The edition of this book might just win the prize for absolute worst jacket description, starting out with:

Forget everything you know about Japan, and enter the postmodern world of Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, where people sweat about their careers, drink too much, and drift through broken marriages, all without a kimono in sight.

Pathetic!

This was Murakami’s first major novel, and it seems apparent to me, having read several of his more recent books. Though it’s hard not to compare it to the epic and astounding The Wind-up Bird Chronicle as there are a lot of similarities between the stories. It just feels like his fantastical absurdity isn’t as fully developed as it could have been. But half the book takes place in Hokkaido and there is the Sheep Man who “speakslikethis,” and those are enjoyable elements whether comparing or contrasting to other books.

The next Murakami book we’ll get to see in English will come out in January 2005: Kafka on the Shore!

It started when I left Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase at home, after only reading a few pages. And then I left this one at Steve’s house with only 10–15 minutes of reading to go in the story. I could have read this in one day!

It’s such a tragic novella: an American in Paris in love with a girl named Hella who is not sure if she wants to commit to him and departs to think in Spain. In the meantime he falls for Giovanni and they have a sweet affair until Hella returns. The American leaves Giovanni, leading to an event that sends Giovanni to the guillotine.

Despite its brevity, the book manages to be rather rich in imagery (which is often hard to do in a concise manner) and beautiful in its sadness. I found it virtually impossible to be sympathetic to the American partially because his name (David) just doesn’t sound right to me, and it’s easier to call him “The American.”

Reading this book, I kept feeling very aware that Auster is a solid writer, but also that something about his style prevented me from fully immersing in the story. He seems pretty rigid in many ways—he has a clear idea of what he wants to communicate and the confidence to make the story push out of the boundaries of realism to achieve it. But sometimes it just felt like the seams were too apparent, and I didn’t like feeling like I could see right through him, in a “he only made this happen in order for that to be plausible” manner. I like fiction that doesn’t feel invented.

The story itself is compelling and the themes Auster develops are quite smart—especially the recurring question, Can art exist without an audience?

For some reason I had the expectation that this book was more specifically about writing, but instead it is a loosely sketched memoir of how honing in on her senses led her to be a writer with a lot of family history. It was far more interesting as a memoir than as any kind of guidance for fiction writing.