1Q84
By Haruki Murakami
I've been with this book for quite a while. I remember that I was reading it before February break, when I
took a little hiatus for some cowboy lore. For the past few days, as I've been closing in on the finish, I've been doing my best to savor this latest Murakami world, unsure of what I'd do when it ended. Then again, do Murakami worlds really ever end?
The stars of this show are Tengo and Aomame. Tengo is pretty close to the derided "Murakami man" -- a loner with an older, married girlfriend who seems to wander haplessly but fairly contentedly through the world. Aomame, though, is different -- a strong female lead. It is she who starts the story off when, one afternoon, she is frustrated by a traffic jam on the highway and, at her taxi driver's suggestion, descends a set of emergency stairs off the highway. She makes it down fine, but she soon discovers that the world after that event is a little different than it was before. Police uniforms, she notices, are just a wee bit different. Different enough that she thinks she would have noticed, but not so different as to be a complete break from what came before. Other discrepancies emerge as well, and she decides that she is no longer in 1984 -- she is in 1Q84. It is confirmed when she looks at the night sky and sees not one but two moons shining down on her.
Meanwhile, Tengo's journey is a little more subtle. He is conversing with the editor of a literary magazine when his companion proposes something out of the ordinary. The editor has received a manuscript -- Air Chrysalis -- with an extraordinary story but lackluster prose. Would Tengo re-write it so that it can be submitted for a literary prize? Tengo knows better, but he's read the story and something is drawing him to it. So he does the work and, sure enough, the novella wins the prize. Then it becomes a best seller. And one day, Tengo sees two moons too.
Oh, and another thing: Tengo and Aomame are pining for each other, and have been since they once held hands in a magical moment as 10-year-olds. They never spoke again, but very much want to get back to one another. Right.
So what's the deal with this 1Q84? It has some wonderful, mysterious, and, typical of Murakami, rather vague elements. The most important of which are the Little People. They were a feature in the book that Tengo re-wrote. And in 1Q84, they are real. What are they? Who are they? Are they good? Are they evil? We never really figure out. One thing we know is that they create chrysalises out of the air that house a kind of copy of living humans. Clones? Maybe. We also know that they play a central role in a religion of which the original author's father was Leader. And that Aomame, who as a side job worked as an assassin who murders serial abusers of women, kills Leader. It is this final act that, spoiler alert, finally brings Aomame and Tengo together and allows them to climb back up the fire-escape-cum-portal back to 1984. It takes 925 pages.
So, what does it all mean? The book is essentially about a book that brings another world to life. So it seems like a riff on a familiar Murakami theme about the nature of reality, that it is something we can create -- not just something that is presented to us. It is also, of course, a statement about the power of stories, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones our culture perpetuates, and the ones that can set us free.*
925 pages. I will miss 1Q84.
*I forgot a detail about the moon. Murakami loves to insert musical references. In this case, lines from "Paper Moon" -- "It wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me." Again: Reality is what you make of it.
