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It was Sunday evening when the TV People showed up.

My first exposure to the works of Haruki Murakami came from a collection of Japanese short fiction I’d found on the “to be returned” shelf at the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The collection was called Monkey Brain Sushi, and they were pretty much all dull, save for one…

The season, spring. At least, I think it was spring. In any case, it wasn’t particularly hot as seasons go, not particularly chilly.

To be honest, the season’s not so important. What matters is that it’s a Sunday evening.

“TV People” is classic Murakami, a slow, controlled decent into surrealism, where a perfectly ordinary situation is thrown deeper and deeper into absurdity and surrealitly. Murakami’s most famous novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, works in a similar way. A man searching for a lost cat suddenly finds himself in a bizarre underworld where his brother-in-law exerts psychological control over others.^[1] “TV People,” by it’s form, is a much quicker decent, but just as controlled. Only Murakami could have a character talk about Sunday evenings devolve into written sound descriptions: “KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB,” in four paragraphs.

Murakami loves to leave the reader guessing. A number of moments occur where the reader has to question the narrator’s own account of the events, such as the TV People entering a meeting room with a Sony TV, and walking back out without being noticed. The narrator is afraid to even broach the subject with his co-workers. His wife doesn’t notice the TV placed in their living room, knocking magazines and bric-a-brac out of place. The reader can never be sure of just what’s fact and fantasy, which the narrator shares in the climax, watching the TV People on his television, putting together an “airplane.”

In stories like this, Murakami can leave the reader stifled, gasping for air, some connection with reality, as they fall deeper into his well^[2]. The important thing is to relax, and let him guide you where he wants to take you. You won’t be abandoned, but you’ll certainly need some time to think about what’s happened to you. The ultimate strength of Murakami’s works lies in his ability to ferry the reader, safely, through dark, strange, and fantastic situations without leaving you utterly lost. The reader cannot explain, but they do not feel as if someone’s played a trick on them. If you need to start reading Murakami, and everyone does, The Elephant Vanishes is a great starting place; not just for “TV People.”

1. This summary is woefully insufficient. Just read the damn book. ↩
2. Another Wind-Up Bird reference. ↩

I began this year with a list of ten books I want to read^[1], and two-and-a-half months into the year, I’ve completed two of them. Considering the time left, and the eventual opening up of my schedule (with any luck) after May, I think I’m on track to accomplish the goal set out.

The first one I attacked was the excellent, bizarre, and strange House of Leaves. It’s my first real exposure to Ergodic literature, and the odd looks I’m sure I got on the subway as I turned the book around 360º to read passages that placed oddly on the page were absolutely worth it.

The second book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, at least to me, lived up to its audacious title. I can certainly see why some would find Dave Eggers’s writing style to be obnoxious. His stylistic… quirks, let’s call them… are intense, self-referential, and obvious. However, I’m a sucker for the metafictional device. If there’s anyone fit to write an introduction to Donald Barthelme’s Forty Stories, it’s Eggers, no question.^[2]

I’m about to start in on The Stone Raft by José Saramago, which has been sitting on my shelf for close to a year and a half. Well, not so much sitting on my shelf, as in a special, reserved section for books borrowed from others. My wonderful, understanding, girlfriend lent to me, not long after I finished The Double, and it’s sat with me since. I love Saramago’s style. His run-on sentences look imposing, but once you get into it, it feels like a printed version of a proper, old-fashioned storyteller speaking to you from across a campfire; albeit, a storyteller who concocts bizarre tales of exact duplicate people and the Iberian peninsula breaking off from Europe and floating out to sea.

After this, I think I’ll move on to Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. I’ve harped on how much I love his work before, and it’s been said that Kafka is his best since The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and I’d like to see if that’s true.

1. This list, I should point out, exists to describe personal reading. As I am a student at the time of this writing, I have quite a heavy load of academic reading to do, and I’ve certainly read more than just two books in the past 2.5 months. ↩
2. I’ve been meaning to buy a subscription to McSweeney’s, but the money’s just not there for now. ↩