"As a spokesman for disaffected youth of the post-1960s, Murakami Haruki has become one of the most important voices in contemporary Japanese literature, and he has gained a following in the United ...States through translations of his works. In Dances with Sheep, Matthew Strecher examines Murakami’s fiction—and, to a lesser extent, his nonfiction—for its most prevalent structures and themes. Strecher also delves into the paradoxes in Murakami’s writings that confront critics and casual readers alike. Murakami writes of “serious” themes yet expresses them in a relatively uncomplicated style that appeals to high school students as well as scholars; and his fictional work appears to celebrate the pastiche of postmodern expression, yet he rejects the effects of the postmodern on contemporary culture as dangerous. Strecher’s methodology is both historical and cultural as he utilizes four distinct yet interwoven approaches to analyze Murakami’s major works: the writer’s “formulaic” structure with serious themes; his play with magical realism; the intense psychological underpinnings of his literary landscape; and his critique of language and its capacity to represent realities, past and present. Dances with Sheep links each of these approaches with Murakami’s critical focus on the fate of individual identity in contemporary Japan. The result is that the simplicity of the Murakami hero, marked by lethargy and nostalgia, emerges as emblematic of contemporary humankind, bereft of identity, direction, and meaning. Murakami’s fiction is reconstructed in Dances with Sheep as a warning against the dehumanizing effects of late-model capitalism, the homogenization of the marketplace, and the elimination of effective counterculture in Japan."
In an "other world" composed of language-it could be a fathomless Martian well, a labyrinthine hotel or forest-a narrative unfolds, and with it the experiences, memories, and dreams that constitute ...reality for Haruki Murakami's characters and readers alike. Memories and dreams in turn conjure their magical counterparts-people without names or pasts, fantastic animals, half-animals, and talking machines that traverse the dark psychic underworld of this writer's extraordinary fiction.
Fervently acclaimed worldwide, Murakami's wildly imaginative work in many ways remains a mystery, its worlds within worlds uncharted territory. Finally in this book readers will find a map to the strange realm that grounds virtually every aspect of Murakami's writing. A journey through the enigmatic and baffling innermost mind, a metaphysical dimension where Murakami's most bizarre scenes and characters lurk,The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakamiexposes the psychological and mythological underpinnings of this other world. Matthew Carl Strecher shows how these considerations color Murakami's depictions of the individual and collective soul, which constantly shift between the tangible and intangible but in this literary landscape are undeniably real.
Through these otherworldly depthsThe Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakamialso charts the writer's vivid "inner world," whether unconscious or underworld (what some Japanese critics callachiragawa, or "over there"), and its connectivity to language. Strecher covers all of Murakami's work-including his efforts as a literary journalist-and concludes with the first full-length close reading of the writer's newest novel,Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.
Haruki Murakami Strecher, Matthew C; Thomas, Paul L
2016, 2016-03-22, Letnik:
7
eBook
Murakami's writing over his career reveals numerous recurring motifs, but his message has also evolved, creating a catalogue of works that reveals Murakami to be a challenging author. Many of those ...challenges lie in Murakami's blurring of genre as well as his rich blending of Japanese and Western mythologies and styles--all while continuing to offer narratives that attract and captivate a wide range of readers.
Murakami Haruki is perhaps the best-known and most widely translated Japanese author of his generation. Despite Murakami’s critical and commercial success, particularly in the United States, his role ...as a mediator between Japanese and American literature and culture is seldom discussed. Bringing a comparative perspective to the study of Murakami’s fiction, Rebecca Suter complicates our understanding of the author’s oeuvre and highlights his contributions not only as a popular writer but also as a cultural critic on both sides of the Pacific. Suter concentrates on Murakami’s short stories—less known in the West but equally worthy of critical attention—as sites of some of the author’s bolder experiments in manipulating literary (and everyday) language, honing cross-cultural allusions, and crafting metafictional techniques. This study scrutinizes Murakami’s fictional worlds and their extraliterary contexts through a range of discursive lenses: modernity and postmodernity, universalism and particularism, imperialism and nationalism, Orientalism and globalization. By casting new light on the style and substance of Murakami’s prose, Suter situates the author and his works within the sphere of contemporary Japanese literature and finds him a prominent place within the broader sweep of the global literary scene.
The cover artist for this year De Ambrogi, Marco
The Lancet infectious diseases,
01/2018, Letnik:
18, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The 2018 cover artist for The Lancet Infectious Diseases is Kouzou Sakai, who replaces Andrew Lyons. Having graduated from the Department of Animal Science and Biotechnology, Kouzou has a special ...affinity towards all kinds of animals, especially cats, so we hope that he will include some in our future covers.
El volumen Primera persona del singular –aparecido en 2020– acoge ocho relatos breves de Murakami que permiten descubrir temas ya tratados en su repertorio: desconcierto vital, episodios desairados ...de una juventud infeliz, la irrupción de lo fantástico, la impostura. Comprobar cómo se plasman los temas planteados y el formato textual seleccionado es el objetivo de este trabajo. Además de constatar su vínculo con las obras anteriores, importa al mismo tiempo reconocer qué nuevo aporte ofrece este conjunto cuentístico, por lo que se ha atendido a reseñar los nuevos territorios que se recorren. Destaca señaladamente aquí el tono desde el que se narra, ahora ya el de la edad avanzada. Encontramos así que reflexiona sobre la vecindad de la muerte inexorable, que también presenta códigos de principios morales, todo siempre desde la perspectiva de una primera persona del singular desde la cual Murakami parece darnos a un tiempo pistas personales y otras ficticias, con la apariencia de verdad que le ofrece el género japonés de Novelas del yo, al que de algún modo se remite.
Contemporary literature encompasses not only works but also culture, defining the processes of the past preserved in the memory of posterity. Haruki Murakami influenced the shaping of this modern ...culture to a great extent. The research purpose is to investigate the phenomenon of Haruki Murakami analysing the components of the collective and individual consciousness of the Japanese nation in his fiction. At the methodological level, the following methods of analyzing literary phenomena were used in the training to solve the set tasks: hermeneutic interpretation and sociological method. The research reveals the main features of the urban world of the Japanese society portraying it in progress (from the post-war period to the present moment). The evolution process is portrayed as detachment, independence and solitude. The literary factors reflect both internal spiritual relations and global intercultural links. At the same time, the writer portrays Japan as a country experiencing technological and informational progress, thereby declaring that it is ready to accept and participate in the world changes and become a part of the globalisation process. The writer has made a great contribution to the treasury of Japanese literature and his works are considered an important part of the intercultural interactions between countries they are trying to achieve in a global world. The results close the theoretical and empirical gaps in the literature and literary criticism and contribute to the analysis of the cultural and literary traditions of Japan.
For decades now, the "detachment to commitment" framework has served as a model for how critics understand Japanese author Haruki Murakami's career. The former term alludes to the often aloof, ...disinterested, and apathetic protagonists of Murakami's earlier fiction while the latter term refers to later works more sensitively attuned to issues facing Japanese history, culture, and society. This article reexamines Murakami's Kafka on the Shore as a novel that unsettles this framework and compels its revision. More specifically, Kafka on the Shore reframes "detachment" as a sign of traumas that remain in the aftermath of the version of history it offers to readers, that is, one melded out of warfare, violence, and conflict. Consequently, the novel invites readers to rethink Murakami's fiction and career while bolstering its own status as one of the most defining works of Murakami's oeuvre.
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