Almost all works that we have read so far (A Wild Sheep Chase, The Long Goodbye, and Murakami's other short stories) revolve around a main character who is an agent acting as "the discoverer." This "discoverer" is intertwined in a narrative seeking to solve a mystery. He embarks on a thrilling journey filled with danger, absurdity, and self-reflection. Often, he is accompanied by a female character or at the request of a female character (i.e. "Charlie," Boku's girlfriend, Eileen Wade, missing husbands' wife, etc.).
This particularly reminds me of the movie, "Drive My Car," adopted from Murakami's short story collection, Men Without Women. In the film, Oto, a screenwriter, creates her stories during sex and narrates them to the protagonist, Yusuke, who is a theater director. The story involves a girl who develops an obsessive crush on a guy from her school and sneaks into his bedroom. Ultimately, in the vaguest way I can describe as to not spoiling the plot, she wanted the world to materialize what she has done regarding this guy but there were no way of verifying her actions. Therefore, the entire thing felt illusory to her, blurring reality with dreams. Yusuke is left with missing pieces of the story as he attempts to figure out the rest of the story as both the detective and the continuing writer.
The construction of the "frame tale" where a story is being constructed within a story is prevalent among many works. This creates a setting that permits the bending of time where boundaries and the awareness of chronology distorts. This creates many dimensions to the story plot and it is employed in 1Q48 as well as many of Murakami's other works.
Yiqin Zhang
No comments:
Post a Comment