Okay, I agree: Just for this, Murakami likely deserves the Nobel.
His breakout love story, Norwegian Wood, is an indulgence, as much for him (according to the translator’s note) as for us.
In part, it’s because its narration—between the frequent intimacy—drips with an unvarnished realism:
“Why did you break up with him?”
“'Why?'!" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl say something like this? I like you more than I like him, that's all. I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't.
I fell in love with you!”
But other times, it’s his ideas, which, layered over the novel, seem to resonate as if positioned around some secret acoustic sweet spot:
“What I learned from Naoko's death was this: no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.”
“So, hard as it may be, you have to be strong. You have to grow up more, be more of an adult.”
All told, Norwegian Wood has every element of the magic of the Japanese postwar generation, and, when it comes to love (or at least its earlier stages), it may be the high-water mark.
20 more quotes that have lived in my head rent free since I finished just over a week ago:
“I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.”
“There is absolutely nothing to be gained from sleeping with one strange woman after another. It just tires you out and makes you disgusted with yourself. It's the same for me." "So why the hell do you keep it up?" "Hard to say. Hey, you know that thing Dostoevsky wrote on gambling? It's like that. When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.”
*“I think you look better now than you did before," I said. And I meant it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another cute student. A fresh and physical life force surged from the girl who sat before me now. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.
“Besides, it's Kobayashi family tradition to treat guests well. I don't know what it is, but we like to entertain. It's inborn; a kind of sickness. Not that we're especially nice or people love us or anything, but if somebody shows up we have to treat them well no matter what. We've all got the same personality flaw, for better or worse.”
“Do you think you weren't loved enough?" She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod. "Somewhere between "not enough' and "not at all'. I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it—to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to cuddle up and beg for something, they'd just shove me away and yell at me. "No! That costs too much!' It's all I ever heard. So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally 365 days a year. I was still in primary school at the time, but I made up my mind once and for all." "Wow," I said. "And did your search pay off?" "That's the hard part," said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. "I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough." "Waiting for the perfect love?" "No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don't want it any more and throw it out of the window. That's what I'm looking for." "I'm not sure that has anything to do with love," I said with some amazement. "It does," she said. "You just don't know it. There are times in a girl's life when things like that are incredibly important." "Things like throwing strawberry shortbread out of the window?" "Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. 'Now I see, Midori. What a fool I've been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortbread. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I'll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake?'" "So then what?" "So then I'd give him all the love he deserves for what he's done." "Sounds crazy to me." "Well, to me, that's what love is. Not that anyone can understand me, though." Midori gave her head a little shake against my shoulder. "For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesn't begin at all." "I've never met a girl who thinks like you." "A lot of people tell me that," she said, digging at a cuticle. "But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying to be different. But I'm not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or play-acting. When that happens, I feel like everything's such a pain!”
“Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's OK. She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble." "Did I say something I shouldn't have?" "Not a thing. Don't worry. Just speak your mind honestly That's the best thing. It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset the way Naoko did, but in the long run it's for the best.”
“Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?" "Kind of like a hobby?" she said, amused. "Yeah, I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a hobby, that's OK, too.”
“When it's raining like this," said Naoko, "it feels as if we're the only ones in the world.”
“It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you. It's because I think of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day. I know I have to give it my best here just as you are doing there.”
“Languages are like games. You learn the rules for one, and they all work the same way. Like women.”
“Oh no, I thought, tomorrow is Sunday again! Sundays seemed to be rolling around every four days.”
“No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for—and to do it so unconsciously.”
“Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live—and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.”
“Let me just tell you this, Watanabe," said Midori, pressing her cheek against my neck. "I'm a real, live girl, with real, live blood gushing through my veins. You're holding me in your arms and I'm telling you that I love you. I'm ready to do anything you tell me to do. I may be a little bit mad, but I'm a good girl, and honest, and I work hard, I'm kind of cute, I have nice boobs, I'm a good cook, and my father left me a trust fund. I mean, I'm a real bargain, don't you think? If you don't take me, I'll end up going somewhere else.”
“My advice to you is very simple. First of all, if you are drawn so strongly to this Midori person, it is only natural for you to have fallen in love with her. It might go well, or it might not. But love is like that. When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity… So don't brood over everything in that super-serious way of yours. All of us (by which I mean all of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don't live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all our lines and angles with rulers and protractors. Am I right? My own personal feeling is that Midori sounds like a great girl. I understand just reading your letter why you would be drawn to her. And I understand, too, why you would also be drawn to Naoko. There's nothing the least bit sinful about it. Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up. Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. Life is like that. I know I sound like I'm preaching from a pulpit, but it's about time you learned to live like this. You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don't want to spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and let yourself go with life's natural flow. I'm just a powerless and imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how wonderful life can be! Believe me, it's true! So stop what you're doing this minute and get happy. Work at making yourself happy!
“Needless to say, I do feel sorry that you and Naoko could not see things through to a happy ending. But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”
“Sometimes I feel like the caretaker of a museum—a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself."
“It must have been such a load off her mind to feel she knew exactly what she was going to do.”
**“If you feel some kind of pain with regard to Naoko's death, I would advise you to keep on feeling that pain for the rest of your life. And if there's something you can learn from it, you should do that, too. But quite aside from that, you should be happy with Midori. Your pain has nothing to do with your relationship with her. If you hurt her any more than you already have, the wound could be too deep to fix. So, hard as it may be, you have to be strong. You have to grow up more, be more of an adult. I left the sanatorium and came all the way up here to Tokyo to tell you that—all the way on that coffin of a train.”
“At last, Midori's quiet voice broke the silence: "Where are you now?" Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the phone box. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.”