The Wind-up Bird Chronicles...
Sep. 11th, 2011 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranContinuing my run of Murakami titles... This one was probably the most conventionally structured in terms of magic realism novels. It reminded me a bit of The Zahir, although I thought The Wind-up Bird Chronicles was far superior. Basically, mysteries increase throughout the novel, until they reach a point when they start folding back upon each other and converging.
I've got a bit of a theory about how this works.
Suppose you had to write an interesting scene about a bus ride. Think of all the different ways you could do this. First, you could add in some interesting or amusing details about the bus ride itself. It's not just a normal bus ride. It's a space bus ride. Or it's a ride on a talking bus. Next, you could try, for example, adding some jeopardy or character motivation. The character needs to make it to the next town to escape something or save someone. Or, you could throw in obstacles the character needs to surmount to complete the journey. The bus breaks down. A weirdo gets into the next seat. And so on.
Another way to approach this is simply to play the bus ride completely straight, but give the reader a mystery to ponder. Say, that just before the bus ride, a man approaches the protagonist and warns him that a fox is going to eat the world unless the frog can be delivered across the rainbow bridge. Then the bus ride plays out in loving detail, showing the towns the bus passes through, the way the seats rattle at each pothole, the way the old lady on the right hand side snores, and the reader is hooked because there's a question waiting to be answered.
And then, when the bus ride ends, crucially, just as the interest is starting to fade, there's a beautiful woman at the terminal, slipping beside the protagonist and telling him she has to pass him a secret. And then we go on to the next scene. At some point, of course, you need to tie back the woman and her secret and the fox who eats the world, and that's where the story really lives, in the way the mysteries all hook up together to form an ending.
And that's where someone like Murakami is a true master, in that you can stand at the mid-point of the story and look at all the different puzzles and think there's no way anyone can tie this all together. And yet he does. Kind of like the same way you can look at Mozart and see all the standard set of classical era musical tricks. This is how you build tension away from the home key. This is how you resolve a cadence. Yet, if you apply all those tricks together, all you get is Michael Haydn (sorry, Michael). The real genius lies in how you use those techniques, not just how well you can execute them.
I've got a bit of a theory about how this works.
Suppose you had to write an interesting scene about a bus ride. Think of all the different ways you could do this. First, you could add in some interesting or amusing details about the bus ride itself. It's not just a normal bus ride. It's a space bus ride. Or it's a ride on a talking bus. Next, you could try, for example, adding some jeopardy or character motivation. The character needs to make it to the next town to escape something or save someone. Or, you could throw in obstacles the character needs to surmount to complete the journey. The bus breaks down. A weirdo gets into the next seat. And so on.
Another way to approach this is simply to play the bus ride completely straight, but give the reader a mystery to ponder. Say, that just before the bus ride, a man approaches the protagonist and warns him that a fox is going to eat the world unless the frog can be delivered across the rainbow bridge. Then the bus ride plays out in loving detail, showing the towns the bus passes through, the way the seats rattle at each pothole, the way the old lady on the right hand side snores, and the reader is hooked because there's a question waiting to be answered.
And then, when the bus ride ends, crucially, just as the interest is starting to fade, there's a beautiful woman at the terminal, slipping beside the protagonist and telling him she has to pass him a secret. And then we go on to the next scene. At some point, of course, you need to tie back the woman and her secret and the fox who eats the world, and that's where the story really lives, in the way the mysteries all hook up together to form an ending.
And that's where someone like Murakami is a true master, in that you can stand at the mid-point of the story and look at all the different puzzles and think there's no way anyone can tie this all together. And yet he does. Kind of like the same way you can look at Mozart and see all the standard set of classical era musical tricks. This is how you build tension away from the home key. This is how you resolve a cadence. Yet, if you apply all those tricks together, all you get is Michael Haydn (sorry, Michael). The real genius lies in how you use those techniques, not just how well you can execute them.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 06:55 am (UTC)It did all tie up, though, and beautifully, and tied up a few more things that hadn't even been introduced....
no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 08:54 am (UTC)