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Synopsis & Review | City of Glass from the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, 1985

Summary Synopsis

The trigger was a wrong number. A mystery writer in NY, Daniel Quinn accepted the case of Peter Stillman, as a private detective Paul Auster. Virginia Stillman, the wife of Peter Stillman, requested him to watch the same name father, Peter Stillman would discharge soon, the former professor of Columbia University wrote a book of extraordinary and occultist religious theory. He shut up his son in a room for nine years.

Quinn watched Stillman during two weeks, but he was wandering around a constant area of town only. Quinn tried to talk to Stillman but his talkings were incoherent. A day, Stillman suddenly checked out of the hotel he stayed, so Quinn lost track of Stillman…

Book Review

City of Glass is Paul Auster’s major debut novel originally published in 1985 and the first volume of his New York Trilogy.

A thirteen chaptered novel borrows the style of detective stories. And a snobbish postmodernist or avant-garde literature contains various elements and signs, many fine little interesting episodes and mentions of classical literature. It describes confusion, complexity, difficulties and emptiness of the contemporary huge metropolitan city, New York, and deconstructs the grand narrative, the significance and the form of traditional novels.

My first impression, I think this novel resembles Auster’s next novel Ghosts which also borrows the form of detective stories. Both of them is the story the main character was perplexed, confused and manipulated by a mysterious and confused person(s), and the storyline and elements are resemble.

Almost works by Paul Auster and contemporary novelists have a structure as to seek a riddle or something, and to try to solve questions and riddles. Auster indicated the structure itself on this novel in a symbolic form.

In some parts, Auster indicates his literary thought and philosophy of writing. For him the ideal form of novel is practical detective stories has full of meaning and no vainness. And Quinn was interested in the relation among stories and their combinations. And words are has no fixed meanings. Words and stories should be made by people’s activities as writing. But Stillman Sr. denied the thought of contemporary language theory, he think it was the fall. On this novel Quinn gathered fragments of things, wrote a red notebook and resulted in construct a his story. I think the Auster’s thought of writing is like behalf of Wittgenstein’s language game and Sartre’s existentialism, also it includes the postmodernist theory of deconstruction. It is an active and pragmatic policy of writing put emphasis on physicality, reality and 　contingency or randomness.

This novel is an excellent story of stories and writings. The stories in this story splendidly consists this story. And this novels is a self-reference novel. Quinn, a writer “Paul Auster” and the narrator are writers, the characters may reflect Paul Auster himself, and the notion what are writing, story and words is an important element in this novel.

And I think an outstanding characteristics of Paul Auster’s novels is there were many or some impressive, colourful and vivid scenes and interesting, intellectual and integral descriptions and little fine and funny episodes such as the notion about New York, mystery novels and detective, the description when Quinn bought a red notebook, the summary of The Garden and the Tower: Early Visions of New World by Peter Stillman, the portrayals of Grand Central Terminal and a writer, Paul Auster’s talking his essay on Don Quixote. They calls a harmony and an elaborated image like music, especially like a symphony or a concerto.

This novel is not an armchair story, is a story in the city and in motion or moving. I think Auster’s policy of writing a novel is novels should be written in motion or moving and in the city. The main characters of Auster’s novels moved, fought with difficulty, struggled in the real world or a restricted situation, and the stories progress. So it’s Auster’s practice of language game which was mentioned by Wittgenstein. Also in Auster’s novels, characters play their own language games construct words and stories.

And a sub theme of this novel is a struggle of the view to words and language between Quinn and Stillman Sr.. The former is a contemporary practical language theory like Wittgenstein’s language game or the Saussurean semiology. The latter is like the classical historical language study pursues Proto-Indo-European such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Jacob Grimm.

But Quinn was defeated in the struggle and couldn’t solve the question and find the answer. Readers thought about and experienced the story with Quinn. But the the questions and the riddles were not solved, so this novel involuntary asked the readers about the problem of contemporary people’s emptiness and confusion. And this novel has no conclusion and answer of the question. Many riddles and questions remain. So I think no conclusion is the answer or conclusion.

Details of the Book

The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
Faber & Faber, London, 2 Jun 2011
320 pages, £5.99
ISBN: 978-0571276554
Contents:

City of Glass
Ghosts
The Locked Room

Synopsis & Review | Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami & Philip Gabriel, Vintage Books, 2001 (originally published in 1999)

Summary Synopsis

Sumire is a close friend of mine. She dropped the university at her sophomore year to become a novelist. And she visited my apartment on weekends, she showed me her manuscripts. I love her, but she didn’t have love feeling for me. At a time, she came across a merchant lady Miu, she became an assistant of Miu, then Sumire couldn’t write a novel.

Miu and Sumire went to France and Italy on business, on their way home, they dropped in a Greek island as a vacation. At the Greek island, Sumire suddenly disappeared. I went to the Greek island requested by Miu, but we can’t find Sumire. A day, I found two texts in a floppy disk written by Sumire…

Book Review

This novel ninth long novel by Haruki Murakami, and the third romance novel follows Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun, originally published in 1999. But he has not written a romance long novel again until now. Also, this novel is an unusual romance novel that describes today’s persons who have no existence or reality who can’t fall in love really, seriously and passionately.

This novel is a story about Sumire, and the substantial main character in this novel is Sumire. The main descriptions of the first half of this novel are descriptions about Sumire from the viewpoint of the narrator like Nick Carraway in the Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, and talks about Miu of which the narrator heard by Sumire. Sumire is an interface or a narrator of the narrator, to see the world and to understand himself. And the narrator narrates the story which is not a neutral and fair act. There are choices, selections and interpretations by the narrator. I think the narrator is one of the readers who interprets the story like the concept of death of the author by Roland Barthes.

The name ”Sputnik Sweetheart” is the secret nickname of Miu named by Sumire. So Sputnik Sweetheart is Miu, and Sputnik (means "traveling companion” in Russian) is Sumire. Sumire and Miu are beings like a satellite or Sputnik, lost existence, reality and lively feeling. Their hearts were shunted by an iron shell and went away from others by centrifugal force. And Sumire and Miu can’t express or perform true moving or emotional expressions by art. In this novel, a few times it mentioned the word “lesbian (love)”. But rather than it, I think this novel expresses women’s platonic love and intimate friendship.

The subtheme of this novel is writing, writing novel and story, and what are story and writing. Writing and story for Sumire (and today’s people in this novel), the methods fill in the gap with between reality and self or own mind. For Sumire, writing novels is the meaning of life, but she had no reality, existence and true genius or talent as an artist. From the time Sumire met Miu, Sumire did not have to fill in the gap with the reality, because Miu is a being on the other side and was a fine pianist but hadn’t true genius, equal to Sumire. So by her fate and experiences, she can’t complete a novel she wanted to write and must disappear in her youth.

I think the description of chapter 5 is Murakami’s literary and philosophical reflection and question on self and his thought of writing novels. And this novel is a reflection on Murakami himself through Sumire, and through Sumire through the narrator. The narrator partly lived in Sumire’s story, and the narrator’s meaning of life is the story of Sumire. So Murakami made and lived the story of the narrator and Sumire, wrote and implied his thought of writing by this novel.

And, physicality or embodiment is a key to this novel. In this novel, the narrator by Murakami played sport first time. Sumire and Miu are persons who lost their physicality, so they can’t do and feel real or sexual love. It may be the notion of Murakami, as literature or writing needs physicality.

I think this novel resembles Murakami’s first romance Norwegian Wood very much. The relationships, Toru Watanabe-Naoko-Reiko and the narrator-Sumire-Miu resemble. Also, positioning of characters, the structure of story and locations, last phone call, Reiko and Miu abandoned playing piano, Naoko and Sumire are the beings lost existences and emotionally unstable, they resemble. And Norwegian Wood is tragic, humid and melancholic. Instead, this novel is dreamy, light, dry and refreshing. So I think Sputnik Sweetheart is the 90’s variation of Norwegian Wood, the story around 1969-1970. And the structure of many elements made the story and its content and meaning, so I have resembled but different feeling by the two novels.

This novel is one of the fine works of Murakami, and a dreamy and wonderful but mysterious "romance" novel written by Murakami's original style.

And this is a structuralist novel that consists of the structure of the story and positionings of its elements as characters, places and notions. The narrator is a usual (and empty) person, but the structure, its elements, their positioning and his view make the story and the meaning. But also this novel is an existentialist novel that expresses the nothingness of existence of people today. But Murakami didn't write answers such as Sumire's whereabouts and what is a story and writing. He left answers and considerations behind readers.

Details of the Book

Sputnik Sweatheart
Haruki Murakami (Author), Philip Gabriel (Translator)
Vintage Publishing, London, United Kingdom, 3 October 2002
240 pages, £8.99
ISBN: 978-0099448471

Synopsis & Review | After Dark by Haruki Murakami & Jay Rubin, Vintage Books, 2008 (originally published in 2004)

Summary Synopsis

At autumn midnight, in Shibuya, a 19 years old boyish and innocent girl, a student of the University of Foreign Studies, Mari Asai was reading a thick book at Denny’s. Her sister’s ex-classmate Tetsuya Takahashi found her and shared the table with her. Then Kaoru, the manager of a love hotel, Alphaville, got her to speak and help a Chines prostitute girl, Dongli who was ruined and robbed of her belongings.

Simultaneously, Mari’s older sister Eri Asai who had been slept for two months was shut into the room in a TV screen by the Man with No Face, and suffered meaningless violence…

Mari had grown by to come across night people, Takahashi, Kaoru, Korogi and a bartender. In the morning she got back home, got into Eri’s bed…

Book Review

After Dark is Haruki Murakami’s 12th long novel, and an experimental 18 chapters long novel describes occurrences during a midnight by the objective third-person viewpoint. And each part is attached to pictures of a clock, and it shows the passage of time. The original Japanese hardcover edition is 294 paged book. But substantial content or plot of this novel is a novelette, and it isn’t significant story. This novel only describes very very long midnight occurrences during 7 hours. I think this novel is short as a long novel, very long as a story of 6 or 7 hours occurrences. Because there are lots of short chattings and objective descriptions.

This story is the story of to connect, to sync and to exchange symbols, metaphorical meanings or something among three girls (Mari, Eri and Dongli), and between Mari and night people, Eri and Man with No Face, and Dongli and Shirakawa. Each chapter is basically divided by the episodes of Mari Asai, Eri Asai, Kaoru and Shirakawa, each plot progresses simultaneously, and each episode connects directly or indirectly in real or metaphorical meanings. It may signify fragmental connections and information in the internet space. The situation was described by the third-person point like the view of Google Earth and Google Street View.

Mari knew Curtis Fuller's Five Spot After Dark, her most favourite movie is Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, and wore a Boston Red Sox cap (She was given the cap by a friend only, and was not interested in baseball.). These things mean randomness of knowledge in the global culture and the internet. And, Mari’s coming across a Chinese girl Dongli, Shirakawa’s escape imply random encounter of the era of globalization and internet.

Takahashi’s saying “Say your sister is in some other Alphaville kind of space—I don’t know where—and somebody is subjecting her to meaningless violence”, and Mari’s reply “In a metaphorical sense?”. (p.130) ”Aspects of the interrelationship of thought and action” (p. 153) of which Shirakawa considered. They imply the most important theme of this novel. There are proper or accidental connections in physical or metaphorical senses in the world, for better or worse, like a network or the internet. So the contemporary world is moving and changing.

In this novel, Murakami splendidly described the situation, state, atmosphere and communication in the age of network and globalization and the 00’s internet and cellphone era. The era in which people connect through the internet and cellphones, and meet at third places such as family restaurants, convenience stores, fast-food shops and Starbucks café as points of networks. Third places connect things and people from global to local.

Also this novel is a story of experiences of Mari during 7 hours. Mari came across and talked with adult night people, exchanged kindness and tenderness, then she grew up. And it’s profound and beautiful experiences have positive influence on some characters and readers, and give readers good feelings.

This story is beautiful and impressive, it's a precious thing for me, but it's not masterpiece and grand narrative. I think this novel is one of fine works of Murakami.