Haruki Murakami and the Search for Self-Therapy: Stories from the Second Basement

Description

Haruki Murakami, a global literary phenomenon, has said that he started writing fiction as a means of self-therapy. What he has not discussed as much is what he needed self-therapy for. This book argues that by understanding more about why Murakami writes, and by linking this with the question of how he writes, readers can better understand what he writes. Murakami’s fiction, in other words, can be read as a search for self-therapy. In five chapters which explore Murakami’s fourteen novels to date, this book argues that there are four prominent therapeutic threads woven through Murakami’s fiction that can be traced back to his personal traumas — most notably Murakami’s falling out with his late father and the death of a former girlfriend – and which have also transcended them in significant ways as they have been transformed into literary fiction. The first thread looks at the way melancholia must be worked through for mourning to occur and healing to happen; the second thread looks at how symbolic acts of sacrifice can help to heal intergenerational trauma; the third thread looks at the way people with avoidant attachment styles can begin to open themselves up to love again; the fourth thread looks at how individuation can manifest as a response to nihilism. Meticulously researched and written with sensitivity, the result is a sophisticated exploration of Murakami’s published novels as an evolving therapeutic project that will be of great value to all scholars of Japanese literature and culture Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments A Note on the Text Introduction Diagnosis: What Is Murakami Seeking Self-Therapy For? Cure: Writing as Self-Therapy Four Therapeutic Threads in Murakami’s Fiction Chapter 1: The Long Goodbyes Introduction Hearing the Unconscious in Hear the Wind Sing This Is No Place for Me: From Fitzgerald to Chandler to Murakami Mourning and Melancholia in Pinball, 1973 The Last Goodbye: A Wild Sheep Chase Chapter 2: Self-Therapy and Society Introduction Hitting a Wall in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World The Anatomy of Dependence in Norwegian Wood Passing through the Wall in Dance Dance Dance Chapter 3: The Return of the Real Introduction Welcome to the Desert of the Real: South of the Border, West of the Sun Blocks and Flows in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Chapter 4: Absent Mothers, Abusive Fathers, Heroic Children Introduction It’s All Greek to Me: The Apollonian and the Dionysian in Sputnik Sweetheart The First and Second Half of Life in Kafka on the Shore Is There Hope After Dark? Chapter 5: Individuation, Alchemy, and the Death of the Father Introduction Crime without Punishment in 1Q84 The Alchemy of Recovery in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Meeting Mercurius in Killing Commendatore Conclusion: Self-Therapy and Salvation Notes Bibliography Index