Haruki Murakami (村上春树) is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been best-sellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the World Fantasy Award, the Tanizaki Prize, Yomiuri Prize for Literature, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Noma Literary Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, the 欧宝娱乐 Choice Awards for Best Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Awards. Growing up in Ashiya, near Kobe before moving to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, he published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979) after working as the owner of a small jazz bar for seven years. His notable works include the novels Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), Kafka on the Shore (2002) and 1Q84 (2009–10); the last was ranked as the best work of Japan's Heisei era (1989–2019) by the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun's survey of literary experts. His work spans genres including science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, and has become known for his use of magical realist elements. His official website cites Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his work, while Murakami himself has named Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy and Dag Solstad as his favourite currently active writers. Murakami has also published five short story collections, including First Person Singular (2020), and non-fiction works including Underground (1997), an oral history of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), a memoir about his experience as a long distance runner. His fiction has polarized literary critics and the reading public. He has sometimes been criticised by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, leading to Murakami's recalling that he was a "black sheep in the Japanese literary world". Meanwhile, Murakami has been described by Gary Fisketjon, the editor of Murakami's collection The Elephant Vanishes (1993), as a "truly extraordinary writer", while Steven Poole of The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his oeuvre.
Sen-Kyūhyaku-Nanajū-San-Nen no Pinbōru = Pinball, 1973 (The Rat #2), Haruki Murakami
Pinball, 1973 is a novel published in 1980 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The second book in the "Trilogy of the Rat" series, it is preceded by Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and followed by A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), and is the second novel written by Murakami.
The plot centers on the narrator's brief but intense obsession with pinball, his life as a freelance translator, and his later efforts to reunite with the old pinball machine that he used to play.
He describes living with a pair of identical unnamed female twins, who mysteriously appear in his apartment one morning, and disappear at the end of the book. Interspersed with the narrative are his memories of the Japanese student movement, and of his old girlfriend Naoko, who hanged herself.
The plot alternates between describing the life of narrator and that of his friend, The Rat. Many familiar elements from Murakami's later novels are present. Wells, which are mentioned often in Murakami's novels and play a prominent role in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, occur several times in Pinball.
There is also a brief discussion of the abuse of a cat, a plot element which recurs elsewhere in Murakami's fiction, especially Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (in which the search for a missing cat is an important plotline). Rain and the sea are also prominent motifs.
Haruki Murakami tends to write two kinds of novel: ones with a story and ones without; Pinball, 1973 is unfortunately the latter.
A translator with twin live-in girlfriends (I know, just humour the author’s sad wish fulfilment fantasy) develops an obsession with pinball, specifically a pinball machine called Spaceship. One day his machine disappears. He half-heartedly goes looking for it…. zzz…
This is part of Murakami’s Rat series where a character called The Rat appears. It’s even more underwhelming than it sounds. The Rat is just a moody barfly who drinks beer and doesn’t do much else – I really don’t know why Murakami kept putting him in books as a recurring character given how dull he was. It’s not even clear why he’s called The Rat, unless it’s a description of his general uselessness.
The Rat chapters read like the worst kind of pretentious arthouse movie scenes – he drinks, he smokes, he says inane drivel that I guess is intended to be profound wisdom – and I have no idea what his inclusion added to the novel; far as I can tell, it’s nothing.
There are bits and pieces of the book that are intermittently interesting like the section on the country well digger, the history of the pinball manufacturer and the twins, who were just strange as they didn’t seem real. And the book overall is as clearly written as most of Murakami’s work is.
This being Murakami’s second novel, readers familiar with his later, much better books will recognise here what will become trademarks of his storytelling style: cats, wells, jazz, The Beatles (the book closes with the protagonist playing Rubber Soul, the second track of which, Norwegian Wood, would become the title of his breakthrough novel).
His female characters though remain as one-dimensional as ever. Besides a minor character at the start, none of the female characters are named – the interpreter’s colleague is simply referred to as “the girl”, as is the college girl in his flashback, while the twins are numbers, 208 and 209!
I’ve tried deciphering it but I’m completely clueless as to what this one was supposed to be about. The narrator talks about meeting people from Saturn and Venus at the start, the pinball machine is called Spaceship, so… ? Is the pinball machine meant to symbolise something, like a lost love – is that what that hallucinatory sequence at the end was about? No real point is established and the book just stops so it’s fairly unsatisfying. What I’ll charitably call “the story” as a whole was a bit too obtuse for me and could’ve been more focused.
It wasn’t a total bust but Pinball, 1973 is definitely one of Haruki Murakami’s lesser novels – fans only. For those who’d like to start reading Murakami, I recommend checking out A Wild Sheep Chase or The Strange Library instead.
This is the second book in?Haruki Murakami's?"The Rat" tetralogy, and the fourth I read. I love this guy's writing!?
While reading these books, I kept wondering what it is that I love so much. It's not that there's this awesome plot that keeps you on the edge of your seat. In fact, there's not much of a plot at all. The story just goes along without a whole lot happening, and yet these books are mesmerizing and un-put-downable.?
I couldn't seem to pinpoint what it is about these books that are almost addictive, so I did what I always do when I don't know something. I googled it.
To the question "Why is?Haruki Murakami?so appealing?":
Antonio Mu?oz-Torralbo gave this answer on Quora, "He is able to create a magic atmosphere that allows the reader [to be] immersed into the story forgetting everything he/she has around. Then?Murakami's?plots are interesting and easy to understand, there are not too many actors and the story flows steadily providing surprises in a gradual form".
And from a review of this book by Ian Sansom in The Guardian, "What keeps the reader engaged are the Murakamian swerves, the long shots, the non sequiturs and the odd adjacencies".
I agree with both these men and thank them for putting it into words for me. Murakami has a unique and magical style that is entrancing. He's probably not for everyone and seems to be one of those authors people either love or hate. I'm obviously in the former category.
In my review of the first book , I suggested starting the series with book 3. Now, having read book 2, I will amend that. I think the order to read is 2,1,3,4.? In the first we meet the Rat, but we get to know him much more in this second book. He does not play so heavily in the 3rd and 4th books but I think it would have been good to know him before reading those.?
Anyway, no matter the order they're read, these are just some really good books!
Haruki Murakami writes about the ordinary, the bland, and he makes it readable and enjoyable. I am riveted reading this stuff. This ordinary world he paints throws up some extra-ordinarily bizarre events. Non sequiturs of the highest order are thrown around too.
Life can be like that, hey?
Pinball, 1973 (The Rat #2) follows on from Hear the Wind (The Rat #1) with the nameless narrator and his drinking buddy The Rat, spending considerable time at the bar tended by “J”. Again, there is a lot of smoking and drinking beer in this novella. Murakami sometimes describes the act of smoking or lighting a cigarette in great detail – just as a person (in real-life) may sometimes observe these actions in great detail, maybe unintentionally.
The themes here are similar to The Rat #1 these include, loneliness, loss, relationships, and the ordinariness of life. There is a striking blandness of the lives of our main characters. Interestingly, this is interspersed with some truly unusual happenings – such as our narrator one day finding twin sisters in his bed, they stay with him for two months, they all sleep together. However, the author mainly focusses on the fact they make good coffee and spend their time looking for balls at the golf course ‘next door’. He also started a thriving translation business, the admin assistant has a penchant for repairing holes in the armpits of his sweaters. But, our guy never seems happy, or sad – just neutral, indifferent and cruising through life.
Where there is an entrance, there is usually an exit. That’s the way things are made. Mailboxes, vacuum cleaners, zoos, saltshakers. Of course, there are exceptions. Mousetraps for instance.
However, the one thing he does seem passionate about is pinball. He played a particular machine at J’s bar, and developed quite a skill for it, the machine was called ‘Spaceship’ and had three flippers (3 flippers back then was new and exciting - believe me).
One day, the machine isn’t there – so our protagonist engages the services of a university lecturer in Spanish to search for this machine – bizarre right? I think this is one thing our main character is truly obsessed about.
Almost nothing can be gained from pinball. The only payoff is a numerical substitution of pride.
Murakami’s musings of pinball are considerable – something I can relate to as I played a lot of pinball, usually on Sunday nights during my university days. I remember those days fondly. Life was simple.
The Rat seems to carry on where he left off from the first book of the series – living a dull life. Drinking and smoking, much of his time spent at J’s bar. He does have a brief encounter with a woman – which doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, probably due to The Rat’s ambivalence. Surprisingly, The Rat makes an important decision towards the latter part of this book – something I will look forward to following in The Rat #3.
Her breasts were small, and though her trim body was beautifully tanned, it was a reluctant rather than a boastful tan, as if it had been acquired without her approval
This plotless wonder, where nothing much really happens, apart from the pinball odyssey – is so interesting because Murakami pulled me in several surprising and unexpected directions throughout.
If you do read this, expect the unexpected as you proceed through a dark fug of banality.
I took a long look at my reflection in the window. My eyes were a bit hollow with fever. I could live with that. And my jaw was dark with five o’clock (five thirty, actually) shadow. I could live with that too. The problem was that the face I saw wasn’t my face at all. It was the face of the twenty-four-year-old guy you sometimes sit across from on the train. My face and my soul were lifeless shells, of no significance to anyone. My soul passes someone else’s on the street. Hey, it says. Hey, the other responds. Nothing more. Neither waves. Neither looks back.
Another one of Murakami's earlier works, Pinball is just his second novel. Here, the narrator from Hear the Wind Sing describes his brief obsession with pinball. The book contains some of the elements that we eventually relate to as part of the Murakami aesthetic. The metaphor of the switch-board, the twins that mysteriously appeared, a girl who kills herself and some details about his friend Rat make up most of the novel.
'Pinball, 1973' is not a particularly engrossing novel. There are still the following good reasons to read it.
1. It is short, simple and a quick-read.
2. Its Murakami-ness. The novel itself is not as strong as his later novels, yet a flavor of familiar Murakami elements is present which grew and developed into his later work. The seeds which were planted here, blossomed into the novels which we love and respect. There is a beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking nameless narrator who is detached and apathetic and has a strange-ness about him. There is one Naoko trying to find the right words; wells and cats make an appearance; ears, spaghetti cooking, music, literature all find a mention as well. The recurring theme of loneliness, conscious-ness, purpose of existence is fairly prominent. Interesting and unusual metaphors, lovely descriptions of natural scenery, moving passages about human desire and feelings are a delight to read.
This is certainly a worthwhile read for anyone interested in understanding the development of Murakami's body of work.
I read this after and . At the time, it was INCREDIBLY hard to find in English or French translation (as was the first of the series Hear the Wind Sing!) I finally found it in a PDF I believe and loved it. It has some of the same characters as the later books and - although early Murakami - has the stylistic idioms that became part and parcel to Murakami's writing later on. I believe this book and are now available in a single volume. I would probably recommend reading The Rat series in the order he wrote it: , Pinball, and . They are all wonderful!
The second short novel opens with an unnamed protagonist again. He is pondering what his life was like ten years earlier. Remembering how he used to love to hear people’s stories.
The main narrative starts with the unnamed protagonist waking up to find two female twins in his bed. Guess what? They don’t have names either. We don’t know where they came from or why. They know next to nothing about the world, but I think after reading the first novel, this is par for the course. Murakami seems to excel in the enigmatic.
It is the spring of 1972 the protagonist and a friend start up a small translation company. Almost immediately their business is a roaring success and the money starts rolling in.
Chapter two sees the return of “The Rat”. I was delighted to find him returning as he was my favourite character in the first novel. Also returning is J’s bar and this is where we find Rat sitting and talking with the Chinese bartender who is simply known as “J”. For me the dialogue between these two characters is a highlight of the novel. There is just something “real” and gritty about their conversations, even though they are really about nothing at heart. Or are they?
The narrative will switch back and forth between the protagonist’s story and the Rat’s. Interestingly we learn of Rat’s past and why he left university from the protagonist’s side of the narrative. Rat is depressed, lonely, deep in a trough of melancholy. Subsiding on beer and smokes. Each day a replica of the one before it.
The protagonist remembers a pinball machine, that the Rat and he used to play in J’s bar. When it was taken from the bar, he tracked it down to an arcade until the arcade was replaced with a doughnut shop. One day he wakes, and he is obsessed with tracking down this pinball machine. He hears it calling to him.
Just like his debut novel, Murakami has a way of segueing seamlessly into an entirely different subject. An example,
“Like the Siberian penal camps for thought criminals they had back in Imperial Russia. Speaking of penal camps, I remember reading about one of them in a biography of Leon Trotsky. Can’t remember much, just the parts about the cockroaches and the reindeer. So let me tell you about the reindeer…”
Along with his beautiful poetic prose, I think this is a major strength of Murakami and this novel. The reader has no idea where they will be taken, what they will find out, sometimes in the very next paragraph.
His writing is also enigmatic and riddled with hidden meaning. When a character talks about how on Venus (yes, I did say Venus, one of the characters the protagonist talks to claims to be from Venus), there is no hatred, envy, or contempt, only overflowing love, is he describing an idyllic Earth, criticizing the state of our planet? With Murakami I am quickly finding that you can never be sure.
Then before you know it, Murakami is off talking about wells again. What is it with the wells?
The protagonist,
“I love wells. Whenever I come across one I toss in a pebble. Nothing is more soothing than hearing that small splash rise from the bottom of a deep well.”
I’m pretty sure that the protagonist is giving voice to Murakami’s own feelings.
Murakami certainly has his own beautiful unique style of writing. How about this sentence,
“The undulating hills resembled a giant sleeping cat, curled up in a warm pool of time”.
I think that most of my enjoyment from these two short novels came from the sheer joy of reading sentences such as this.
I enjoyed this novel better than the debut and I can see myself becoming a Murakami fan. His style will not be for everybody though. 4 Stars!
What is the significance of the pinball machine? I think the protagonist answers this question best himself,
“笔颈苍产补濒濒?” “Yeah. You know, hitting balls with flippers.” “Of course I know. But why pinball?” “Why? This world is rife with matters philosophy cannot explain.”
This was buddy read ten with the wonderful Nat K and she has read much of Murakami’s work and is a big fan. Please check out her super review here - /review/show...
Murakami'yi ?ok sevsem de onun ilk d?nem eserleriyle aram hi? iyi de?il. Büyük beklentiler i?inde oldu?um ‘Pinball 1973’ maceram hüsranla bitti. Kitap ?ok savruktu, hi? keyif alamad?m maalesef.
Part 2 of my mission to read everything Murakami has written in publication order
This is the second book in the tetralogy of The Rat. Despite this, I don't think you need to read the first novel before reading this novella. They focus on the same characters, in the same town, but in different stages of life. Where as Hear The Wind Sing focuses on the characters as they are around college age, Pinball, 1973 focuses on the ennui that occurs with the mundane existence of work life. Doing the same thing every day, seeing the same people, going no where fast. If you identify more with the Hear The Wind Sing stage of youth, you could read that one and skip this one. Of the two, Pinball, 1973 is the more forgettable read.
Murakami is still his characteristically weird self. Our narrator attends a funeral for an electronic panel, lives with two very empty and cardboard character twins. All the while The Rat is busy staring off across a dock at a light on the other side of the water that marks where his lady friend lives. Very Gatsby like, but it lands flatly for me, as if he is merely copying and not giving homage to . The Rat really is the Murakami-esque Great Gastby. He's a rich man unsatisfied with his riches, looking for something more, suffering from a lack of purpose and loneliness.
I think readers that can identify with the loneliness and lack of purpose the narrator and the rat feel can find their story relatable.
Many of Murakami's signature motifs and symbols are rife in Pinball, 1973, like he was playing with these ideas but still not so sure what to do with them. Wells, cats, weird women, weird sex, even the unfortunate ear fetish (not to yuck anyones yum), wonderful jazz selections, the ever present urban ennui.
I enjoyed this one less than Hear The Wind Sing, but there are pieces of prose that really stood out to me. Here is a collection of quotes:
"i enjoyed listening to stories about faraway places so much that it became a kind of sickness."
"a riotous profusion of narcissus bloomed by the pond, where little birds gathered to splash about in the mornings."
"The Rat looked up at the roof of the car and slowly closed his eyes. As if flipping off a switch, he extinguished the remaining lights in his head and descended into a new sort of darkness."
"She had begun to blend with the autumn air too."
The grass beneath our feet was filled with the premonition of its approaching death until the next spring."
“From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight. This being that could love a man, bear children, grow old, and die; to think one whole existence was in this weight.”
Overall, there are dark moments of greatness. Unfortunately those brilliant moments are awash with the presence of cringe-inducing twins (early Murakami writes women like they are empty dolls). I was feeling like this was a two star read until about half way through the novel. The scenes really seemed to improve after that, and it seemed to me like Murakami was hitting his stride. It reminded me of someone with a wet matchbox, taking out a damp match and trying repeatedly to get them to strike fire, and finally succeeding, only for it to burn out and then they have to try again.
I enjoyed the melancholy of the ending; the sadness but sense of purpose that comes with parting ways when it is time to move on. I felt Murakami encapsulated that feeling well.
“So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.” ― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973
Like Murakami's first novel (The Rat, #1), 'Pinball, 1973' (The Rat, #2) contains many of those elements that would define Murakami's fiction in the future. In someways this novel is both a story of loneliness and a love story between the protagonist and a specific Pinball machine. 'Hear the Wind Sing' seems to show early signs of Norwegian Wood, but 'Pinball, 1973' seems to be an early protonovel that would develop into Murakami's strange, dream-like later novels.
My first exposure to Murakami was in my early college years. I checked out (The Rat, #3) one summer from a military library and after I read it, but before I returned it, the library had mysteriously burned down. I'm not sure if I still owe the library a late fee or not. I had no way to return the book, and after reading it, I didn't ever want to. I saved it from the fire. I saved it from oblivion. It was now mine.
Both 'Hear the Wind Sing' and 'Pinball, 1973' are novellas best left to Murakami completists. There are better novels to start with and unless you are going to read more than ten Murakami novels, I wouldn't begin here. Start with 'Wild Sheep Chase' or , or .
If you check out Murakami and the bookstore or library burns down, watch out, you won't be able to rest until you've stalked every novel and read every page.
"It’s like Tennessee Williams said. The past and the present, we might say, “go like this.”?The future is a “maybe.”?Yet when we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that brought us this far, we only come up with another indefinite “maybe.” The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment, and even that just passes by."
This is Murakami's second book. Like its predecessor, this one is also nostalgic, in a whole different way though. I also found it darker and a bit trickier. Like any Murakami, god knows how many symbolisms I didn't get... Say what you will. Murakami is the Man!
Have I not read last year, I would probably find this book less engaging than any other of Murakami's later works. But this one is a prefect chain in the evolution from "slice of life" of to the bonkers of the Wild Sheep. And it's as always cozy, funny and warm in the only possible Murakamish way. Still, I prefer my Murakami with more supernatural to the story. No ice, but well shaken, so to say. 3,5.
P.S. Fun fact - Rubber Soul is the only album by The Beatles that I own.
Pagaliau u?pild?iau sprag? Murakamio The Rat sagoje (?). Prad?jusi skaityti pamaniau, kad ?ia turbūt pras?iausias Murakamio pasakojimas, kur? skaitau, bet nuomon? prad?jo keistis, kai ?pus?jau "1973-i?j? kini?kas biliardas". Turbūt d?lto, kad pagaliau pajutau t? pasakojim? ir nustebau, kokios artimos veik?j? i?gyvenamos būsenos mano dabartin?ms. Būtent to i? prad?i? to ir nepasteb?jau. Pasteb?jus - truputi sukr?t?.
Reikalingos knygos pa?ios patenka ? rankas, at?jus tam laikui. Taip ir su ?ia buvo.
Nemanau, kad ?i knyga patiks daug kam. Net m?gstantiems Murakamio kūryb?, ?i knyga gali nepatikti. Galimai d?lto, kad nesate buv? tokioje gana savoti?koje būsenoje, nesat? patyr? ka?ko pana?aus, kas ?ioje knygoje neramina veik?jus. Jei visgi skaitysite, tai pabandykite pa?vengti giliau to vieni?umo, kuris knygoje ir taip akivaizdus.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Klasik murakami kitaplar?na g?z k?rp?yor ama o kitaplar?n yerini de tutmuyor. Y?llarca ?evrilmesini istememekte ?ok hakl?. Ba?lang?? kitab? olmak i?in k?tü. Murakamiye al??t?ktan sonra okunabilir ancak.
You're never sure what's for real in Murakami's writings, as he always navigates on the border of reality. Sometimes "he finds you home" and let you savour his travels through your mind, but there are times when his symbols don't work enough for you and become quite exhausting. And that's the story with Pinball...
Hurray! Finally, I have the Holy Grail of Murakami reads, available to you for $5000 in print form, or free online. I'm so excited to read this. Or should I temper my expectations, lest they mar the experience? Okay, I promise to calm down.
****
Aha, here are the true first sprouts of the Murakami we know and love, the thoughtful, shy musings on routine, emptiness and evil, the very beginning of his interest in cats, the occasional well-chosen metaphor that makes you think, "I bet no one ever though it just like that until he came along."
This is a love story, between a man and a pinball machine, the Space-ship with three flippers. And between another man and a bar, no flippers. The mood reminds me of the end of Casablanca, tear-less but stirring. Think of it. It's beautiful pain.
This is the missing link to all his later works. it needs to be republished. Anyone hear me?