A review by emsemsems
Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryū Murakami
3.0
‘We’ve been ignored all our lives, so nobody knows who we are.’
Might as well call this novel, ‘The Revenge of the Incels’, which would have been less misleading than the original title. But of course, if it had been called the former, it would have certainly cut down the amount of readers, drastically. I, for one, would not have picked this up. I’ve spoken much too soon when I said that ‘this was less of a torture porn’ than [b:In the Miso Soup|17810|In the Miso Soup|Ryū Murakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309282509l/17810._SX50_.jpg|856346]. The especially distasteful, loose composition of torture-pornographic ending could’ve been easily reduce one short paragraph with more impact. Highly ironic considering the anticlimactic, but ‘explosive’ ending. Is it satire, really, if there is no proper critique embedded in the prose? Whatever his ‘message’ might have been, it all just felt very loose, blurry, lacking control and precision. The entire thing was like someone telling another person of a thing they’ve seen word for word in the most raw and literal sense – trashy, pulpy and gossipy. And at the end of it all, one can’t help but gasp, and thirst for a tall glass of delicious, meaningful conversation. For top quality pulp fiction, I’d recommend [b:Life for Sale|53203665|Life for Sale|Yukio Mishima|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1587257274l/53203665._SY75_.jpg|1950920] by the legendary Yukio Mishima that of which I have a clear and dear preference for.
‘The junior college girl with the misaligned eyes was attending a lecture on child psychology in the big lecture hall at her school and wondering why no one in the crowded room took any of the seats around her. It made her sad to think it might be because her face was so scary, as her brother had always told her when she was little and as the manager at MOS Burger had said just recently when she went to apply for a part-time job. In her loneliness, she decided to try and summon up one of her ghost friends to talk to. Sugioka’s ghost was always the first to appear, and today was no exception.’
Why then would I give Murakami’s novel a 3-star rating if I had found/experienced so little pleasure reading it? In comparison to ‘In the Miso Soup’, this one, I have to admit, do actually offer a few decent sub-plots (that I can definitely see becoming great stand-alone novellas). As for characterisation, I thought the most interesting one was the junior college girl who appears on and off throughout the novel. And I particularly enjoyed the story of the ‘buri’/yellow-tail fish. Murakami captured that tender moments of obscure, muddled violence and the discomfort of that awkward occasion brilliantly. It was executed so well that one can’t help but wonder why he’d fuck up the rest of the novel. Even though I enjoyed the story about the ‘buri’, I can’t help but think of Haruki Murakami when I read it. It reminded me of Haruki without the magical realism. Something Haruki would have produced if he was possessed by the ‘ghost’ of Beckett/Pinter, perhaps? All that I had manage to ‘enjoy’/appreciate in this novel wasn’t anything that felt characteristically Ryu, but simply something that was reminiscent of Haruki’s prose.
‘When a passing prep school student saw the victim, his first instinct was to try and help…or at least summon the police, but he was wearing a white shirt and on his way to a date…“I can’t mess up this shirt. Besides,” he reasoned to himself, “there’s a big pile of shit or something right next to her.’
The ‘incels’ and the ‘oba-sans’ were portrayed as the victims of their own crippling loneliness. The ‘incels’ seemed to be effortlessly ignored by the majority/masses, while the ‘oba-sans’ being less so (but think of as ‘worse’ by the intolerable narrator). The ‘incels’ in their own muted desperations had went out of their way to fill their ‘void’ and voraciously fed their own social needs in ways both acceptable and inappropriate/criminal – in a ‘whatever it takes’ kind of approach. Like them, the ‘oba-sans’ had a similar need to feel validated and to thrive/prosper socially. Each of us have our own level of tolerance and our own views of ‘loneliness’ – and I suppose in many ways – ‘loneliness’ is more than a feeling. In the novel, it’s presented as a form of hunger that destabilises the characters, leading them to do things they wouldn’t have wanted to do otherwise. This sentiment is well pronounced in the first few pages of the novel – which I thought was very well crafted. Both groups were socialising for the sake of socialising without actually ‘socialising’/relating to one another. It was a brilliant composition of the failures of communication in modern societies. There were admittedly a handful of promising elements in the novel that were never used to compose a better narrative(s), therefore resulting in a beautiful waste of sentences.
‘Her body felt fuzzy and itchy inside, however, reminding her that it was about time for her period to begin…’
The problem I have with both Murakamis (yes, I’m thinking of the more popular, Haruki Murakami) is that they write very unrealistic women characters. Thinking about it more thoroughly, surely, this isn’t just limited to Japanese men writers – it’s just a much too common issue for (men) writers. Ryu Murakami’s attempt to write about a woman’s body during her menstruation period was just embarrassingly bad – so poorly done. He could’ve played with anything from nausea, anaemia, a drop in body temperature, bottomless hunger, swelling/bloated, low self-esteem, heightened sensitivity to smells, uterine and intestinal contractions; inexplicable sadness or futile anger, but he went with ‘itchy’ and ‘fuzzy’ instead. I’m also pretty confident that that’s not a translation issue. But also, what a massive lack of literary research on his part.
‘At the moment, Ishihara was nudging Nobue’s shoulder and saying, “Nobu-chin! Nobu-chin, say ‘Congratulations on the New Year’!” The closest Nobue could get was something like, Kon raw yoo rayon la la Roo Ya, at which Ishihara collapsed on the tatami and rolled about, laughing hysterically. Nobue didn’t mind. He knew now that when you’ve been badly damaged emotionally or physically, it isn’t the people who are mournfully sympathetic or overly careful about your feelings that help you out so much as those who treat you as they’ve always done.’
The half-arsed, badly constructed homo-erotic scene in the third quarter on the book had seemed vaguely promising, but the ending ultimately killed it. Also, I would expect at least a soft exploration of ‘suicide’ in a book like this (which could have had balanced the ‘flat’, tedious, one-sided portrayal of violence out a bit), but the novel was wholly deprived of that. The constant and pervasive theme of (simple and predictable) murder in the novel was sickening – not like in a way that makes one sick in the stomach – but more of a matter of taste. It was like eating too much salt and vinegar crisps in one sitting, and your tongue just gives up on you for the rest of the day. Murakami’s novel just didn’t hit hard enough in any/every way. I tried appreciating the novel in different angles, but none hit the spot. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good enough at all. Underwhelming. Mediocre at best. Murakami had played with the extremist concept of ‘murder’ as the only way that makes the ‘invisible’ visible. A wildly and carelessly overused method to induce ‘shock’. And Murakami didn’t even seem to have spent much effort in developing it further/well which only makes it worse and even less palatable. It felt stunted, and half-arsedly finished. I’d much rather watch ‘Squid Game’ again.
‘None of the Midoris had ever been big on travel, and though they were always trying to think of things to do together, somehow the idea of going overseas had never before occurred to them. Every one of them had always thought of travel abroad as an extravagance she had no need for. They believed it was wrong to want things you didn’t need, and that the people who flaunted Celine scarves, for example, or Louis Vuitton bags or Chanel belts or Hermès perfumes, were essentially people who had no self-esteem.’
For the most part, it has the same vibe as Murakami’s other book, [b:In the Miso Soup|17810|In the Miso Soup|Ryū Murakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309282509l/17810._SX50_.jpg|856346] – loosely built on a narrative of ‘unattractive’/unwanted men spending the cheap and messy hate they’ve collected throughout their uneventful lives on unsuspecting women who they do not have any personal ties to; oh, and make it as pornographic as possible. This should probably be on the back cover of every Ryu Murakami. Even though I complain about Haruki Murakami quite a bit, he reigns superior to Ryu every time, all the time, without a single second of doubt. It’s not simply about how ‘problematic’ Ryu’s work is, but it's more about the simple fact that his work lacks substance. It’s like someone just taking a shit in the middle of a road, in broad daylight – and then calling it art. It just makes me want to read some Bataille very badly to cleanse my literary palate. A happy (literary) meal of Bataille, Mishima, and Camus is necessary to help me recover from this flavourless disappointment and dissatisfaction. Might even throw in a re-read of the better (Haruki) Murakami as the novelty toy essential to a proper ‘happy meal’.
I’ve not been doing this as consistently as I’d like to, but I have for this review made a tiny playlist (below). Instead of songs that simply ‘complement the novel’ (as with my previous reviews), these are songs would also (in my opinion, surely) make the reading experience much more bearable if you are so keen to give it a try. I don’t particularly think that it was a waste of time per say, but I certainly could live without the experience of reading it. But then having said that, I’m also finding it pretty impossible to give this novel any less than a 3-star rating considering that I’ve already given ‘In the Miso Soup’ a generous 2-star rating; and to clarify, this one’s better in every way.
Fetch the Bolt Cutters – Fiona Apple
Flamingo – Kenshi Yonezu
Hit Me Like That Snare – Alt-J
‘Ishihara then approached the register and asked the clerk, a sweet-faced youth of about his own age, “Do you have any food that can warm the cockles of hearts?” The young clerk tilted his head, thinking. “Let me see…cockles of hearts, that’s a difficult one. May I ask you to wait a moment?” He called for the manager, a serious-looking, bespectacled man of maybe thirty. “The customer is looking for a dish that will warm cockles of hearts,” the sweet-faced clerk said, and the manager muttered, “I see,” and with his arms crossed and a look of intense concentration began walking up and down the aisles. The clerk marched along behind him, and Ishihara and Nobue followed. Finally the manager selected a package of nabeyaki udon, an earthy noodle dish that required only fire and water to prepare. “This ought to do the trick,” he said.’