This is not an easy book to read, review or discuss. You will either love it or hate it (more likely - never read it). I liked it. The swirling, kaleidoscopic imagery with freely overlapping of the physical and the metaphysical, the real and the imaginary, the utterly sane and the completely cuckoo makes us question what is real and what is not. For a tranquil setup, the Prelude (the first 7 pages) whizzed by before I even realized. And I was appropriately intrigued. By page 20, I don’t know what clicked, but I was hooked. And by page 42, the beginning of a “wild adventure” was imminent - the wild sheep chase was about to begin.Plot: The chain-smoking, freshly divorced protagonist with a nihilistic streak has unknowingly attracted the attention of some very powerful people. The reason: He published an innocuous bulletin in which he used “an ordinary photograph of Hokkaido landscape - clouds and mountains and grassy pastures and sheep, superimposed with lines of an undistinguished pastoral verse.” Of course, while the photograph was ordinary, one of the sheep was not. The protagonist is then given a month to find that special sheep. And should he fail, “the world will hold no place” for you [him] ever.” But why? What’s so special about that sheep? The answers (along with more puzzling questions) begin to trickle in as the protagonist meets the Sheep Professor, hears the mythic sheep story, sees the Sheep Man and finally sits down to have beer with The Rat. (I did say cuckoo, didn't I?) A pictorial depiction of the plot would look like this.But what really kept me glued to the book was the language of the book. It is so beautiful, it almost has a surreal feel to it. One is left wondering: How much of the beauty is lost (and gained) in translation? The narration is sprinkled with crisp, luxuriously vivid descriptions of everyday activities, sights, sounds and emotions:-the simple lighting of a cigarette: “The tip of the cigarette crackled dryly as its lavender smoke formed a tracery in the morning light.” (pg 16) -snowfall: “An awfully silent snow,...neither hard nor sticky wet. Pirouetting down slowly from the sky, melting before it amounted to anything. The kind of tranquil snow that makes you close your eyes, gently.” (pg 270) Or the melting of snow after which the “birds sang as if set free.”(pg 259)-the texture and quality of silence: “...silence that rolled like oil into every corner.” (pg 258) “Particles of silence floated about the room for the longest time.” (pg 186)-loneliness: “Loneliness wasn’t such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off.” (pg 246)-----------------------------------------------------------------------I will leave you with a few lines that stayed with me:“Her face had no expression, like a photograph of a sunken city on the ocean floor.” (pg 16)“A month had passed by since I agreed to the divorce and she moved out. A non-month. Unfocused and unfelt, a lukewarm protoplasm of a month.” (pg 20)“Time. Particles of darkness configured mysterious patterns on my retina. Patterns that degenerated without a sound, only to be replaced by new patterns. Darkness but darkness alone was shifting, like mercury in motionless space.”“... three plump pigeons blurbed mindlessly away. Something had to be on their minds to be going on like that, maybe the pain from the corns on their feet, who knows? From the pigeons’ point of view, probably it was I who looked mindless.” tAnd a few trippy ones:“It is rather our role to take what unrealistic factors that exist and to work them into a more sophisticated form that might be grounded in the grand scheme of reality. The doing of men runs into unrealities. Why is that?”... “Because it appears simpler. Added to which, there are circumstances whereby unrealities contrives to create an impression that overwhelms reality.” (pg 54) (This still gives me a brain-ache.)“...sandwiched as we are between the “everything” that is behind us and the “zero” beyond us, ours is a [an] ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility.” (pg 60)“...Not that it matters much. It’s like the doughnut holes. Whether you take a doughnut hole as blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.” (pg 61)“If a group of aliens were to stop me and ask, “Say, bud, how many miles an hour does the earth spin at the equator?” I’d be in a fix. Hell, I don’t even know why Wednesday follows Tuesday. I’d be an intergalactic joke.” (pg 126)“With my eyes closed, I could hear hundreds of elves sweeping out my head with their tiny brooms. They kept sweeping and sweeping. It never occurred to any of them to use a dustpan.”And of course, the Worm Universe:“In the worm universe, there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me.Yet the fact that the cow chose me to obtain to obtain her pliers changes everything. This plunges me into a whole universe of alternative considerations. And in this universe of alternative considerations, the major problem is that everything becomes protracted and complex. I ask the cow, “ Why do you want pliers?” And the cow answers, “I’m really hungry.” So I ask, “Why do you need pliers if you are hungry?” The cow answers, “To attach them to the branches of the peach tree.” I ask, “Why a peach tree?” To which the cow replies, “Well, that’s why I traded away my fan, isn’t it?” And so on and so forth. The thing is never resolved. I begin to resent the cow and the cow begins to resent me. That’s the worm’s eye view of its universe.” (pg 67)----------------------------------------------------------------------- Questions: Was this a real journey, or a spiritual one? Is the sheep a metaphor? For what? Is the sheep good/evil? Is the sheep God/Satan? Where does the journey’s physicality end and the metaphysicality begin? Or do they run parallel? Answers welcome.
I was surprised at how much I liked this book--I nearly gave it four stars. The reason I picked it up was basically a Murakami-completist urge: since I consider him to be my favorite author right now, I figured I should read everything he's written. (I'm now pretty close--"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" is the only novel of his that's widely available in English that I still haven't read.) I started out somewhat biased against it, because "Dance Dance Dance" is my least favorite of his novels thus far, and I guessed that some of the elements of that book, such as the Sheep Man, would probably figure into this one. I was right that they would figure in, but the book ended up being much more enjoyable for me than "Dance Dance Dance".AWSC consistently put me in mind of two major literary influences: Kafka and Pynchon. I'll start by saying that I have read a lot of Kafka and really like him, but I have only read "The Crying of Lot 49" by Pynchon and seriously disliked it (I had to read it for a class). But I found both influences to be enjoyable in AWSC. First, Kafka. It is no secret that Murakami has an affinity for Kafka and references him more or less explicitly in many of his works. The plot of AWSC has a clear structural similarity to "The Trial", in which the protagonist is inexplicably thrown into the machinations of some shadowy larger organization, and finds himself threatened by it and having to play by its rules. (This atmosphere arises in other works of his, for example his short story "Dabchick".) But more than that, Murakami also consciously emulates the bizarre and obfuscatory bureaucratic language that Kafka uses to emphasize the maddening aspects of a faceless organization. In AWSC, the protagonist's conversations with the Boss's secretary are a fantastic example of this.Second, Pynchon. The bizarre sheep-centric cult-ish story that unfolds reminded me a lot of the Thurn und Taxis/Trystero storyline in Lot 49, as an absurdist conspiracy that is intended to look totally silly but has to be taken seriously by the book's characters. Both have a sort of madcap style where the sheer weirdness is an important component that the author seems to revel in, but I felt like in AWSC it was toned down to a level where I actually enjoyed it, whereas in Lot 49 it dominated all the other parts of the story. Another example of this sort of atmosphere that I actually enjoyed is the "Luisa Rey" section of David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas".AWSC combines these elements with many of the traditional Murakami concerns--the nature of a solitary life, the loss of a romantic partner, the search for anchorage to one's life. (One of the book's scenes is also clearly built out of his short story "The Mirror".) I think Murakami's best work matches these aspects with an equal measure of fun or even silliness--in this category I would include The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka On The Shore, and this book, as well as many of his short stories. The second tier of his works for me, though I still really like them, fall a little short because loneliness and sense of loss are not well-balanced by a sense of fun--in this category I would include Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart, Dance Dance Dance, and South Of The Border West Of The Sun. I imagine that "Hard Boiled Wonderland" will also fall into the first category, so I'm excited to read that! The reason I ultimately decided not to give it four stars, though, is that I thought the emotional themes were not as well developed as in some of his other works. This makes sense given that AWSC was a very early work (1982) and he has returned to these themes over and over again, refining them and portraying them more successfully in his more recent novels.
What do You think about A Wild Sheep Chase (2002)?
This book, as others have said, was slow to pick up. Many elements are familiar, seeminly standard washed out Murakami male lead looking lacking meaning. Initially a complete lack of identifiable female characters with ummmm...character...a sense of nhilistic freedom.Also as others have said, it picks up a great deal around the half way mark, once the character gets on the quest. The sketching of Hokkaido makde me want to go there, as Pat said, the environment, the atmosphere of the book are great. The most interesting characters are introduced right at the end. That's where the cool Murakami wierdness sets in and the book gets truly good.However, definitely not as strong as Norwegian Wood or Kafka on the Shore. I didn't really experience any of the intense emotional engagement and I was not as fascinated. All in all, a bit watered down but pleasant and funny, beautiful at times.
—Nated Doherty
First Read: Three out of five (3/5) starsA Wild Sheep Chase is a Murakami masterpiece which will take you to what seems to be a crazy wild ride. It focuses on an unnamed male character (as always) – a divorced man who works in an advertising firm and ended up going on a wild sheep chase that involves the most surreal characters you could ever imagine -- a sheep man, a sheep professor, a girl with exquisite ears that improves sex drive, a dolphin hotel, a rat, and some endless possibilities. To tell you the truth, the actual plot is a bit hard to summarize. The story goes from strange to exceptionally surreal, even by Murakami's standards, and doesn't quite come together in the end.I really enjoyed this book but not that much. It was genuinely intelligent and very intriguing, and it holds the mystery in a very strange way. But I think it doesn't come close to Murakami’s better efforts. I also felt disappointed because some parts that sounded important remained unclear and seemed scattered without any connection. To make the long story short, A Wild Sheep Chase for me is not that good but fairly interesting, and recommended for people who have time and who are patient enough to read a different kind of book.I've been reading a lot of Murakami books for the last month (half of the eight books that I read last May was Murakami’s) and I think I need a break in doing so. I realized the cold hard truth that even if you’re a big fan of a certain author, there comes a point when you’ll suddenly get tired of that author’s style as you read his/her works one after the other. It’s just too exhausting when you read a book that involves cats, music, loneliness, sex, and the same themes and elements over and over.Just to clear things out, I still love Murakami’s books and I will forever be a true-blooded fan of his works. As I've said, I just need to take a break, probably a one-month hiatus from reading his works. I’m sorry Dance Dance Dance, I think you’ll have to wait for a month before letting me enter into your bizarre world.Second Read: Four out of five (4/5) starsThere is really a different kind of feeling when you reread a book. As the saying goes: "The best part about rereading a book is how your knowledge and perception of the characters change. You get to know them slowly and eventually are let in on all the little quirks you missed before."I guess it's time to reread my books. 1984, you're on queue!
—Alden
When one is approached by a random person and asked to locate a life form that is physically unable to exist, but which you have a picture of, and you choose to do it because you have to, you know you're in for something fantastical. Part noir thriller, part philosophical daydream, the wild sheep chase moves effortlessly along (partially due to the brilliant translation), and scene by scene we are more and more drawn into the story of soon to be thirty year old J. Philosophical detours into entymology, time and space, and the nature of what it means to have arrived just too late abound, and they're actually fun to think about (too much philosophical jargon really gets me going). One of my favorite themes was the notion of silence, especially one that follows some kind of dramatic action. Several times throughout the novel the protagonist finds himself on a room, both alone and with other people, where different kinds of silence rest on things. I was blown away by the different ways one could express a single concept, and in each new description bring a completely new meaning to the word. For example, "The silence was not unlike the feeling one could get when the last curtain closes after a performance, the audience now gone, and the janitor, perhaps a man in his fifties with a wheeze, stands for a moment to inspect the job before getting on with the sweeping." Or: "A silence hung in the room as if a window, open since earlier in the day, had finally been shut, the dust now settling onto the furniture."You see what I mean. It's little things in this book. And things that are not said. Those always get me.Ultimately, this was a very satisfying read, and I highly recommend it. And I'm probably going to read others.
—Chris Shaffer
