Me reading this book came right on the heels of the release of what may be Murakmi’s greatest achievement, 1Q84, being released in America. I finished it the same day, October 25th. Anyone who knows me knows that Haruki Murakami may be my favorite writer. I try not to have favorites, and my opinion of him may change, but right now, no other writer makes me think about the world in such a different way, and whose books still echo in the folds of my mind months after reading them. For someone who has very little interest in Asian culture, it is pretty odd from an outsider’s perspective that I like him so much. But the beauty of his best work lies in how the themes he presents in his stories, such as loneliness, lost love, and grief, are universal, and he writes about them in a way that is universal. Mix with those hardcore themes a sense of narrative playfulness and ferocious originality that makes his books stand firmly on both the scholarly and entertaining sides of modern literature. Anyone can read these books and be entertained by the storytelling wizardry, and still take something profound away every time. He may be one of today’s greatest writers of fiction. After that mouthful, it is easy to see why a book like Pinball, 1973 is not published in America. It is one of his first novels, and it shows like a wine stain on a cotton tablecloth. It tells the story of a man and his weird encounters with unnamed twins, his friend, called ‘the Rat” and a mythic pinball machine, which I think is supposed to be a real spaceship. It is shoddy, elementary, but still entertaining like the not-so-good Murakmai books are. Really, only for completests, since these version cost about 25$. But if you haven’t entered Murakamiland at least once DO IT NOW!!!
Rating: 4/5
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