How deeply perplexing Haruki Murakami’s writing can be.

I’m almost done with The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and as hard as it may seem to understand the literature in his words due to his book being translated from Japanese to English (thanks to Jay Rubin), I’m finding even the translated version as gripping and unputdownable as ever. It basically revolves around a man who is left by his wife for reasons he can’t figure out, and in the process of him thinking his problem through, he climbs down a dry well and lives there in darkness, without food and drink, for a few days. Being in the darkness captures him in such a different way and every memory that he has long forgotten suddenly returns to him in mysteriously vivid detail as if he’s only just experienced them the day before. NO, I am not copying this down from the book, I really do find the plot very moving in some aspects and I do have to admit that the literary value of Murakami’s writing is truly beyond compare.