Norwegian Wood

The feeling of modern isolation is universal, yet his work remains entirely rooted in the specific tensions of the Japanese urban experience.

Now, if Wind-Up Bird sounds a little too sprawling or weird for a first try, his earlier novel, Norwegian Wood, is a much more straightforward, grounded entry point into his work.

But either way, his fiction has introduced millions of readers to the atmosphere of contemporary Japan.

Which brings us to a fascinating paradox.

What's your...

You, you know Murakami? You know Nor- Norwegian Wood?

Yeah, of course.

Have you...

Have you ever purposely or accidentally written a song directly inspired by something you've read?

I sung Midori that came that came out before the album and that was based on a character called Midori in this Murakami book Norwegian Wood and yeah I really liked her because she's like she's this kind of like quite wild character and she is sort of like living in a way that's kind of like protesting against all of the things that she has to do or like the things that sort of like tie her down and that song is kind of about like it's called it's like based on her because it's called Midori but then Midori also means green and I was thinking about like the way that plants come up through the cracks in pavements and like that's like a small little protest

yeah

it's like cities

It was classic stuff, like a Japanese eggplant with hacho miso, katsuobushi, ginger.

But then it was based on, like, a scene in, I wanna say Norwegian Wood, where, you know, someone referenced those ingredients as something they were making for someone.

Norwegian Wood?

It's another novel.

The beauty of it is he's written a ton of novels, and he, uh, mentions a lot of food.

Sure, the surreal stuff.

But the book we're looking at is Norwegian Wood, published in 1987.

It is his most grounded, realistic novel.

It is a remembrance of student life in Tokyo in the late 1960s.

I'm starting to think that maybe it's more like Vonnegut to me, where just, like, the big books, like the Kafka on the Shore, Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Hard Boy Wonderland, like, maybe those were just so good that I kind of blinded myself to the ones that aren't as good.

But then I did start getting into ones like, uh... uh something in the west and i forget it was like a romance one not good i don't even remember if i like sputnik sweetheart that much like i obviously don't remember it so i started to get into the other books where i was like ah not great like norwegian good uh norwegian wood is basically just uh a literary maybe more romance book with a hint of like magical realism just a very touch nothing really weird and like that one I think is what made him famous really and that was pretty good but everything else is not written like that

And also, like, I haven't really read, like, a lot of what I guess you consider, like, magic realism.

Yeah.

It's very weird, yeah.

But he also writes deeply grounded, devastatingly realistic human dramas like Norwegian Wood, which has zero magical elements.

Right.

If a new reader who exclusively loves grounded romance decides to try Murakami because he's famous and they blindly pick up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, they will likely be entirely alienated, put the book down, and write off a brilliant author forever.

But if a curator takes them by the hand and says, "Start with Norwegian Wood, build your trust in his prose, and then we'll introduce the magical realism," you create a lifelong fan.

Guiding that very first step into an author's ecosystem is the most critical intervention a curator can make.

So if we pull all the way back and look at this massive spectrum we've just traversed, I mean, we have lists touting the heavy, dense, best non-fiction of the 21st century.

Uh, and then they just talk about the book that they're reading, yada, yada, yada.

Ooh, I do like Norwegian Wood.

That's a very good book.

Oh, is that the name of the book?