Norwegian Wood - An Art of Music and Love

Perhaps Murakami needs no introduction but still if I write his introduction I it will go as - The writer who knew the nerves of a whole generation and it's successors while the probability of his words giving goosebumps certainly increases with every repeated reading of his lines. 

One of such heart wrenching and desperate confusion of emotions of its protagonist Toru is basis for Murakami book "Norwegian Wood". Norwegian Wood as said in words of Murakami translator Jay Rubin "Haruki Murakami was shocked and depressed to find his normal six-figure readership exploding into the millions when he published Norwegian Wood in 1987". 

The story plot consists of a love story between Naoko and Kizuki , later Naoko and Toru are in love while again Toru and Midori are in love. What happenes in between can't be told to prevent spoilers.

The novel is told from the perceptive of 37 year old Tobu who revisits his life when he was in college days and remembers Naoko and others. 

While the para which caught my immediate attention was -

"Once, long ago, when I was still young, when the memories were far more vivid than they are now, I often tried to write about her. But I couldn't produce a line. I knew that if that first line would come, the rest would pour itself onto the page, but I could never make it happen. 

Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start - the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless. 

Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts. The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her. I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. 

Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed. 

The thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. Because Naoko never loved me."

The novel is a story of Japan, college days, romance, music, broken dreams, desires and sadness which entails all of us sometimes in our life. Perhaps what novel taught us is strong appreciation of happiness and the desire to live, in words of murakami it goes as "But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."

For a long period of time we have all been confused about what love is, perhaps musing is to read Midori lines on what love is - 

"I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all.”

“Wow,” I said. “Did the search pay off?”

“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”

“Waiting for the perfect love?”

“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”

“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”

“So then what?”

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

“Sounds crazy to me.”

“Well, to me, that’s what love is…".

For all those whose pain and wounds have been left unattended, surely this book might act as a healer and may many beautiful things come for them.

Abhishek Tripathi

19/ 05/2021