Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? Book Review

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (WYPBQP) was my second slice of the Carver cake and helped to affirm my previously tentative positive opinion towards its works, exploring themes as equally as interesting as those in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love such as eating disorders, mental illness and solitude. Carver’s brief, minimalist, bare writing style continued to dress proceedings and whilst this caused a few misses, with regards to the tales of the collection, for many it increased their intensity and had an overwhelmingly positive effect. As always Carver uses very relatable characters, ‘sales[men] for…machine parts firms’, characters who would uses phrases such as ‘you dumb chickenshit’ as part of their everyday vocabulary or who would refer to depression as a ‘bummer’. These are characters who just want to ‘live a good honest life without having to worry about money and bills and things like that’ and who are believable, relatable and so more sympathetic than the fantastical characters of some of his contemporaries.

As in the first Carver collection I read, in WYPBQP disconnect and loneliness continued to be frequent themes among the tales. The issue is explored in a variety of intriguing means which I shall now endeavour to outline. Primarily in the story entitled What Do You Do In San Francisco work is presented as a tool for covering up the issue of loneliness and disconnect, neutralising it almost as seen in the line ‘a man who isn’t working has got too much time on his hands, too much time to dwell on himself and his problems’, delivered near the end as we realise that the protagonist’s own seemingly stable state is only due to his occupation. Carver also frequently describes many fathers being disconnected from their family units, as exemplified by the following quote from Jerry and Molly and Sam where the father notes his children and wife as returning from ‘someplace or another’, his lack of knowledge over the specifics indicating his isolation somewhat, whilst in Sixty Acres the father (Lee) is noted as being ‘left by himself’. However, the most striking example of a father’s disconnect from his family comes in the story The Father. Despite sharing a sense of brotherhood with his baby, the baby ‘[being] a boy too’ the titular character is conveyed as follows:

‘the father was sitting at the table

with his back to them.’

The body language in the above extract seems to suggest a complete withdrawal from those around him, the father not even giving eye contact to the rest of the family unit as he faces his ‘back’ to them. In the tale entitled Fat, Carver successfully employs the use of the first person plural to highlight the fat man’s solitude, the plural at least giving the sense of some form of comradeship. This is illustrated by his noting that ‘we don’t mind’. Carver also uses vacant conversations that only ‘scratch the surface’ as it were to highlight this sense of disconnect, as exemplified by the empty repetition of the line from Neighbours, ‘have fun…have fun’. Actions often speak louder than words in Carver’s works, as showcased by the disconnect as expressed in ‘staring past, over me’ in the tale What Do You Do In San Francisco. Two instances of parent-child disconnect in the collection struck me in particular that of Why, Honey and Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes. In the former the protagonist’s son becomes nothing more than a stranger as their relationship reaches its destruction as conveyed in the following line:

‘I should be the proudest mother in all the land

but I am only afraid.’

The juxtaposition between the overt superlative of ‘proudest’ and the timid adjective ‘afraid’ highlights the thwarted situation as a mother cannot be happy for her son’s vocational success thanks to their non-existent relationship. The following quote from Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes follows the father taking battle with a local in front of his horrified son. The father who is the protagonist notes that a similar event happened to him during his childhood, leading to his recalling of his father’s ‘one fist fight as if it were all there was to him’. Evidence of a similar occurrence happening in the present-day is presented by the following line’:

‘he moved to kiss his son,

but the boy began talking.’

The obvious wish to avoid physical connection to his dad on the son’s part is rather upsetting to the reader (the father’s one mistake being portrayed as rather understandable) and is made even more so by the transition from the familial ‘son’ to the distant ‘the boy’  in just this one line.

Mental illness, more specifically being a psychopath, is also a theme explored by Carver in the collection, in They’re Not Your Husband he paints a particularly interesting portrait of the issue. In the disturbing tale, a control freak husband demands his wife to ‘give a diet some thought’ following an ear in to society’s opinion on her looks. He then proceeds to implement an impersonal, dictatorial regime on her, as exemplified by the following few lines:

‘at home he had Doreen take off all her clothes and get on the scale. He frowned when he saw the veins. He ran his finger the length of one that spouted up her thigh’

Indeed, the husband seems more like a doctor than a close relative. The tale gets its name from the man’s defiant defence of his controlling manners of his wife, as others ‘[are] not [her] husband’, they cannot challenge his authority over her. An equally interesting portrayal comes from the pointless cruelty detailed in Night School when the protagonist coldly thinks of the women he’s left waiting outside in the cold for a lift in the quote ‘the women, they weren’t there when I left, and they wouldn’t be there when I got back’. It comes across as rather ironic to the reader than a previous conversation he had with these two women involved the horrors of ‘being betrayed by somebody in your family’ when they are on the brink of being betrayed by a stranger. However, for me, the most striking betrayal of cruelty and mental illness was that of Why, Honey? In the tale, the protagonist’s mother frets over why her son is continually lying to her, unable to compute as to ‘what…he gain[s]’. It becomes rather apparent that what he gains is a sense of power, being part of that elite who know the actual truth being rather satisfying to him and thus it barely shocks the reader that is eventual occupation is one of great power (he becomes a politician). His psychopathic tendencies, if not made clear thus far, are made evident when the mother, in noting a bundle of clothes ‘full of blood’ in the backseat of his car sees him devilishly staring at her ‘watching out of the window’. If ever there were a face of evil, this is one.

Two new themes that sprung to the forefront in WYPNQP that were by no means so prominent in WWTAWWTAL were weight orders and smoking. Interestingly weight is at the centre of two of the early tales Fat and They’re Not Your Husband. Carver portrays weight as a label for life as outlined in the tale Fat when a character reminisces of his schoolmate ‘Fat’, this being ‘the only name [he] had’. The fat man’s acknowledgment of this fact is showcased by how he self-consciously ‘wear[s] a coat’ for decency’s sake almost. Carver equally illustrates weight as being an issue created by society, the protagonist of They’re Not Your Husband not taking his wife’s size as an issue until he overhears two passers-by mocking her because of it. ‘Fatness’ is also seen as being mostly psychological, the ‘emotional fatness’ of the fat man being passed on to the protagonist at the rather ambiguous ending as seen in the line ‘I feel I am terrifically fat’. Smoking as a subject was so prominent in this collection that I was shocked actually when it was not mentioned in a story and naturally Carver paints the issue in a variety of ways. First and foremost smoking is portrayed as a tool of preoccupation, as seen in Neighbours when the protagonist, away from the alluring beauty of his wealthy friend’s flat turns to smoking to fill the void. Smoking is seen as a quintessentially manly thing to do, as can be emphasised in They’re Not Your Husband by it being a ‘man [who] lit a cigarette’. In Nobody Said Anything smoking is a tool for rebellion whilst in What’s In Alaska smoking is used for digression as exemplified by the line ‘I need to be diverted tonight’ as the wife asks for a ciggy. One of the more interesting presentations of smoking is as an indicator of mental illness in Jerry and Sam and Molly. The following quote conveys this:

‘when you’re depressed it shows all over you,

even in  the wat you light a cigarette.’

Finally, and most obviously, Carver places emphasis on the addictive nature of smoking, the protagonist of Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes in fact attempting to give it up. The following section was particularly revealing of the difficulty of such a feat…

‘he reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette.

Then, breathing deeply, he passed the back of his hand under his nose.’

Here the physical action of drawing a cigarette out of his pocket seems to be ingrained in the protagonist and smoking is portrayed as the natural go-to in stressful times. Without smoking, a vacant hole is left that is filled up with difficulty.

Those who have read my earlier article on Carver may remember my extensive exploration of his portrayal of the male characters in particular, who are often seen as primitive sex pests. This is seen also in WYPBQP though less frequently so, however the few times Carver adds to this thesis it is done completely transparently. In Nobody Said Anything Carver plainly supports this thesis, two males primitively competing over a kill as seen in ‘neither of us letting go of his end of the stick [that carried the fish]’. Equally in Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes the brutal fight that occurs between two otherwise respectable men degrades them to the status of mere animals. The stagnation of relationships and general stagnation of life is a theme Carver also uses religiously and he expresses it in a variety of intriguing ways. In Are You Not A Doctor? the stagnation of a relationship is portrayed in the dialogue used, the formal speak of ‘Arnold. Arnold Breit speaking’ to a partner clearly suggesting that things are drying up. A sense of numbness towards life is also often portrayed, most evidently so in Nobody Said Anything in which the mother merely ‘glance[s] at the TV’ despite having earlier instructed her son to not turn it on. Stagnation is also seen in the setting, the dull repetitive, closed-off suburbia Carver often uses exemplifying this. For instance in What Do You Do In San Francisco people in the local area ‘aren’t used to seeing mean wear beards’ indicating a lack of variety and thus an overarching sense of boredom. Carver also portrays this sense of stagnation physically in the bodies of his characters, most frequently that of the trophy housewife. The following two lines demonstrate this…

‘she looked tired, irritable…older’ (Jerry and Sam and Molly)

‘thighs that were rumpled and gray and a little hairy and veins that spread in a bezerk display’ (They’re Not Your Husband)

The emphatic ellipsis of the former illuminates this type of physical decay whilst the unappealing semantic field of revolting adjectives helps the firm conclusion to be reached that happier, healthier days have passed.

Many of the actions that cause the disputes and the overall plots of many of the tales are done by impulse, uncontrollably so, almost as if a reflex action (which, in biological terms, does not use an impulse that passes through the brain but via the spinal cord, indicating no thought of the possible repercussions). This sense of impulse is used in many ways, primarily in relation to eating disorders, in Fat it being noted that ‘there is no choice’ in gluttony. Impulse is also associated with infidelity (a favourite topic of Carver’s) as seen in the titular tale when an unfaithful wife defends herself with the following words:

‘it was impulse, that’s all I can say.

It was the wrong impulse.’

Finally, impulse is showcased in association with evil, the protagonist of Jerry and Sam and Molly exclaiming soon after he has abandoned his dog, ‘what have I done’, as the sheen of impulse fades away. Carver is perhaps trying to outlie how our will can only get us so far in life and that often in the moment it fades to nothing as we complete actions our sensible selves would look at with horror. 

This seems to thus suggest an understanding towards cheats and wrongdoers and that we should look at them more kindly than we do, anyone can make a mistake when following their impulse.

The wish for a better life, with abounding wealth etc. is the main theme in the tales Neighbours and Signals. Such a wish manages to temporarily elevate one couple whilst it immediately destroys another. The former couple in Neighbours enjoy, for a short period, a more fruitful sex life than ever before due to being faced with the allure of wealth in housekeeping for their rich friends. This being completely struck by the lustre of wealth can be seen how, in following a visit to the house, the wife notes how ‘[she] didn’t feed Kitty or so any watering’, this being the task she had set out to do in the first place.  Thanks to these visits however, there is a revival in their sex life, as seen in the unexplained demand following a visit on the husband’s part of ‘let’s go to bed, honey’. However, once this holiday ends as they lose the keys to the apartment, the usual misery returns, the couple ‘lean[ing] into the door as if against a wind…brace[ing] themselves’. In the second example, a divide surfaces between the refined wife looking for an increased standard of living and the brutish husband (he refuses a guided tour of an exquisite wine cellar for instance). This is highlighted by the husband’s remark that ‘[he does not] like the group [his wife has] been keeping company with lately’.

As always with Carver, there were a many hits but a few misses in this collection. The most noticeable examples of the latter were What’s In Alaska where I found his plain, everyday style of writing as weakening the tale rather than being an asset to it. The dull periods of converse when ‘cream sodas’ were ordered and eating arrangements were settled rather bored me but of course that is a natural risk of adopting such a style as Carver’s, it can be and often is successful, making the tale more relatable and believable, however occasionally, as it does this time, it borders on being dull. I also found the tale entitled Collectors as rather pointless, its meaningless nature, I believe, can be summed up by its anticlimactic ending:

‘all right’ he said,

and he shut the door

However, for every weaker tale, there were many breathaking masterpieces. I particularly liked Why, Honey, being intrigued by the psychopathic tale in which a relationship was destroyed irreversibly. I also thought Put Yourself In My Shoes and Will You Please Be Quiet Please as very successful in gradually building up tension from nothing. The latter particularly I thought was Carver at his best as can be illustrated by the following four quotes one at the beginning, two at the middle and one at the end of the tale:

‘he and Marian understood each other perfectly’

‘he screamed…she whimpered’

‘Marian on the floor, blood on her teeth: “Why did you hit me?”’

‘he held himself…as long as he could. And then he turned to her’

The first quote is one of perfect unity and comprehension, the ideal, stable couple. The second example shows the arising of conflict, as emphasised by the contrast of the two verbs ‘screamed’ and ‘whimpered’. The third quote adds an even more serious note as physical violence occurs whilst the fourth a gradual reconciliation. Carver manages to do this very successfully, making for rather gripping reading.

In conclusion, although I found WYPBQP less cohesive than WWTAWWTAL holding a huge variety of themes that often did not link from tale to tale, this sense of variety made for less repetitive reading than the former where relationship decay and divorces were found in literally every tale. Yes, it was hit and miss throughout, but that’s bound to be expected by any short story writer, you’re bound to have some stories you love and some you loathe. Overall, at his best WYPBQP made for a very enjoyable read, someone whose work I can enjoy not just in an academic and studious mind-set. 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Book Review

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (WWTAWWTAL) began my trilogy of Carver collections, which also contained Cathedral and Will You Be Quiet, Please, Raymond Carver being an American short story writer who was at his peak in the 1980s and who often receives the title of being the individual who revived the format. Carver focuses in on the blue-collar experience of everyday working class Americans in the North West, hence critic Thomas R Edwards observation that Carver’s world is one in which "people worry about whether their old cars will start, where unemployment or personal bankruptcy are present dangers, where a good time consists of smoking pot with the neighbours, with a little cream soda and M & M's on the side.” Carver has a minimalist style, writing the bare minimum for each of his tales, and this has two benefits. Namely that it allows the tales to seem further reflective of the individuals they describe, where there is little room for excess and great expense, and, in a more practical light, the tales are easily read in one sitting, making them rather approachable. Despite this, I did find Carver’s style one that took a little time acclimatising to, especially his rather ambiguous and seemingly unfulfilled endings, and even now my opinion on WWTAWWTAL remains rather undecided.

Carver as a writer paints characters that are heavily relatable in terms of class and lifestyle. For instance, Buddy the ‘common labourer out of the saw mill’ in The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off, and the protagonist of Viewfinder noting that ‘why would [anyone] want a photograph of [the] tragedy [that is his house]’, his life being one in dull suburbia, a lifestyle kept by many. Indeed the lack of a name for the ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ protagonists of Everything Stuck To Him reflects how their story can be transcended onto many. These characters are also relatable in terms of their choices and decisions, the wife in So Much Water So Close To Home deciding not to take a stand against the relative crime of her husband and instead being seduced to stay by her animal needs as she ends up making love to him. Many of the tales consist of this ‘physical…carnal love’ as noted in the titular tale, rather than its unreachable, perfect counterpart. Carver also uses colloquial language through the tales, a voice that many of the readers would understand and relate to. Casual phrases such as ‘I says’ and ‘one in the oven again’ litter the collection, furthermore, rather than following an unrealistic stream of dialogue, many of the speeches are interrupted by throwaway injunctions. An example of the latter can be seen in Tessa’s interruption of Mel’s heartfelt speech in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love , as she reminds him that the vessels he talks of were in fact ‘called vassals’. Carver also makes a comment on how closed off the human race is, many of his characters refusing to reveal their true emotions and instead dodging questions as regards to their mental state. Examples of this include the main personage of I Could See The Smallest Things noting that she ‘didn’t have any more thoughts except the thought that [she] had to hurry up and sleep’ rather than consider the events that have just unfolded, equally in Sacks the protagonist says to their father ‘everyone’s fine’… ‘which was not true’.  The awkward, vacant, dried up conversation in this tale is especially notable.

“Here we are” I said.

“Well, yes”, he said.

I shrugged and said “yes”.

At first I found this rather infuriating, Carver merely scratching the surface many times, but then I began to question whether I myself would differ from any of the characters and sadly the answer was no. Therefore Carver’s choice of such a style is merely reflecting the majority of individuals on the planet, furthering his sense of portraying real life. All these previous areas also make Carver’s tales all the more powerful as the sense of real people being portrayed is accentuated and hence they become more applicable, relevant and intriguing.

A frequent theme running through the collection is the destruction and ending of relationships, often due to infidelity on the part of one half of a couple. In the rare occasions that Carver paints a picture marital bliss it is made clear that this happiness will only be temporary. For instance in Everything Stuck To Him it is noted that ‘everything else…was outside for a while anyway’ though the troubles that will eventually place a heavy strain on the relationship are slowly burrowing their way inwards. Carver frequently conveys a sense of boredom in marriage, something none the more evident in the ending three lines of Mr Coffee and Mr Fixit…

“Honey”, I said to Myrna the night she came home.

“Let’s hug awhile and then you fix us a real nice supper.”

Myrna said “wash your hands”.

…in which the cold, clinical tone of the last line reflects the dull, tense situation the husband and wife now find themselves in. The sense of boring continuation is also reflected in how the wife, Myrna, is quickly redirected back to her usual duties in the kitchen. Further boredom is suggested in So Much Water So Close To Home in which the protagonist’s husband is suggested as ‘eat[ing] with a good appetite’ despite not being ‘hungry’. This illustrates a sense of gluttony merely for the purpose of filling the emotional void in the marriage. Marriage decay and marital conflict often takes the centre of Carver’s stories. This is illuminated in Gazebo in which the physical decay of the hotel owned by the main couple (the pool being noted as ‘fill[ing] up with a green gick so that the guests wouldn’t use it any more’) coincides with the spiritual decay of their relationship, thus emphasising it. Equally a deep sense of trust being lost is conveyed in A Serious Talk when the wife instructs the husband to ‘hang up [from the phone in the kitchen] when [she] says’, not wishing him to have an insight into her private life, whilst in So Much Water So Close To Home the wife ‘rakes [her] arms across the drawboard…send[ing] the dishes to the floor’, further accentuating this sense of destruction. The previous examples are pretty disturbing, but the ‘award’ as it were for the most desperate image of marital decay clearly goes to the tale Popular Mechanics, as illustrated in the following section…

‘Let go of him [the baby], he said.

Don’t, she said. You’re hurting the baby, she said.

I’m not hurting the baby, he said.

The kitchen window gave no light. In the near dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder.

No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.

She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby’s other arm…’

This shocking and intense description of a physical struggle for the baby, the one shining gem of home from an otherwise battered and dead marriage, is a startling display for the reader, with powerful effect. The two individuals involved are made into mere animals, primitively fighting over this one precious possession. Much of the time the main reason for this aforementioned decay is infidelity, something that frequently crops up in the tales whether it be an affair with ‘a Stanley Products woman’ as in Sacks or the devastating affair of Gazebo. As it is so often the male partner that partakes in the affair in these tales perhaps Carver is making a comment on the male sex as a whole, this being something that will be explored in the next paragraph.

Carver portrays his male characters often in a rather negative light. Men are made to seem abusive, simplistic, predatorial and narrow minded, each of these traits being something I will explore in this section. Firstly, as aforementioned, the frequent infidelity in the tales is often due to the male partner, and the following quote from Sacks seems to suggest that this is a fault with the male gender as a whole.

‘A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don’t matter a damn anymore.’

This seems to suggest that infidelity is almost programmed into the male sex, it being impossible for a man to cling on to fidelity once he has been tempted to do otherwise. Carver also paints many of his males in a predator-like, simplistic light. For instance in So Much Water So Close To Home the female protagonist notes a nearby driver as ‘look[ing] at [her] breasts, [her] legs’ whilst in Tell The Women We’re Going Out the protagonist Jerry begins an ambush on two female cyclists passing by. The last tale takes a darker light as Jerry stones both girls at the end as they don’t respond to his coming on, this being one of many shocking male acts of violence throughout the collection that also include the threatening husband of One More Thing and the destructor of A Serious Talk who ‘saws’ through the phone cord before ‘revers[ing]’ his car into his ex’s house. Men are also portrayed as extremely narrow minded by Carver, for instance in Everything Stuck To Him the husband refusing to abandon a trip to help his clearly struggling wife with childcare as ‘Carl’s planning on [him] going’. The most blatant case of narrow-mindedness however has to be that of So Much Water So Close To Home in which the husband, along with a band of his mates, decide to leave a dead body they found in the water and worry about it at the end of their trip. Thus they go on

‘cook[ing] fish, cook[ing] potatoes, [drinking] coffee…[before taking] their cooking things and eating things back down to the river and wash[ing] them where the girl was’.

This brutal insensitivity and selfishness is rather startling to read and even more worryingly, as Carver portrays, it seems to start from a young age, perhaps being ingrained in the male psyche. This is seen in The Bath when a young boy, having just seen his friend get hit by a car, thinks the following thoughts:

‘he was wondering if he should finish the rest [of the potato chips] or continue on to school.’

Overall, Carver’s depiction of men thus is clearly very negative, the women of the collection, in contrast, often taking the moral high ground and acting as the victims. Men are portrayed as being closest to our evolutionary ancestors in terms of their ‘survival of the fittest-esque’ and primitive behaviour, indeed Carver’s dismal view towards the male gender has definitely made me check my one ways and whims, hoping to escape from the stereotype he draws up.

Carver also touches on the subject of mental illness in the collection, perhaps most noticeably in After The Denim in which the husband is evidently an incredibly unstable individual, prone to OCD and showing some rather autistic behaviour. As the vignette, as it were, reaches its end we are left with the rather upsetting observation that he ‘felt unworthy to be listening, to be standing’, this being suggested as being a regular occurrence. Indeed, many of the mental breakdowns and abusive displays previously discussed are seen as momentary lapses in a continual stream of uninterrupted boredom and unhappiness. Carver’s presentation of alcohol in the tales is also rather interesting, he having been an alcoholic for a long part of his life. It is primarily painted as a tool for destruction as seen in Gazebo where it is noted that ‘all of [the couple’s] important decisions have been figured out when [they] were drinking’ and I Can See The Small Things in the line ‘Sam and Cliff used to be friends, then one night they got drinking…’. Furthermore many of the marital conflicts precedently described occur under the influence, for example in One More Thing ‘L.D. [is] found dunk again’ before his ensue of violence commences. Conversely, alcohol is also portrayed as a means to achieve emotional numbness, hence the decision in So Much Water So Close To Home to ‘pick up some beer’.

As I earlier stated, the greatest difficulty I found in acclimatising to Carver’s style was not his minimalistic, plain writing style, but the ambiguous endings and sporadic titles that label his work. The prime example of an unfulfilled ending comes from the first story Why Don’t You Dance as seen  in the following extract.

‘She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time she quit trying.’

I found this ending particularly insufficient as the girl fails to fully gain an understanding of the bizarre actions of the protagonist to the tale and it seemed all too abrupt for me, indeed the word ‘trying’ itself seems rather mid-sentence and incomplete. The choice of title’s was equally frustrating for me to start with too, examples such as Everything Stuck To Him seeming to have little relation to the actual meaning and content of the tale itself. However, as critic Mars-Jones suggests:

"Endings and titles are bound to be a problem for a writer like Carver, since readers and reviewers so habitually use them as keys to interpret everything else in a story. So he must make his endings enigmatic and even mildly surrealist, and his titles for the most part oblique. Sometimes he over-compensates."

Indeed, although at first look being frustrating and seemingly bizarre I gradually got used to and began to appreciate the effect of both the abrupt endings and titles, beginning to see the irony in many of them, for instance Popular Mechanics describing the struggle of force over the baby and Tell The Women We’re Going emphasising how the horrific events described very much are those done by the male sex. Equally the clinical and neutral ending to the horrific show of force and violence in Popular Mechanics provided some mirth, the ending being ‘in this manner the issue was decided’.

Thus, to conclude, I by no means deny the fact that I found What We Talk About When We Talk About Love a struggle at first, Carver’s style being something that took a while getting used to and eventually somewhat appreciating. Although my opinion on Raymond Carver remains undecided, I still find much praise for the powerful nature of the pictures he paints; accentuated by the characters and tales being so relatable and believable and I look forward to starting another one of his collections some time soon. 

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami Book Review

Norwegian Wood was the work that propelled the famed contemporary Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, from the depths of celebrity into the realms of superstardom (something that occurred much to his disdain), and is often viewed as ‘the Japanese book’, ‘everyone’ in Japan having at some stage looked into its pages, and having read the famous work, I can clearly understand why. It follows the ways and whims of the adolescent Toru Wantanabe, a wallflower if ever there was one who ‘[doesn’t] go out of [his] way to make friends’ because ‘it just leads to disappointment’, and the decision presented before him, to choose between a past full of death and pain or pursuing a promising, although scary, future. In this book review I will explore both the main themes of Murakami’s work, along with the strengths and weaknesses of his style as a writer.

Toru has to choose between two girls in the novel, Naoko, an ethereal, but traumatised individual who represents his past and Migori, a lively individual who represents a possible future. It is made clear early on that Naoko, the former girlfriend of his late friend with whom she felt almost ‘physical joined’ to, is not the right choice for Toru, the all-too-painful past forever acting as a barrier for their future happiness, as seen in Toru’s noting that ‘[he] could have closed the distance between [him and Naoko] but something held [him] back’, this something being the ghost of his late friend, Kizuki. It is also notable how for much of the book the two ‘avoid any mention of the past’ as a subject, meaning that it always remains in the background as an opposing force. This idea of Naoko belonging solely in Toru’s past and not his future is also subtly portrayed when Toru notes how ‘[Naoko looks] like one of the beautiful girls you see in woodblock prints from the middle ages’. Naoko is also clearly traumatised from her awful past, having had to suffer both the deaths of her boyfriend and her sister. Midori, in contrast, despite similarly being surrounded by death herself (in this case the deaths of both her parents), is a lively, hopeful and sprightly individual as seen in her stating how she is ‘a real, live girl, with real live blood gushing through [her] veins'. Midori represents a hopeful future whilst Naoko represents a desolate past, indeed Toru hopefully admitting his certainty that ‘[him and Midori] could make it’. Eventually, as the novel reaches its close, and following the unfortunate suicide of Naoko (clearly her way of letting Toru go so he can achieve the happiness she cannot), Toru admits his love for Midori and the book ends on a rather ambiguous note following this:

'Where was I now? I had no idea, no idea at all!'

Toru, despite being somewhat lost and confused as where to go next, at least has a chance to achieve happiness, when before with Naoko no such chance was available. The sense of confusion and being lost indeed reflects how life is now what Toru makes of it, in other words he can chose where he’s heading to. Murakami presents all these precedent events in a rather fatalistic fashion, the chance meetings of Toru with both girls seeming to have been somewhat destined, in meeting Naoko for instance, Toru notes how both ‘had not planned to meet [one another] but had run into each other'.

Murakami’s exploration of adolescent sexuality is also rather interesting along with his challenge of the precept ‘sex is just sex’, one that Toru’s friend Nagasawa swears by. Nagasawa is a rather odd specimen having been consistently unfaithful to his girlfriend of three years, defending himself by noting how a man’s ‘sexual needs’ must be fulfilled somehow, but that the sex itself is meaningless, merely being a means to meet an end. At the novel’s preface, Toru, although sceptical of Nagasawa’s chosen lifestyle, often joins him on his various trips of promiscuity but, as the tale progresses, so does the decline of his sleeping around. Furthermore, the sexual encounters that Toru does involve himself in are portrayed as having real meaning and being the right thing as it were, challenging the claim that ‘sex is just sex’. Examples of this can be seen in Toru and Midori’s first romantic encounter where it is noted that ‘[they] had felt something warm and close and…both probably wanted, half consciously, to preserve that mood in some form', the sense of mutual consent and comprehension adding a rather magical feel. Equally, the sensual beauty and intimacy of…

'I traced the outline of her body through her gown with the flat of my hand. From shoulder to back to hips, I ran my hand over her again and again, driving the line and the softness of her body into my brain'

…in describing an encounter of Toru and Naoko is very successful in crushing Nagasawa’s view that sex is not an intimate act, and is merely a means to meet an end. It is a credit to Murakami’s descriptions and writings that he is able to tackle such a prerequisite.

Another theme throughout is that of mental health and death, issues that are epitomised in the character of Naoko, her mental illness indeed being a strong barrier to her possible future with Toru. Her mental illness is described as having ‘deep roots’ and often ‘people talk to [her] from the darkness’ when she is alone. If Toru stuck with her it is rather clear that he would have eventually been sucked into her void of unhappiness or else spent forever waiting for her recovery. Death is also explored in a rather intriguing manner, the following quote being one scattered often throughout the novel:

‘death exists not as the opposite, but as part of life’

This could be read in a multitude of ways, perhaps noting how the deaths of both her sister and her boyfriend will forever cloud Naoko’s life in the future, taking over it. Perhaps it’s a comment on Murakami’s part that we ought to accept death as part of the course of life in order to achieve some form of happiness, thus not spend forever bemoaning the deaths of others. It could also reflect how we as humans can reach immortality through the personal relations we make in our lifetime, which will be followed on by those who we leave behind. Death seems to somewhat encompass the plot line, several deaths occurring and being mentioned throughout, Naoko seems to be restrained by her mourning whilst Midori manages to keep on living, making Toru’s choice of girlfriend seem all the more obvious to the reader.

I also found the character Reiko, a friend of Naoko’s at the mental asylum she goes to, fascinating. Reiko takes the position of a prophet in the novel almost, often acting as a guide for Toru and aiding him with his decision making. Perhaps the best example of her in action is how a letter from her (announcing Naoko’s death) at last manages to '[smash] the illusory castle that [Toru] had built on that fragile hypothesis [of Naoko's recovery]’. Furthermore, Reiko so much as admits her role herself, noting how she feels as if she’s ‘preaching from a pulpit’. However, the guidance is not only one way, due to Toru’s isolation following Naoko’s death, Reiko is forced to step out of her comfort zone and leave her asylum of eight years in order to face the real world and comfort him.

Music is presented as a tool for memory in the novel, indeed, in a rather conventional manner, a chance listening of The Beatles’ song ‘Norwegian Wood’ causes a middle aged Toru to 'think of all [that he] had lost in the course of [his] life: time gone forever...feelings that [he] would he we know again', and thus induces him into writing the novel so as to ‘think. To understand’ for he has to write down everything ‘to feel [he] fully comprehends'. This generic set out is however excused by the breath-taking story that is written down. Murakami is also heavily successful as a writer in creating flowing yet complex series of dialogue (which take up a large proportion of the work), the many conversations between Reiko and Toru being prime examples of this. I also found his many descriptions as being equally noteworthy, for instance…

'In the spring gloom [the cherry blossoms] looked like flesh that had burst through the skin over festering wounds'

…which occurs following Toru hearing news of Naoko’s death. Through the novel itself, Toru learns so much about life and himself and develops such wisdom that there is lent an almost autobiographical tone, something that Murakami himself laughed off when questioned noting how his childhood was certainly ‘far more boring’ than that of Toru Watanabe.

To conclude, I found reading Norwegian Wood a real pleasure and although Murakami’s simple style of writing makes for a rather easy read it is by no means a ‘simple love story’, having many deep and complex themes. Indeed, I was not at all surprised to find, having read it, the high standing the work holds in its native country, a standing that is much deserved.

The Bell Jar/The Miniaturist/The Corrections

The Bell Jar/The Miniaturist/The Corrections 

Frankly I have no excuse but my shear laziness to explain my relative absence from book reviewing of recent and my current sluggish state prevents the following titles from getting the detailed review that they deserve. Mansfield Park (review can be found on a different link) indeed was the first dip in quality of my book reading for a long while, having just read these rather excellent titles that I shall go on to describe.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I was rather sad to realise that this was Plath’s first and only novel for this novel was fantastically easy to read (such so that I would liken its fluidity to a work of teenage fiction such as The Hunger Games), full to the brim with relatable characters and interesting teachings. The plot follows the downwards spiral of an Esther Greenwood, an individual unable to accept the norms of life, much of which involve in some form or another female subservience and it is her attaining to the feminist cause (and not willingly becoming the quiet, obedient wife that was expected of her). Her being trapped under a metaphorical 'bell jar' gradually forces her into an irrevocable madness, and a clear strength in Plath’s writing was that as a reader, I was not shocked by Greenwood’s first suicide attempt, nor her next nor her last, as her story seemed reasonable and her frustration understandable. I was also intrigued by the hostile mental health units Greenwood is forced to visit, treatment via electricity being normal practice. Overall, the Bell Jar was a read I would thoroughly recommend.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

A few weeks ago, I at last saved my birthday present of last year from the pound of dust that suffocated it, and was presently surprised to find it a rather thrilling read too. With twists and turns that could even rival Hardy, and complex characters oppressed by society in 17^th century Amsterdam such as Marian and Johannes (Marian over her interracial love and Johannes over his homosexuality, the oppression society had to offer leading to both of their deaths), it seems the hype towards Burton’s debut is fitting. 

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Yet another easy read, this time by American post-modern writer Jonathan Franzen. The despair Franzen manages to create in this epic has been described by some critics as foreshadowing to the events of 9/11 (which occurred quickly after its release) and whilst the more financial and economic sections did somewhat escape me, the fragmentation and pain amongst the central family unit of the story was rather palpable. Thanks to predominantly the multifaceted characters and intriguing plot twists I will be sure to invest in Franzen as an author again in the near future. 

Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park

I chose Mansfield Park (publ. 1814) to be my first taste of Austen’s work primarily due to the rather uncomplimentary review one discontented reader had related to me, vastly over the ‘infuriating’ and ‘unpitiable’ nature of the ‘heroine’ Fanny Price. Always one to want to challenge an opinion I was intrigued to see whether Austen’s third novel was really so terrible and I have to say that my first glimpse into the world of the famed realist author left me with rather mixed feelings.

One of the main arguments surrounding Jane Austen as a writer in general is whether the aristocratic, rural lifestyle that predominates all of her writings is something she wishes to mock or wilfully accept. A rather oblique answer can be found when looking at Austen’s treatment of both women and the issue of slavery in Mansfield Park. The most striking character with relation to the former area is 
certainly Lady Bertram, Fanny’s lazy and indecisive aunt who appears to be the definition of subservience. When puzzling over which card game to play at a dinner party she immediately turns to her husband, as seen in ‘which will amuse me most’. Later on she is noted as avoiding the difficulty of making her own decisions again as ‘Sir Thomas [was] at hand’. Furthermore she buys into the common gender norms of the time, believing that a woman only comes to be of any worth to as her complexion improves. Indeed, ‘by [Lady Bertram] convincing herself that Fanny was very pretty…it made her feel a sort of credit in calling her a niece’.  The humour generated from such a terrible individual clearly suggests Austen being on the more satirizing side of matters than encouraging such subservience. Equally, it would be easy to assume Austen’s acceptance of male dominance in matters, through Fanny’s practically having no choice but to marry Henry Crawford at some stage or another, in that the male will always succeeding over the female counterpart eventually and also through how marriage is presented in the novel as a must for any young woman who, unable to stand alone, must seek for male protection. However, ultimately the fact that Fanny does not marry Henry Crawford after all, instead at the end fulfilling her dreams by marrying her cousin Edmund, suggests a further challenging of such norms, the will of the woman being fulfilled. Another source of contention among many critics towards the novel is the ever-present fact that the centre place of the novel, Mansfield Park, is predominantly funded by the works of Sir Thomas Bertram in countries such as Antigua in the slave trade. However, this does by no means implicate Austen’s acceptance of such an immoral practice and status quo at the time of publication, she's merely presenting a norm at the time. Equally in the majority of her novels she tends to remain rather politically hushed. Indeed in 1814, the year when Mansfield Park was published, the climax of the Napoleonic Wars was marked, though this is completely emitted from the novel. Thus, as Austen’s criticisms tend to be more socially rather than politically charged, the fact that many of the social norms of the time are obliquely challenged in the novel, supports the case for Austen being this scornful commentator for the aristocratic lifestyle.

The second main source of contention I wish to address is the central heroine Fanny Price, the literary equivalent to marmite. To some critics she is a pitiful and endearing specimen, whilst to others her shy and timid nature is nothing short of exasperating. Having read Mansfield Park, I tend to agree with the latter opinion. The reader is quickly introduced to Fanny as an ‘extremely timid and shy’ individual who tends to ‘[shrink] from notice’. She is generally abused at Mansfield Park, the place which at age nine she was suddenly sent to away from the comforts of her home. The trait of timidity in itself is not necessarily an implication for a weak heroine, it is the fact that Fanny never seems to really escape and progress from this weak and shy persona that is infuriating and so makes her a pitiful protagonist. This weakness is exemplified by Price’s insisting of having at least ‘a sensation of being honoured’ following the proposal by the corrupt and promiscuous Henry Crawford. The lack of gravitas in her refusal thus leads to his continued, determined pursuance of her, causing her much distress that she could have swiftly avoided in the first place. Bar an internal flash of anger over a letter from the morally corrupt Mary Crawford, Fanny is too much the quintessentially weak victim to extract any sympathy, thus suggesting a failure on Austen’s part through failing in her obvious attempt at providing a likeable protagonist. Indeed, when Fanny has the ‘sympathetic’ soliloquy of ‘I must be a brute indeed, if I can be really ungrateful’ when refusing Crawford’s proposal, I must confess that my heart was so hardened towards her that I felt little more than a tinge of annoyance. Another way which Fanny rather irritated me as a character was her continual sticking to all that was right and good which (admittedly this is taking it to the extreme) made her rather like a living and breathing set of the Ten Commandments and so rather unrelatable as a protagonist. This might just be due to the fact that views on morality clearly change with time (nowadays private theatre is not seen as an abominable sin). To those at the time of publication Fanny might have been praised for this sticking to all that was good and right whilst nowadays be viewed as boring and judgemental, however, as literary critic Claire Tomalin notes, it is not just Fanny’s moral cleanliness but the fact that she will ‘cast aside’ sinners which she has only ‘intolerance’ for, that really creates the dislike.

Morality is an integral theme of the book, characters such as Mary Crawford (who admits that "she never has danced with a clergyman... and she never will") get their comeuppance eventually whilst characters such as Fanny Price (who looks on in horror at the evil around her, as seen in ‘Fanny looked on and listened, not unamused to observe the selfishness which, more or less disguised, seemed to govern them all’) eventually end up in a state of great happiness. Although the distinctly differing fates between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ do manage to strictly enforce the novel’s central theme, allowing for a slightly cathartic feel as a result, the saccharine nature of such an assortment of fate was rather frustrating for me. The ‘last straw’, as it were, for me was Edmund’s rather sudden and unrealistic turning away from the love of his life, Miss Crawford, to Fanny in the last chapter suggesting that ‘her warm and sisterly regard for him would be the foundation enough for wedded love’. Indeed, I do believe that my overall opinion of the work would have been somewhat more appraising had the happy ending been emitted or at least slightly adjusted. I also found Austen’s style rather verbose and wordy at occasions, especially in the dialogue, however perhaps this in itself reflects the unnecessary formalities and whims of upper class life which she sets out to satirize.

Thus to conclude, Mansfield Park was an interesting way to ingratiate myself into the world of Austen and despite all its many flaws, it was incredibly easy to read and get into. Indeed, despite my many issues with the plot line and characters, the last 50 or so pages, in which the pace of matters all so suddenly sped up, were generally thrilling. However, overall I am afraid to say that the opinion of the one who recommended Mansfield Park to me in the first place is one I strongly agree with.