Murakami signatures in first part of Wind Up Bird Chronicle

 

*Aimless 30-year old male protagonist, left by wife

*Association with adolescent girl 

*Other female figures as objects of sexual desire  

*Suggestions of incest 

*Communication with alternate reality / occult / divination 

*Maleficent right-wing figures

*Sheep or other ovine animals 

*Long shadow of Japanese Imperialism

*Use of random music (jazz, rock, or classical) / cooking as punctation, like listening to music while making spaghetti and then the phone rings... The music is always specifically named. 

*Search for lost cat 

Of course, this does not make any given novel unoriginal. I'm sure all writers have favorite situations or character types that work well for their particular imagination. It's almost comforting to see a motif you've seen in a few other novels, because the novelist is teaching you how to read him. 

Jeopardy Style

 This 1947 book uses 99 separate styles to recount an anecdote about a man with a long neck, wearing a hat, on a bus, who later meets a man to consult with him about his overcoat. 

What is Exercises de Style?  

Insomnia

 I was thinking about the circle of fifths as I was falling asleep--or failing to fall asleep--the other night. 

Going around the circle, each new key adds a sharp, on the seventh degree of the scale.  So G has F#, D adds C#, etc... At the bottom of the circle F# adds E#.  At every point of the circle there is one fewer shared notes. So G shares all but one note with C, and F#, at six positions of distance, shares only one note. At first, I was thinking that Gb or F# had five notes in common with C, since there are two white notes in the this scale. But then I realized that the B would have to be spelled as a C flat.  

With the flat keys on the other side of the circle, each new key loses a flat.  Of course, losing a flat is the same as adding a sharp, so the same pattern is observed. With the circle of fourths (reading counterclockwise), each key adds flat, and that flat is always the fourth degree of the scale, so that F adds Bb, Bb adds Eb, Eb adds Ab, Ab adds Db, Db adds Gb, Gb adds Cb.  Usually, I would be asleep by now thinking about this, but this particular night I just kept going.  If I had stayed awake longer I would have figured out why the fourth corresponds to the 7th going the other way.  I do know that the sequence of sharps added follows the same sequence as the circle of fifths itself, starting with F#, C#, G#, D#...  The flats are the same order, in retrograde.  

{The reason why it's flatting the fourth the other way around is very obvious: the fourth of the key becomes the seventh of the next key, in the circle of fifths.} 

[The sharp added will be the 7th, as we said, so that previous sharp added will the 3rd in that new scale. The one added before that will be 6th, then the 2nd, the fifth.  Finally, there will be key that begins on that first sharp added (F#).] 

Blank

 The blank-slate protagonist of Murakami's novels works pretty well. The aimlessness, lack of connection to the world, even his mediocrity, make him available to what is proposed to him. He has negative capability. Someone with more of a definite personality would not work as well.  He has to be free (left by his wife, un- or under-employed), a bit stoic. It doesn't matter that it is the same generic character in several different novels. A reader (male at least) can identify with him as an everyman. 

Of course, he has to be strong too, resilient when things start to happen. Mediocre everyman has to rise to the occasion.  The modesty has a power of its own. It doesn't even matter that many of the other characters are more interesting than the protagonist. He doesn't have to be interesting because things happen to him.   

***

The banality of the original anecdote of Queneau's stylistic exercises is similar. A story with more inherent interest would not work, because the key is the stylistic variation.  

UK HEADLINE STYLE

 LONDON RAILWAY STATION OVERCOAT BUTTON SUSPECT ACCUSED IN BUS ROW

Cante jondo

Andalucía tiene 

autobuses siniestros

donde llora la gente.  

¡Ay, amor,

que se se va y no vuelve!

En la encrucijada verde

del llanto en los olivos

el puñal se pierde

¡Ay, amor,

que se se va y no vuelve!

Y el puñal, ay,

se hunde en el pasajero

que en el atardecer muere.

¡Ay, amor,

que se se va y no vuelve!

Dated Slang

 Jeepers creepers! This hepcat, ya dig?  He's got some groovy threads, with this porkpie hat. I thought he'd have cool wheels, too, with a get up like that, but there he was on the city bus, probably going back to his crib to shed, like all the cats used to do. Anyway, this other cat is standing there, throwing shade his direction, so finally the first cat, he's like, daddio! I'm just cooling my heels here, I don't dig the way you're cramping my style. He kept riffing like that for a while, then took a load off in an empty seat. 

I saw this same mofo later with this ofay cat, on the other side of the tracks. I thought the other cat was the man, but they were just comparing their threads, just two jive turkeys.