The Synesthesiac

Author: Maddie Oatman

I can't get away from Haruki Murakami. So much so that when I recently went to check out another one of his books, I didn't even have to look up the call number - I already knew exactly where I would find his shelf in the library. Murakami, a Japanese fiction writer who is heavily influenced by Western authors, appeals to me because his style is so smooth and direct. Or maybe because he often writes about young subjects. Or perhaps because sometimes I think his narrator has made an incision in my brain, seated himself inside my mind for the duration of the book and resolutely refused the infiltration of any outside thought.

Murakami's characters take me over. And if the above metaphor about splicing open heads seems absurd, you obviously haven't read Murakami. He loves the bizarre and saturates his stories with gelatinous dimensions, disturbing conspiracies, fetishized objects and dreams that crack open like eggs and ooze into the realm of the real. And somehow he makes it possible for us to navigate through such surreal circumstances and psychologically aberrant characters to end up grounded in modern-day Tokyo. Murakami can stray eons away from reality, disassemble logic with a vicious precision and still enter my core to leave me feeling deeply unsettled about everyday life.

Take "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles," translated by Jay Rubin. The main character, Toru Okada, leads a mundane life in a Tokyo suburb with his wife Kumiko. Toru is the prototype of passivity-he's unemployed. "Not that I had quit for any particular reason. I didn't dislike the work," he narrates, and spends the days cooking and putzing around the house (Book 1: The Thieving Magpie). His life begins to unravel when his cat goes missing, his wife disappears and mysterious phone calls lead him into a world of ulterior dimensions. Toru acquires a blue-black mark on his cheek and attracts the attention of characters such as the morbid but chirpy 17-year-old May Kasahara, the elusive medium Malta and her sister Creta and a woman under the pseudonym Nutmeg, whose son goes by Cinnamon.

In order to contact his wife, Toru must face her charismatic yet manipulative older brother Norboru Wataya, a politician who charms his way to worrisome degrees of power. Wataya's evil poses the most concrete threat in the novel, yet we also get the sense that much of the trouble Toru endures stems from inexplicable forces outside of his control. It's as if layers of unrest - some rooted in trauma left over from the Japanese involvement in World War II, some the products of a stagnating and numb bourgeoisie - have unlatched the fastenings of Toru's world. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" is a literary Cirque du Soleil, complete with symbolic animals, wildly dressed prophets and narratives that begin to destabilize our perception of linear time.

If you are intimidated by the fantastical elements of Murakami's more surrealist novels, at least try "Norwegian Wood." It has long been a favorite in Japan, and the popularity of the novel when it was published in 1987 lent Murakami a cult-like following among national readers and international audiences alike. "Norwegian Wood" marked a departure from Murakami's usual hallucinatory storytelling. As the author writes, "Many of my readers thought that "Norwegian Wood" was a retreat for me, a betrayal of what my works stood for until then. For me personally, however, it was just the opposite: it was an adventure, a challenge. I had never written that kind of straight, simple story and I wanted to test myself."

On the surface, "Norwegian Wood" does seem more straightforward. "Once upon a time, many years ago - just twenty years ago, in fact - I was living in a college dormitory," reminisces Murakami's narrator, the stoic and humble Watanabe. The novel's emotional force however, is anything but simple. Set in 1960s Japan, "Norwegian Wood" explores the equally perplexing realms of sexuality and grief. Watanabe, an unremarkable college student, falls in love with the distant but beautiful Naoko.

Naoko's emotional instability, however, leads her to check into a sanatorium in the mountains, where she meets the wrinkled Reiko, a musician with the capacity to comfort Naoko in Watanabe's absence. As Naoko's mental state deteriorates, Watanabe struggles to reconcile his undying love for her with his undeniable attraction to the lively and loquacious Midori, who he describes as emitting a "fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring." Along with this untraditional love story, "Norwegian Wood" explores the innards of loss and regret, the fragility of human sanity and the insurmountable abysses that can consume even the most precious among us.

I could go on and on. Murakami has never failed to engross me with his intuitive storytelling, from "Kafka on the Shore" to "Sputnik Sweetheart."Never have I read an author who forces me to transcend my concept of reality, temporality and consciousness, my national and cultural context, my own gender for chrissake, with such ease. His characters leap off the page and become my world. Read Murakami, become drenched in his genius and prepare to lift off from your life as you know it.