Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 339 Praise of Haruki Murakami

After the book "Criminal Eikoku" there is Zhang Chao's novella "Young Babylon". The two works together have more than 20 words. When Murakami Haruki finished reading them all, the morning light had already filled the gaps in the curtains, leaving a light golden mark on the edge of the room.

He simply stood up and pulled open the curtains. At this time, the morning sun's rays were already flowing on the glass mirrors of the tall buildings, as gentle as melted butter, but Shinjuku, farther away, was still immersed in the cobalt blue night and had not yet woken up.

If it weren't for the Japanese signs that were seen from time to time between buildings, Murakami wouldn't be able to tell whether this was Japan or the United States.

This was not the first time he had heard of the name "Zhang Chao". When he lived in the United States, he had seen the public opinion waves stirred up by this young Chinese man on television and in newspapers many times.

He didn't pay much attention to it. After all, he was well aware of the American media's love of exaggerated rhetoric and the sensitivity of racial issues, and he just thought it was another lucky person who hit the hot spot.

In his 30-year writing career, he has witnessed too many literary meteors - even Ryu Murakami, who was once known as the "Double Murakami" with him, although still very productive, has never written a work close to "Infinitely Close to Transparent Blue".

But Zhang Chao gave him a very different feeling.

Unlike many young Japanese writers who indulge in themselves, Zhang Chao's works are always full of calmness. As an author, Zhang Chao does not put himself into any role, but is more like an observer hiding in a dark corner.

This free-flowing creative attitude prevents the work from scorching the readers’ nerves, or even causing them to lose their minds and dance with the characters;
But at the same time, it also brings amazing penetrating power to the novel, as if it can directly penetrate the barriers of time and space, allowing Haruki Murakami, a foreign reader, to touch the folds of the times described by his writing.

Murakami looked at the clock on the wall. It was already 5:10 a.m. He went to the bathroom to wash up briefly, then fried himself an egg, toasted some bread, and made himself a cup of coffee.

While eating breakfast, Murakami was thinking about the two stories he had just finished reading overnight.

According to the preface written by Iizuka Yoshio, "Young Babylon" was written by Zhang Chao when he was 19 years old, and "Criminal Eiko" was written last year. Although only two years have passed, Murakami has seen the growth of a writer.

The state-owned saccharin factory in the 90s in "Young Babylon" may become a new landmark in East Asian literature in Murakami's eyes because of its unique sense of the times.

But its narrative technique is still somewhat immature, with a distinct sense of showmanship, as if a young acrobat is showing off the somersaults he has just mastered.

The feeling that "Criminal Eiko" gave him was even more special - in the novel's triple narrative framework, he saw some familiar literary genes. This technique of making the narrator and the characters question and deconstruct each other formed a wonderful echo with the mirror world he constructed in "The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland".

Zhang Chao undoubtedly goes further. When Captain Cheng suddenly breaks into the real dimension from the fictional level at the beginning of the novel, the penetrating power of this narrative has exceeded Murakami's usual parallel time and space setting, making people understand that the truth is never a solidified fact, but constantly flows with the changes in human emotions.

The key is that Zhang Chao restrained the narrative anger in this novel, buried all the sorrow and anger deep in the text, and only grew an old tree covered with scars and small flowers on the ground.

At this time, the ending of "Criminal Eiko" came to Murakami's mind——

[When the snow stopped, I stood on the second floor of the abandoned old police station. The iron roof of the carport was blown up by the wind and fell on the steel frame. Amid the roar, the echo of footsteps from ten years ago was still clearly audible. A notebook swollen by rain was spread on the windowsill, and the last page was scribbled: "98.4.17 sunny confirmed death."

The setting sun penetrates the back of the paper, turning the word "death" into gold foil, reflecting the twilight that never dissipates at the end of the city.

"What a great ending!" Murakami secretly admired. After all, writing a wonderful ending is a torture for every novelist who is too harsh on himself.

For Murakami, he won't even start writing the beginning of a novel until he has thought about the ending.

The two novels also have a common feature, that is Zhang Chao's keen capture of the "transition zone". Whether it is the county's "urban-rural transition" or Captain Cheng's "transition from the 80s to the 90s", they both have a natural sense of alienation.

This sense of alienation is also the characteristic of Haruki Murakami's novels. However, unlike the typical "Haruki Murakami novels", the characters in Zhang Chao's works do not have the "relaxed feeling" after the disillusionment of ideals, nor are they "modern patients", but are full of a kind of wild vitality.

This barbarism is not violence, but the rough deconstruction of modern society by undisciplined life.

"You are so cunning. Let me read such a novel." Murakami shook his head helplessly, as if Iizuka Yoshio was sitting opposite him.

For him, who is nearly 60 years old, reading a few novels by young people will naturally not change his literary philosophy, not even if his beloved Fitzgerald were alive.

But he also understood why his old friend wanted him to meet Zhang Chao——

To some extent, Zhang Chao is like a mirror image of his 25-year-old self living in the 21st century; Zhang Chao's wild growth is just like a certain energy that he deliberately suppressed when he was young.

In 1979, the young man who stayed up late in the Kokubunji Jazz Bar to write "Pinball in 1973" and the old man who is now reading "Glory of the Detective" in his Tokyo apartment have completed a fateful folding of time and space in Zhang Chao's writing.

From the moment he decided to use novels to find a way out of his life, he was trapped in a maze of fiction.

Perhaps this explains why the characters in Murakami's works are always looking for a way out, Watanabe Toru wavering between Naoko and Midori, and Tamura Kafka running towards the forests of Shikoku...

Before I knew it, breakfast was over and the clock hands pointed to 6 o'clock.

As usual, Haruki Murakami sat in his study and wrote until 10 o'clock, until all 10 sheets of manuscript paper were covered with words.

A sleepless night was not a big deal for the energetic man. He didn’t even cancel his running plan for today. Instead, he put on his sportswear and running shoes and prepared to go downstairs.

But when he took a look at his phone, he found that there were dozens of "new messages". Unable to resist his curiosity, Murakami opened the cover of his phone and took a look at one of them...

"Huh?" Murakami widened his eyes in disbelief.

The email was accompanied by a photo of himself standing at the counter of a bookstore, paying for "Kei no Eikoku". However, the photo was very blurry, and only the outline could be seen. It must have been captured from a surveillance video.

"I heard that you bought Zhang Chaojun's "Criminal Eiko" last night. Is that true?" The person who sent the email was a Japanese literary journalist and columnist he was familiar with, named Kenichi Sato.

The village head Haruki sighed to himself: "This is truly an information society...no secrets can be kept!"

He opened a few more emails, most of which were from reporters and writers asking about this matter. He also read the copy of "Kafka on the Shore" that he signed for the clerk.

Murakami thought about it, and put his phone back on the cabinet in the entrance hall, and continued jogging as planned. …

"So, this is why you bought "Criminal Eikoku"? " asked Kenichi Sato.

At this moment, he and Haruki Murakami were sitting in a cafe near Murakami's apartment. The afternoon sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the walnut table, making everything look lazy.

Haruki Murakami said helplessly: "It's just that simple. An old friend recommended it to me, so I bought it and read it. Who knew it would attract so many people's attention."

After finishing his jog this morning, he responded to Sato Kenichi's email. A simple "yes" immediately prompted Sato to reply with "Can I ask how much you've read?"

Murakami hesitated for a moment, but decided to tell the truth, "I've already finished reading it all. It took me a whole night."

In less than 10 seconds, Kenichi Sato sent an interview invitation, hoping to talk with Murakami as soon as possible and ask him about his opinion on Zhang Chao's work.

Somehow, Murakami Haruki, who has always disliked these mundane affairs, actually agreed to do this - it may be because the emotions he felt after watching Zhang Chao's works were so intense that he still couldn't calm down after running a full 10 kilometers.

Sato Kenichi said: "You are a big figure in the Japanese literary world. Zhang Chao has also been quite influential in Japan in recent years. Of course, it is particularly interesting for you to read his book."

Murakami Haruki laughed at himself, and then said, "Big shot? Really? If your words get out, I'm afraid someone will be unhappy."

As an outlier in the Japanese literary world, it is no secret that Murakami has been excluded.

In 1979, Haruki Murakami won the 22nd Gunzo Newcomer Award for his novel Hear the Wind Sing. He was also shortlisted for the most prestigious Akutagawa Prize in Japanese literature, but was ultimately eliminated. Most of the judges believed that "Murakami's novel creation method deliberately deviated from the Japanese literary tradition, and the style was difficult to establish and contained many impurities!"

Later, Murakami Haruki's "Pinball in 1973" was once again nominated for the Akutagawa Prize, but was ultimately eliminated because it was suspected of being a sequel. This is also considered the beginning of Murakami Haruki's feud with the Japanese literary world.

After Murakami Haruki became famous, he also took revenge on the Japanese literary world in his own way, for example, he refused to allow "Pinball 1973" to be included in the "Complete Works of Showa Literature", when the subtitle of the "Complete Works" had already been printed, titled "From Tanizaki Junichiro to Murakami Haruki", which embarrassed the editor Yoshiyuki Junnosuke.

Sato Kenichi smiled and said, "That's all in the past... You said you spent the whole night reading Zhang Chao's novel last night?"

Murakami Haruki nodded and said with some distress: "Speaking of which, I shouldn't stay up late at this age, but the novel is really wonderful. I read it until dawn without realizing it."

Sato Kenichi became excited and asked, "This is an unusually high evaluation - what do you think of his novels?"

Murakami was silent for a while before answering: "There is a special frequency in the stories he wrote, which resonates with me. There are many wonderful novelists in the world, but not many of them can resonate with me.

It’s a very special experience, like listening to a Beatles song or playing the blues on vinyl.”

Sato Kenichi asked: "Can you tell me more details?"

Haruki Murakami said: "For most people, it is difficult to turn abstract concepts into concrete expressions, and novelists become novelists precisely because they are good at doing this.

To some extent, being a novelist can be called a profession that "reaches the truth through lies." Although Zhang Chaojun is young, he is already a "master of lying."

"Criminal Eiko" uses three perspectives, which seems to tell the same story, but also seems to tell many stories. It's like three mirrors reflecting each other, but each mirror has cracks.

Captain Cheng’s work notes reminded me of the conversation between “I” and the shadow in “The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland”, but Zhang Chaojun is even more cruel - he lets the fictional character kick the mirror to pieces and break directly into reality.

This is not my style, but I like this direct approach.”

Kenichi Sato asked: "Is this a kind of... violence?"

Haruki Murakami shook his head and said, “This is exactly the destructive power that literature should have. Zhang Chaojun, like people of our generation, likes to build narrative mazes, but unlike us who like to let the protagonist and the reader get lost in them, he will blow up the maze in the end and reveal the passage—

And tell everyone that getting lost is not a cool thing..."

Haruki Murakami spoke while Kenichi Sato took notes. It took a full 20 minutes before Murakami finished expressing his views on Zhang Chao.

Sato Kenichi stopped writing and said in disbelief, "I didn't expect you to admire such a young writer from China so much. I think you, my old friend, have a very accurate vision. You can even guess that you will appreciate his works."

Murakami Haruki looked out at the street outside the cafe, and after a while he smiled and said, "It's like suggesting that jazz musicians listen to punk rock. There is a dangerous vitality in Zhang Chaojun's novels that can wake me up from my exquisite lethargy."

Kenichi Sato knew this was the end. After writing this sentence, he closed his notebook and said to Murakami: "I'm afraid your high evaluation of him will shock many people again?"

Murakami asked doubtfully, "Again?"

Sato Kenichi: "Don't you know?"

Haruki Murakami said: "I don't watch Japanese news very much..."

Sato Takeru said: "Just two days ago, Ishihara said something extraordinary..."

In the context of Japanese literature, when mentioning "Ishihara", of course the first person that comes to mind is Shintaro Ishihara, who was then the governor of Tokyo.

Haruki Murakami frowned. He certainly had no good feelings towards this man who loved militarism.

Sato Kenichi: "Ishihara said, "In the Meiji era, we got rid of the cultural worship of China... China. Now we are wasting precious tax money to invite Chinese people to eat, drink and have fun. This is simply plundering the spirit of the people.

Does the Japanese literary world still want to be the Chinese's mistress? "

(End of this chapter)