Kafka on the Shore

Thoughts on reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

Start Date: 10 August 2021. End Date: 12 September 2021.

We are feeble creatures made up of memories and experiences. What are we without them? Empty shells perhaps. Hollow men. How strong is our desire to relive certain sensations over and over again? Wouldn’t it be great if we could pull ourselves out of our fixed coordinates in this mechanistic spacetime and go on living in a sweet memory like insects stuck in some kind of pensive amber? Murakami, in this mind bending metaphysical thriller, tells us that perhaps such a spiritual dislocation is not a great idea. Memories are perhaps best left alone in our heads, in a library where we may visit every now and then, detached from the present. But that’s just a small part of the whole novel, one that stands out to me in my third rereading. There’s obviously a lot more going on, a lot more I don’t understand.

Mixing elements of Shinto philosophy with Hegel alongside talking cats, enticing sexual imagery and a gripping plot, Murakami has, without a doubt, produced a modern reinvention of Oedipus Rex that’s worth reading over and over again!

underlined:

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones.