Hear the Wind Sing

Hear the Wind Sing is the first novel by Haruki Murakami; it first appeared in the June 1979 issue of Gunzo, one of the most influential literary magazines in Japan. It is the first of the "boku" tetralogy; translated by Alfred Birnbaum.

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graderjsMay 2023

Great! I also agree. One phrase always stuck with me, when talking about the leader of the cult, Murakami said, paraphrasing, "imagine the bloodbath of internal conflicts that must need to happen to give rise to someone like that". For some reason, I've always remembered it. "Bloodbath of internal conflicts" was a line that always stuck with me. :P ;) xx ;p

Also, I recommend getting hands on the very early (and short) English translations of, "Hear the Wind Sing", and "Pinball 1973" -- just really strange, bizarre and cool. Like a distilled pure essence of all his works to come, but these were (I think) his first two. You can sort of see all his themes, style and everything in those first two. Really great! :) ;p xx ;p

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1arityAug 2015

Stick with Murakami, he's pretty much absorbed the entire Western canon and now left us with his charming "shuffling" of it. Hopefully you also read Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973. They were his first two and recently reprinted ( this month, August 2015 ) in English.

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humanarityApr 2015

Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) - incredibly clear ideas probably clear-up 80% of issues you have with everyday life

The Bible (& The Gnostic Gospels) - I love the idea that Jesus was a real guy who (literally) petrified his childhood playmates because they "vexed" him by dispersing his anti-gravity water :)

Atlas Shrugged - no excuses

Self and Others - personal pyschology

Seth Speaks - a lady channels an interdimensional being

The Road Less Travelled - a psychoanalyst's memoirs

Letters to a Young Artist - encouragement for going your own way, a series of letters

The Alchemist - help you read the signs from the heart of the World for your own path

An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, et al (T. Suzuki) - really interesting, non-duality, higher third unification of opposites

Hear the Wind Sing (Murakami) - really bizarre and pure, his first one written late nights at kitchen table after working in a bar, before he became famous

Rich Dad Poor Dad - solid advice

Discrete Maths (Rosen) - interesting and very learnable, a great reference

An Imaginary Life (Malouf) - great clarity of writing

The Solid Mandala (Patrick White) - amazing observation of people

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keepamovinAug 2023

Fisher library in Sydney Uni. Millions of volumes in open stacks over 9 (i think) floors. "Buzzing with knowledge and light" as someone said back on campus many years ago. Very cool place to just go hang out. It was where I first discovered some old worn copies of Murakami "Hear the Wind Sing" and "Pinball 1973" in English. Only place I've ever seen them in fact.

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elihuNov 2022

> He describes it at one point as an “unadorned natural style”, but one that was arrived at in characteristically unorthodox fashion: having failed dismally on his first attempt to write what would become Hear the Wind Sing, he began again from scratch, writing not in his native Japanese, but English. “My vocabulary was severely limited, as was my command of English syntax,” he writes, and yet when he translated his words back into Japanese, the short, simple sentences created by those self-imposed limitations possessed “a distinctive rhythm”.

That's interesting. I wonder if he still does that at least some of the time for his more recent books?

The English translations I've read seem to be really good; I wonder if this technique/style has made the work the translators have to do a lot easier when they translate back into English or if it doesn't actually make much difference? It seems like it would at least lead to a tendency to avoid linguistic constructions and idioms that don't have fairly obvious English translations.

It would be fun to be able to read Murukami's initial English draft side by side with the English version of the published book to see how similar they are.

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graderjsDec 2020

oh I mean "reminds me of” as a term including "sounds like"... and was just copying what I think of as Murakami's style and some of his common tropes such as pasta, cooking, strangeness in mundane situations.

If you're interested in reading, I reckon it's safe to read his books in chronolgical order. You can see how his style and preoccupations develop over the years.

The first story I read was "on meeting the 100% perfect girl one April morning" out of a short story collection called "the elephant vanishes" which is not his first book. I was in a bookshop in early 2003 and just randomly looking for the shortest thing I could possibly read and this story got me hooked on Murakami. and then I think after reading that short story book the next thing I read was "hear the wind sing", his original short novel. And then "pinball 1973" and then I think "Norwegian Wood."

I like his sort of loose universe how similar characters and types of characters and tropes kind of return but the the recurrence is not necessarily central to any of the particular stories they're just kind of like motifs.

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