William Thomas's Reviews > Dance Dance Dance

I fall in love with every girl I see. Every girl I meet. It's true. I fall in love a hundred times in a week. It's always been like that. So very easy to look at these girls and their legs and their teeth while they ride the bus with me, while they shop for groceries next to me, while they wait in line at the bank in front of me. Because I don't have to really connect to them then. I don't have to really see the nakedness and the scars and the tan lines and the pimples under the makeup. I don't have to k ow how old they really are or if they were abused by other lovers. I don't have to take the time to get to know them. I just make it all up in my head. Funny how I always have them break my heart, then, in the end. I never write a happy ending.

Don't get me wrong, I have loved truly and deeply many many times before on very real levels. But those are very far between all the other fantasies, all the dream girls, running through my waking days. That's the way I feel about Murakami, though. That most of these other books and authors are those girls I meet in passing or at parties, the ones who really aren't real. But that Murakami is so real, so devilishly real that he breaks my heart in ways I never knew it could be. Finds fault lines I didn't know were there. And that he lingers in the mind long after he's gone, unlike the fleeting legs and teeth of bus stop romances.

Listen:

This is how an existentialist writes a metaphysical pulp fiction. And it's really good. My only problem, which seems to be a hallmark of modern Japanese literature, is that at times it feels tedious and that tedium made me feel tired. But slogging through that, you come out into a bright an beautiful book that will sneak up on you. You'll be thinking about it for days after, while you're trying to read other books. Getting lost in that feeling of a great love that came to an end.