The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was one of the books I reread in December. Of all the books I reread during the month, it was perhaps the one I remembered the least about from the first time around. Even Mr. Honda – a character I liked so much I started using him as the answer for security questions on internet accounts – turned out to play a role different from what I’d recalled.
It was, overall, an excellent book. There is a chance I read this book again, of course, but I say this in the sense that there is a chance I might do anything again. For one, the book itself checks in at over six hundred pages and that’s a big commitment to make for any type of reading.
It's a difficult task to write any kind of review for such a long book. So, I thought I'd do something a litter different with the review. In the spirit of the book's meandering style, I got the whole, err, staff here at TOA together and asked them to also read the book. Once they were done, I had them comment on their favorite note, lesson, or observation from the work. The results are below.
(Editor’s note – specific references that may ruin aspects of the book for the new reader have been removed from these observations).
Thanks for reading.
Tim
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The Business Bro: Without question, the idea that the surest route to independence is to learn a useful skill. It’s best exemplified by (editor’s note – name removed) but many of these characters demonstrate the same quality – (editor’s note – name removed) on the computer, (editor’s note – name removed) and the ability to speak a foreign language, even (editor’s note – name removed) demonstrates the idea in action at times. I understand a lot of Murakami’s characters, in general, tend to have a streak of independence and so I recognize that this is not a surprising observation when put it the context of his other work.
Still, it's a good lesson. I think most people struggling early in their career track would do well to heed this advice. Learning how to ‘do what the boss says’ isn’t a useful skill, or at least, isn’t useful in the context of paving the road to independence. Like any complex problem, the solution lies in thinking through the simplest aspects first. Almost all successful careers are defined by a significant degree of autonomy. And which people are most likely to get autonomy? Those who have a unique skill. So, the worker should always find useful skills to learn that are a little different from what others on the same career level are working on. The more time or detail put into this new skill, the better, because the harder it is to learn, the harder it will be for others to catch up later.
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TOA: I liked the brief glimpses into childhood development. In one section, it’s noted how kids who solve everything for themselves become very lonely since they stop turning to others for guidance or advice. It’s followed up a bit later with a comment about how the real world differs from the academic world through its insistence on communal group action. The progression is pretty clear – by learning, possibly in school, how to become self-reliant, a child puts him- or herself in danger of not just isolation and loneliness but also of becoming a somewhat redundant variable in the real world’s problem-solving equations.
A follow-up question I mulled over here is why this thought would apply only to kids. And although it does make a specific reference to schooling, I don’t think it has to, really. A reader can see this in how Murakami blurs the line between some of the adults and kids in this book - it probably isn't his intention for this thought to apply strictly in the context of kids growing up into adults.
I could be wrong, of course. Everything starts in childhood and maybe this is important to keep in mind. But on the other hand, most kids are adults, anyway, just a little dumber than their older counterparts but with a stronger innate sense of justice.
If you are interested in just adult-focused ideas, I would suggest two. First, it seemed throughout the book that the adults who don’t seek counsel end up seeming pretty lonely. And it was a recurring theme that the difference between people who get big things done and those who just talk about getting big things done was the ability to pull people together for a group effort.
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Master Poo: Communicating face-to-face prevents misunderstandings, preventing misunderstandings keeps people from becoming unhappy, therefore communicate face-to-face to keep people from becoming unhappy.
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The Editor: The comment that sometimes meeting a new person is more like running into a long-lost friend was pretty amusing. At first, it seems pretty neat, but there is also a reason why we fall out of touch with certain friends.
I guess it’s not entirely clear to me exactly what this idea wants to convey.
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Moya: Money, money, everything is about money, if you are bald, money, money, it will make your hair grow, if you have pain, money, money, it will make your pain go, it’s insane, sit, have a whiskey, sit, of course it costs money, but I’ll buy it, just have the whiskey, money, money, it’s all about it, homeless people are homeless because of money, they don’t have it, so they get a label, and it isn’t even about them, it’s about their money, ridiculous, such a materialistic thing to say about someone, to define them by their possessions, and yet their hair, Moya, the homeless, some of them with the most beautiful heads of hair, fuller than the rush hour train, if they have hair and not homes, how could a product cure baldness, money, I spit on it, drink, Moya, drink, they say money, some things it cannot buy, well I say if you can buy it, money can buy it, right, otherwise how could I buy it, silly these talkers are Moya, silly, what money can buy, buy, and save up your energy for what it cannot buy, that’s the secret, little by little we learn these secrets, Moya, because little by little a secret is built, no one lies all at once, but we just say, oh, I’ll hide this little detail, and the next time, another, and soon, a whole world disappears down the well, oh the pain of it Moya, and how can we live with it, how can we live knowing some still have faith in others, complete faith, as they get cheated and deceived, it’s the finest quality, Moya, to have faith in someone else, unquestioning faith, unrelenting faith, and to know these people exist, the pain of it, how can they have faith, like the miser in his money, faith in his money, oh, and money, money, it cannot solve the pain, Moya, the pain, but have this whiskey, it does help, doesn’t it, maybe whiskey is what money can buy for the pain…
