Book Review: Hear the Wing Sing/Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami (Originally published in 1979 and 1980)

The odd "one book is always upside down" design of the 2016 edition of Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball, 1973, by Haruki Murakami.

Japanese author Haruki Murakami.

Japanese author Haruki Murakami has fashioned a career as one of the most critically acclaimed novelists of the past 45 years. Murakami’s career began with two short novellas, Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and Pinball, 1973 (1980). The two novellas were collected in one volume published by Vintage International in 2016. I had heard of Murakami’s work for a long time, but what really sparked my interest was a presentation on Murakami by one of my students when I was teaching 10th grade World History. The student relayed Murakami’s story about the moment he decided he should write a novel: when he saw American baseball player Dave Hilton hit a double. I thought, “Okay, that was the moment he decided to become a novelist? I need to read some of his work.” Murakami writes about that moment in the introduction, concluding that “All I can say is that my life was drastically and permanently altered in that instant—when Dave Hilton belted that beautiful, ringing double at Jingu Stadium.” (p.xi)  

Throughout Hear the Wind Sing, Murakami refers back to fictional American author Derek Hartfield, who committed suicide by jumping off the Empire State Building in 1938. Hartfield is not presented as a great author, but a mediocre stylist who nevertheless emerges with an interesting piece of advice for authors: “What would be the point of writing a novel about things everyone already knows?” (p.79)  

Murakami references my favorite author F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hear the Wind Sing when he quotes these famous lines from Fitzgerald’s essay “The Crack-Up": “The test of a first-rate intelligence is its ability to function while holding two opposite ideas at the same time.” Neither the unnamed narrator nor the character known as the Rat can remember who said that brilliant quote, unfortunately. 

Hear the Wind Sing is an unconventional novel, as there’s very little plot or character development. It’s a mood piece, creating a feeling of ennui and stasis. I enjoyed reading Hear the Wind Sing and settling into the mood of the book.  

Pinball, 1973 I found less successful. Hear the Wind Sing more convincingly breaks the conventions of literature. There is no real plot to speak of. Whereas in Pinball, 1973, there was just enough plot for me to be annoyed that it doesn’t go anywhere or do anything. Once again, there’s an unnamed narrator, and the Rat is again a character. It’s not entirely clear if the narrator of Pinball, 1973 is the same narrator as the one in Hear the Wind Sing, and it ultimately doesn’t seem to matter.  

The narrator of Pinball, 1973 lives with two gorgeous twins, who are literally indistinguishable from each other. It’s clear that the narrator is having sex with both of the twins, and the storyline is so ridiculous that it just comes off as a puerile masturbatory fantasy, like something that Norman Mailer or Philip Roth would have come up with and then discarded as too unbelievable. I thought it would have been funnier if the narrator wasn’t sleeping with either of the twins, but that’s just me. Because the twins are indistinguishable from each other, they offer no character development, and their defining character trait is their devotion to the narrator.  

The plot of Pinball, 1973 revolves around the narrator’s attempt to track down an old pinball machine that he was obsessed with playing. Spoiler alert: he tracks it down, but then doesn’t even play it! He just has an imaginary conversation with the machine. Of course, the pinball machine’s voice is feminine.  

The book design of Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball, 1973 is too clever by half, as you have to flip the book upside down to read the second novella. It’s a gimmick that doesn’t serve any true purpose. 

Quibbles aside, I’d recommend Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball, 1973 to fans of Murakami’s who are interested in reading his first novellas. The book definitely sparked my interest in reading more of Murakami’s work.  

Book Review: Steaming to Bamboola: The World of a Tramp Freighter (1982) by Christopher Buckley

 

The cover of the paperback edition of Steaming to Bamboola, by Christopher Buckley, 1982. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

The ship Transcolumbia, renamed Columbianna in Steaming to Bamboola. Built in 1945 as the USS Marine Lynx, it was scrapped in 1988.

Christopher Buckley in the early 1980's.

I could have told you before reading Christopher Buckley’s book Steaming to Bamboola that I was 99% sure I wouldn’t want to work on a cargo ship, and now that I’ve finished the book, I can say that I’m 100% sure I wouldn’t want to work on a cargo ship.

Steaming to Bamboola: The World of a Tramp Freighter, chronicles a late 1979 Atlantic crossing of the cargo ship Transcolumbia. (The ship is called Columbianna in the book, as a way of protecting the identities of the ship and crew that Buckley was writing about.) The Transcolumbia was built as the USS Marine Lynx during the waning days of World War II, and it saw service as a troop ship during the Korean War. It was mothballed by the Navy in the late 1950’s, and in 1967 it was purchased by the Hudson Waterways Corporation, converted to a cargo ship, and renamed the Transcolumbia.

Steaming to Bamboola was Christopher Buckley’s first book, and it came out in April of 1982, when Buckley was 29 years old. Life aboard a cargo freighter is an unusual choice of subject matter for a first book, and certainly not what readers who are now familiar with Buckley’s political satire would expect if they ventured to explore his back catalogue.

Buckley spent a year in the Merchant Marine when he was 18, after graduating high school and before attending Yale. I would venture to guess that Buckley was the only member of his Yale graduating class to have spent time on a Norwegian freighter. Buckley has written about his year in the Merchant Marine in several of his essays.

Buckley keeps himself out of the narrative of the book, and I think that was the right decision to make. Steaming to Bamboola doesn’t read like a typical first book, where the author feels compelled to tell us absolutely everything they know about x, y, and z in order to impress the reader with their brilliance. Buckley is smart enough to simply let the narrative reveal itself to us. Information that gives the reader additional context for understanding shipping is well integrated into the book.

There is humor in Steaming to Bamboola, but it isn’t the focus of the book. Buckley still gets off some clever lines, like this description of Congressman John M. Murphy: “He was understandably anxious, inasmuch as it is inconvenient to campaign for public office while the nation is watching videotapes of you accepting a bribe from an undercover FBI agent posing as a sheik.” (p.90)

A line that wasn’t funny in 1982 but will now raise a chuckle is one describing the many jobs that the Chief Mate on the ship has held: “He’d taught O.J. Simpson how to type at a business school in San Diego.” (p.109)

The book paints vivid sketches of the crew, and the reader witnesses the mounting tensions as personalities clash. On the journey to Bremerhaven, the ship almost hit a mine left over from World War II in the English Channel. Yikes. On the return voyage, the ship must battle through a storm that is a category 12, hurricane force storm on the Beaufort wind force scale. Buckley reminds us of nature’s power as the 523-foot-long ship is battered about by the wind and waves.

Steaming to Bamboola isn’t a travel book in the traditional sense, but what it has in common with many great travel books is the message that the voyage is ultimately more important than the destination. It’s an interesting journey, and I would recommend it to anyone fascinated by the ocean.

Book Review: Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner (1984)

British novelist Anita Brookner, 1928-2016.

Paperback cover of Hotel du Lac, first published in 1984.

I wasn’t aware of the British novelist Anita Brookner until last year, when I read her excellent Introduction to the 1988 collection The Stories of Edith Wharton. I promptly Googled Brookner and read about her fascinating career. Already a well-established art historian, Brookner published her first novel in 1981 at the age of 53. She ended up publishing more than 20 novels, and she won the Booker Prize for her 1984 novel Hotel du Lac. I made a mental note to read her fiction, and I figured, why not start with Hotel du Lac?

Hotel du Lac follows the writer Edith Hope through a sort of forced vacation at a hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland. Eventually we learn why Edith’s friends have suggested that she take a trip for a while. Hotel du Lac is a record of Edith’s time at this small hotel, at the end of the tourist season, and the odd assortment of people who are still there. Brookner is an excellent writer, and Hotel du Lac is full of insightful observations about the human condition.

Such as Edith reflecting that she didn’t take enough care about her appearance: “She had failed to scale the heights of consumerism that were apparently as open to her as they were to anyone else; this could now be remedied.” (p.44) 

Another one of my favorite lines deals with how novelists see things: “Edith reflected, with some humility, that she was not good at human nature. She could make up characters but she could not decipher those in real life.” (p.72) 

While at the Hotel du Lac, Edith meets the handsome and charming Mr. Neville. (I immediately imagined the suave actor James Mason as Mr. Neville.) Neville comes off as a libertine, only interested in his own pleasure, but he has an interesting line of dialogue: “Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.” (p.99) 

Hotel du Lac reads like an old-fashioned novel, and indeed, it might seem to owe more of a debt to Edith Wharton than to the year it which it was published. One could argue that this gives the novel a sense of timelessness; that it isn’t wedded forever to 1984. 

Hotel du Lac was something of a surprise winner of the Booker Prize, as most prognosticators had expected the prize to go to J.G. Ballard’s historical fiction Empire of the Sun. Regardless of what type of novel you prefer, there are many pleasures to be found in Hotel du Lac.