I bookended 2011 with two large novels. In January, I read Witz, by Joshua Cohen, a sprawling brilliant novel which I would set on my shelf beside the likes of Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest. In December, I read 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, also a sprawling novel which at least one critic has likened to War and Peace and Infinite Jest. I had decided to read it on the strength of another review in The Millions, a rave of a review if ever there was one, by Kevin Hartnett, which concludes with: When life wears us down, great fiction gives us back our human shape. Oh great, I said to myself, I’ll sit myself down with this behemoth of a novel and submit to a transformative experience.
I paused halfway through and tweeted: “Am halfway thru 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Am undecided whether this might just be the dumbest book I’ve ever read.” Which I followed with: “I think 1Q84 is like eating potato chips. Kind of addictive, but too much gives you gas or something.” Brash statements, I’ll admit, but I have confidence in my take on literary matters. However, it shook my confidence to discover that the reviews in The Millions are not aberrations. The Globe and Mail has listed 1Q84 in its top 100 books of the year. And the Washington Post has gone so far as to place Murakami’s epic at the top of its list.
Am I missing something? I asked myself. Have I lost access to my critical faculties? Could I be suffering some kind of early dementia that affects my taste in books? Thank God for The Guardian, otherwise I might have driven myself mad with self-doubt. The Guardian nominated 1Q84 for a Bad Sex Award and offered extracts to illustrate just how bad the sex can get between the covers (of a book). Although 1Q84 did not win the award, simply to be a nominee is a remarkable achievement.
Even so, bad sex does not necessarily make for a bad novel, does it? It certainly doesn’t warrant claims like “Complete Waste of Brain Cells” and “Dumbest book of the Century” does it? The curious thing about my assessment is that, for the most part, I agree with the favourable reviews. 1Q84 is a well-written book. Murakami writes in a clean prose that carries the reader directly into a carefully structured story and doesn’t release the reader until it’s done whatever Murakami would have it do. Characters emerge into conflict. Ideas find completion. The novel has all the shape and form of a well-built house. And yet, for all that, I still think it’s a stinker of a novel.
Because this is mostly a gut response, I have struggled to find clear reasons why I respond this way. Here are a few thoughts:
1. 1Q84 is written in the wrong medium.
It should have been a screen play. We get this sense from Hartnett’s review which includes the statement: “And in one particularly riveting scene (that would surely feature prominently in a 1Q84 trailer should the book be made into a movie)…” Exactly. It is heavily and obviously influenced by the sense of realism that cinema produces. That in itself is no great sin. Except. Except.
The novel is chock full of extended dialogue without intervening narration. It’s lazy writing. His characters remind me of the bad guys in James Bond flicks who need to explain exactly why they’re going to kill Bond, which of course gives Bond enough time to find a way to escape. I want to scream at Goldfinger: Shut the fuck up! Forget the death by slow laser and just shoot Bond in the head! Too much dialogue with all its incessant explanation means a) the author thinks his characters are too stupid to exercise powers of inference; b) the author thinks his readers are as stupid as his characters; and c) the author isn’t really writing a novel. Instead, he’s sticking people in rooms or across restaurant tables and letting them explain things to one another while we eavesdrop. That’s called a play or a movie or a noh.
When Murakami writes, I read. When his characters talk, I yawn. Which means I yawn a lot.
2. The sex is frequent and frequently dreadful.
This second thought is related to the incessant dialogue. Not merely because the characters talk too much during sex (which they do) but because the need for explanation which drives the dialogue is the same need that drives the description of sex. It’s one step away from a technical manual. It comes from the demand for visual realism. Remember, Murakami has written a screen play, not a novel, and so it’s important for his readers to interpret it as if they are watching the action in a theatre. Nothing is left to the reader’s imagination. What’s more, the sex exhibits emotional immaturity. It’s the literary equivalent of anime porn.
3. Magical realism is subject to the same rules as science fiction.
The rule is: no more than one outlandish premise from which everything else follows. Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie, illustrates the rule. Children born closest to midnight on the day of India’s independence are born with special powers. This is a device to explore the meaning of historical events affecting postcolonial India. There is nothing else. No alien visitors. No super-humans with laser beams shooting from their eyes. No time machines. No genetically altered viruses.
Rules have exceptions of course, and I’m not one to insist on rule-following. But rule-breaking needs a reason, and I can’t see any reason here. 1Q84 reads like a novel-by-committee where no one could agree on what outlandish premise should dominate and so each member was allowed to make a contribution. Two moons in the sky. “Little People” who enter our world through the mouth of a dead goat. An air chrysalis. Altered states that turn men into sexual automatons (absolving characters of responsibility for acts which would otherwise pass for incest and statutory rape). Immaculate conception. Extraordinary coincidences. Enough! I cry, and roll my eyes.
This is pulp fiction. This is escapism. A decent enough read (for escapist pulp fiction) but don’t try to sell it to me as something else. Don’t try to persuade me (like the reviews in The Millions) that this is Nobel material. It ain’t. It ain’t even close.