a tough day or they have a lot of shit to do and they instead sit down, drink a beer and read. Like Herman Hesse.
- [61:18]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [61:18]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Or Gates Loves Dickens. They read Dombey and Son instead of doing their work. And I think as somebody who's reading, spends a lot of time by themselves, there's something about that, when it's done in a way that is completely natural, that feels so safe. Like when I. When Murakami in Norwegian Wood, the guy is kind of house sitting his friend's parents bookstore and he can't sleep. So he goes downstairs, looks through the books and finds a Hermann Hesse book and spends all night nursing a couple of beers and reading the book. And then the sun rises. It really kind of encapsulates what it takes to love literature.
- [62:10]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. You know, when I started dating the woman who's now my wife, I went to her family's house. She has a big family. And I was not that used to a Big family. My family is small and quiet and hers is large and loud and active. And I was there. Everyone was home. It was a holiday. Everyone was running around and cooking things and catching up and doing all this stuff. And after a few hours, I just slipped away and went to the room where I was staying and opened up my book and thought I would spend half an hour or so reading. And my wife came downstairs and was like, what's wrong? Are you sick? What are you doing in here? I said, I'm reading my book. You know, I wasn't. I didn't walk out on any conversations or anything. I just kind of subtracted myself. And she said, everyone is wondering where you are, if something's wrong. And in some ways, you know, when you talk about literature, when you settle into a book and it feeling safe, I was thinking of the story of my trip to my in law's house and thinking no one would have cared if I were sleeping. Sleeping feels very safe sometimes, too. You settle in and you know you're not going to be disturbed and you're going to have this time with yourself. But the reading felt to them like an act of aggression, you know, like, you're choosing Charles Dickens over us. And I. I saw their point, and I haven't done it since, but it. It does feel like I understand that impulse.
- [64:01]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Well, you know, that reminds me of something that's. I've observed with the whole thing with iPhones and tablets that there's something about.
- [64:12]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [64:13]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
A newspaper. When you're opening up a newspaper, that is permissible, but you can open up a paperback novel because the novel says to the world, like, hey, I need something much better than your company.
- [64:28]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [64:29]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Whereas a newspaper says, you know, hey, I'm going to take a little break, but feel free to interrupt me. And the iPhone is supposed to say, hey, we'll all stare at our phones together. And we've made this pact, and that's acceptable.
- [64:45]
Mike Palindrome
Mm.
- [64:46]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And it's. It's unfortunate that you. You can stare at a phone, but you can't pull out, you know, Dickens.
- [64:55]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [64:56]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Because it's totally unacceptable at, like, Thanksgiving, everyone can stare at their phone and they can read, like, article after article of crap, but if you plot Dickens, people will be like, oh, what, What. What are you doing?
- [65:10]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. Yeah. Like, you really don't want to be here, do you?
- [65:14]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
It's like you've been staring at your phone for two and a half hours.
- [65:17]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. And it's like if you pull your phone, everyone's like, okay, I get it. These things are magical and entertaining. And we all kind of, you know, we're all sort of have a bit of ADD now, and we all kind of want to check headlines and our Twitter feed or whatever every once in a while. But if you. Yeah, if you were to pull out. Right. Okay. So you've mentioned teenagers a couple of times. And one of the things I was struck by is I was reading this. Are you familiar with the author, John Green? The guy. Okay, so he wrote the Fault in Our Stars.
- [65:56]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Oh, right. Turtles all the Way Down.
- [65:58]
Mike Palindrome
Turtles all the Way Down.
- [66:00]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, my daughter's reading that.
- [66:01]
Mike Palindrome
Okay, so I've got here a handful of quotes. Some of them are from Murakami and some of them are from John Green. And I'm going to read them and you can guess. I'm going to have you guess which is which. Okay. Okay, first one. What happens when people open their hearts?
- [66:26]
Jack Wilson
They get better.
- [66:30]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
That's John Green.
- [66:32]
Mike Palindrome
That is from Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Let me try another one.
- [66:43]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Okay.
- [66:44]
Mike Palindrome
I dream sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.
- [66:51]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
That's John Green.
- [66:53]
Mike Palindrome
That's from Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart. Oh, for two. Okay, how about this one? To be alive is to be missing.
- [67:09]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I guess I'm going to say Murakami.
- [67:12]
Jack Wilson
That's John Green.
- [67:15]
Mike Palindrome
I could keep going, but maybe we should stop there. But there's, you know, it has a lot of. Murakami has a lot of. If you look at what are the favorite quotes of Murakami? What's your favorite quote that Murakami has? A lot of people pick out these. They're kind of pop wisdom, almost like self help. You know, they're. They're kind of vaguely philosophical, melancholy advice, you know?
- [67:42]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Really? I guess I don't get that from him.
- [67:46]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. Maybe it blends in with the rest of the novel, but that's what people seem to pick out. Like, here's the most. Here's the most popular quote from Murakami. And this is from the site Goodreads, where everybody votes for their favorite quote. And his is quote. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
- [68:09]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Huh.
- [68:11]
Mike Palindrome
You know? Really? Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of thing that John Green would say. Right? But it's saying Norwegian Wood. Or. Here's another one. Memories warm you up from the inside, but they also tear you apart.
- [68:26]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, that's Murakami, right?
- [68:30]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's from Kafka on the shore.
- [68:33]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I mean, you know, I guess I don't really stop and think of those quotes, but they probably help make it, you know, very, very readable, you know, because his. He doesn't use many adjectives and there aren't many, you know, dependent clauses, long sentences.
- [68:54]
Mike Palindrome
And you know, what both he and John Green are probably both doing, too, is they're putting these observations in the mouths of characters. So it's not like this is Murakami as the Tolstoyan narrator saying, you know, all happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It's not him observing something about the world. It's characters are trying to communicate with one another and trying to express some kind of truth or observation that they've made. Yeah, okay.
- [69:30]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I mean, but, you know, this is the kind of stuff that I think of more of him. Like this character saying that her sister had committed suicide in her room. And she said, I called out to her, dinner is ready. She was standing by the window. She wasn't in bed. She was standing by the window, staring outside with her neck bent at a kind of angle like this, like she was thinking. The room was dark, the lights were out. It was hard to see. That's when I noticed she looked taller than usual. What's going on? I wondered. Is it so strange that she have high heels on? Was she standing on something? I moved closer, and I was about. Just about to speak to her again when I saw it. There was a rope above her head. It came down from a beam in the ceiling. And this is the great line. I mean, it was amazingly straight, like someone had drawn a line in space with a ruler. The sister had hanged herself. I mean, that description that dinner is ready, and then you see her by the window, but she looks taller than usual. I mean, it's just brilliant.
- [70:33]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah.
- [70:33]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
You know, and that line, I mean, it was amazingly straight, like someone had drawn a line in space with a ruler. And it's like, unforgettable.
- [70:43]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. So that. That hits you more and hits you harder than some of the quotes that I had read earlier.
- [70:53]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. I mean, but, you know, I mean, his writing is a real lesson in saying what you. What you saying, what you mean. When I wrote in my notes that he has a real intelligence, but it never. He's able to kind of have some perspective on his intelligence, unlike Gaddis or David Foster Wallace, who basically use their intelligence. Well, sometimes use their intelligence to say fuck you to the reader.
- [71:22]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah, he doesn't do that.
- [71:24]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
No. It's the scene I just described that could have been done and with a lot more suspense. Well, I don't know about suspense, but they could have done been done with an over, over the top verbal intensity. And he doesn't do that.
- [71:42]
Mike Palindrome
Mm. I have a perfect quote that goes along with this. Yeah, this is Murakami from his Paris Review interview. And he says, I get some images and connect one piece to another. That's the storyline. Then I explain the storyline to the reader. You should be very kind when you explain something if you think it's okay. I know that it's a very arrogant thing. Easy words and good metaphors, good allegory. So that's what I do. I explain everything very carefully and clearly.
- [72:22]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah.
- [72:22]
Mike Palindrome
You could say he's being self effacing and I think he is. He seems. He always comes across as very modest.
- [72:28]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah.
- [72:28]
Mike Palindrome
And not taking himself too seriously, which I think is one of the reasons why he's so popular. But I think it's. I think he sees it as a real obligation to the reader.
- [72:38]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
To be clear, I read that he sometimes writes in English and translates it into Japanese to see how it sounds. So he's very, you know, his first love. You know, Thomas Mann says that every writer is a failed artist. That's something else. And Murakami was a failed jazz musician.
- [72:57]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah. And he owned a jazz cafe.
- [73:00]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. So, I mean, Thomas Mann was a failed composer, so. But yeah, I mean, the sounds of the dialogue are great, but I do want to just drive home how much sex is in his novels. People are not bowled over to want to read them, but if they just. And they're not titillating at all. I mean, here's an exchange between two characters. Do guys think about particular girls when they masturbate? This woman asks. I gave up trying to avoid the question. Well, I do. At least I don't know about anybody else. Have you ever thought about me when you were doing it? Tell me the truth. I won't get mad. No, I haven't. To tell you the truth, I answered honestly. Why not? Aren't I attractive enough? Oh, you're plenty attractive, all right. You're cute and sexy. Outfits look good on you. So why don't you think about me? Well, first of all, I think of you as a friend, so I don't want to get you involved in my sexual fantasies. And second, you've got someone else you're supposed to be thinking about. That's about the size of it. You have good manners, even when it comes to Something like this. That's why I like. That's what I like about you. Still, couldn't you allow me just one brief appearance? I want to be in one of your sexual fantasies or daydreams or whatever you call them. I'm asking you because we're friends. Who else can I ask for something like that? I can't just walk up to someone, anyone, and say, when you masturbate tonight, will you please think of me for a second? It's because I think of you as a friend that I'm asking. And I want you to tell me later what it was like, you know, what you did and stuff. I let out a sigh. It's.
- [74:34]
Mike Palindrome
You chose the word titillating to say that. It's not titillating. It's not salacious, that's for sure. And it's not dirty, or you wouldn't call it erotica. But there is something titillating or exciting about the idea of this desire of hers, Right?
- [74:53]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah. I mean, there, you know, there's oral sex. There's, you know, a lot of foreplay. And this is probably a PG podcast, so I won't go into it. But he really does try to capture the kind of things that are at the heart of relationships, in addition to, you know, having a lot in common. I mean, there, you know, people are having sex.
- [75:19]
Mike Palindrome
Right?
- [75:20]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
And they're comparing, they're taking notes, they're comparing against past partners. And, you know, it's refreshing to read.
- [75:28]
Mike Palindrome
Well, and it's especially refreshing to read in the context of him, where he's. He's going off into. He's taking some wild detours. And so it's nice that it would be easy for him to basically turn all of the characters into Harry Potter or, you know, young adult type of. Not sexual beings.
- [75:51]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah.
- [75:51]
Mike Palindrome
You know, they could just be Luke Skywalker. Maybe that's a better example. You know, as they're dealing with this labyrinth that they're trying to get to the. The middle of. You could subtract that side of them just because you don't want to take the risk as an author.
- [76:07]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
There's a quote by him that I love, you know, talking about his humility. He said that with nothing but my writing, I have made a number of human beings want to drink beer. You have no idea how happy this made me because people were saying that there's so much drinking and eating in his fiction.
- [76:32]
Mike Palindrome
Here's another one. Here's a similar one. I think this is similarly humble. And then I want to do a Quick quiz with you.
- [76:40]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Another one.
- [76:41]
Mike Palindrome
When asked what was the most important advice he could give to a young writer, Murakami said, every time you write, ask yourself, could this scene take place.
- [76:52]
Jack Wilson
In a hot air balloon?
- [76:55]
Mike Palindrome
If the answer is yes, then it probably should. Okay, so here's what happened. I typed in Google. Now, don't cheat by going to your computer. Okay, I typed in Google.
- [77:10]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I already failed the John Green quiz. I have no pride.
- [77:17]
Mike Palindrome
So I typed in. I was trying to figure something out, and I typed in is Murakami. And then I was going to type in the word. But before that, Google started suggesting what they thought my question was going to be based on the searches of millions of Google users. So there were four things that came up. Do you think you can name any of those four? What are people wondering when they type? Is Murakami blank Nobel. Oh, that's interesting because he has not won the Nobel yet. He is currently listed as the second most favorite to win. The odds are 9 to 1. And the most favored author to win is 1. I'm hoping to do an episode on soon, Googie Wa Thiongo, who is at 6 to 1 and he should win. I mean, the guy, he has an amazing story. He's lived in exile, he was imprisoned, and he'd be a perfect Nobel winner. And his books are excellent. So it's not a surprise that he's the favorite. Margaret Atwood is third, 11 to 1. Javier Marias, old friend of the show is 17 to 1. And Philip Roth is 17 1, which is interesting because I thought people thought he would never win the Nobel. And Martin Amos and Salman Rushdie are tied at 51 1. I don't think Martin Amos is going to win the Nobel Prize.
- [78:51]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, Martin Amos is. I think if he wrote an. Maybe two more. Yeah, really good books maybe.
- [78:59]
Mike Palindrome
And maybe a kind of Hemingway old Man in the Sea kind of thing.
- [79:03]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Yeah, because like yellow dog and Dr. Zorba, I mean, he's, he's kind of. He's. I mean, talk about re trying to rewrite old books.
- [79:12]
Mike Palindrome
And Rushdie must be like, what do I have to do to be why am I tied with this guy? I mean, Rushdie, like, he was, I mean, you know, his life story. Okay, so what do you think? People were searching? Oh, no, Bell. That was not one of the top four. Any other guesses?
- [79:33]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Dead.
- [79:37]
Mike Palindrome
No. I'll tell you the four. Tell me what you think. The first thing that came up is Murakami.
- [79:43]
Jack Wilson
Postmodern.
- [79:46]
Mike Palindrome
I think that's probably students, right? Trying to Write a paper or trying to. Or maybe they've been assigned to read a postmodern writer and they're wondering if Murakami will count. Number two is good. I think that's readers trying to decide whether they should read one of his books. Number three, literature. What is Murakami Literature?
- [80:10]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Oh, versus genre, I guess.
- [80:14]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [80:14]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah, that's interesting. And number four is Murakami. Magical Realism.
- [80:22]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Oh, yeah. So I guess it's the whole, like mysterious animals and supernatural characters.
- [80:32]
Mike Palindrome
Yeah, right, right. It's close, but, you know, you don't know. I guess if you're trying to maybe again, you've been assigned read a magical realism novel or wondering if there's ever been one that wasn't based in Latin America or something like that. Okay. So then I thought, well, I don't know how unusual these completed sentences are. So I did a couple of other authors just to check. And this time I'm going to do the quiz the other way around. So I'm going to give you what Google completed and you tell me what author I was searching for.
- [81:12]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Okay.
- [81:12]
Mike Palindrome
Are you ready?
- [81:13]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Sure.
- [81:14]
Mike Palindrome
Is blank. And it completed as difficult to read. Worth reading. Worth it. Good and boring.
- [81:28]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
David Foster Wallace.
- [81:37]
Mike Palindrome
Difficult to read.
- [81:39]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Joyce.
- [81:41]
Mike Palindrome
That's a good guess. It's actually Marcel Proust.
- [81:46]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Oh, okay. Yeah.
- [81:47]
Mike Palindrome
And then I did one other is blank. Alive, feminist, vegetarian, dead and vegan.
- [82:03]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Joan Didion.
- [82:08]
Mike Palindrome
Another good guess was Margaret Atwood.
- [82:11]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Okay, I was gonna say Margaret Atwood.
- [82:13]
Mike Palindrome
It's very interesting because those are three very different collections of adjectives or, you know, descriptors that these authors filled in. It made me think maybe we should do a whole show on that where we try to trick each other and maybe it'll get old. Okay, so what else do we have to say about Murakami before we wrap things up here? Did we leave anything out? Anything else you wanted to add?
- [82:39]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Well, I was going to say, you know, back to your original question about binge reading, that, you know, I would definitely start with Norwegian Wood or Wind up Bird and then read the other one. And then I would read Kafka on the Shore and then Colorless Tzukuru Tazaki south of the Border, then Hard Boiled Wonderland, and then I wouldn't read anything else by him, but I do have to read IQ 84.
- [83:14]
Mike Palindrome
Would you space them out?
- [83:16]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I think I would read Norwegian Wood and win a bird and try to read them back to back. Yeah.
- [83:21]
Mike Palindrome
What about his book about running?
- [83:23]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
You know, I. I skimmed and read parts of it. I'm not crazy about his nonfiction. But I'm also just not crazy about nonfiction by writers. Yeah, I just feel like it's sort of like they burn the candle so bright trying to write their when they write their fiction that when I can't help thinking the non fiction, they're sort of kind of doing it half half heartedly.
- [83:50]
Mike Palindrome
Mm. Right.
- [83:52]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
But the nerve gas attack in the subway book, just the subject matter alone made me interested. So that that's another thing maybe I'll read when I'm one. I haven't read them in a while.
- [84:04]
Mike Palindrome
Okay, when for the rest of us we can jump in as you recommend with Norwegian Wood and the Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Mike, as always, thanks for joining me on the History of Literature.
- [84:15]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Thanks, Jack.
- [84:30]
Jack Wilson
Okay, there we go. Back in 2025. Now that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to President Mike, as always, and to Haruki Murakami, who really has done a lot to advance his particular brand of not quite magical realism, not quite genre, definitely literature, at least in my opinion. Very good stuff, including the short story Super Frog Saves Tokyo, which is worth a read. We will be back with more of our countdown of the 25 greatest books of all time, plus a look at the magical year 1925 and a discussion of Jane Austen's favorite brother, Henry. Kathryn Mansfield is around the corner and Christina Rossetti and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Johannes Gutenberg. Don't forget to put down your deposit. If you'd like to join us on the first ever History of Literature podcast tour through London, Oxford and Bath. With lots of good hotels, fine eating and special guests, all those experts waiting to greet us, that's at John shorestravel or@historyofliterature.com and our Patreon account for your low ed version of the show, patreon.com literature. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. It's hard to remember now, but the Internet used to be fun.
- [86:03]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
I can't believe how easy it is.
- [86:05]
Mike Palindrome
To surf the net.
- [86:06]
Jack Wilson
Surf's up on Long Shadow Breaking the Internet, we'll trace how a tool that.
- [86:10]
Mike Palindrome
Once fueled democracy, opposition activists organized the march on Facebook became a weapon aimed.
- [86:16]
Jack Wilson
At the very heart of it.
- [86:17]
Mike Palindrome
You're watching the unraveling of our democracy right now from longlead and prx. This this is Longshadow Breaking the Internet. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [86:30]
Guest/Advertiser Voices
Hi, I'm Rick Rebeck.
- [86:31]
Jack Wilson
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Guest/Advertiser Voices
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Jack Wilson
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Guest/Advertiser Voices
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Jack Wilson
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Guest/Advertiser Voices
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Jack Wilson
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