Free Haruki Murakami And The Music Of Words Ebooks To Download
As a young man, Haruki Murakami played records and mixed drinks at his Tokyo Jazz club, Peter Cat, then wrote at the kitchen table until the sun came up. He loves music of all kinds—jazz, classical, folk, rock—and has more than six thousand records at home. And when he writes, his words have a music all their own, much of it learned from jazz. Jay Rubin, a self-confessed fan, has written a book for other fans who want to know more about this reclusive writer. He reveals the autobiographical elements in Murakami's fiction, and explains how he developed a distinctive new style in Japanese writing. In tracing Murakami's career, he uses interviews he conducted with the author between 1993 and 2001, and draws on insights and observations gathered from over ten years of collaborating with Murakami on translations of his works.
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Random House UK; New Ed edition (January 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099455447
ISBN-13: 978-0099455448
Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1 x 7.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #740,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #85 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > Asian > Japanese #229 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Japanese #4444 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors
First of all, don't buy this book purely for biographical purposes, hoping to get some hidden insight on Murakami's life. It is clear that Murakami values his privacy intensely and Rubin goes to great lengths to respect that. Also, what information is given about Murakami will pretty much conform with what you probably could've assumed about him. This book, more than anything else, is a chronological literary criticism of Murakami's works up through "after the quake." Rubin does a good job of analyzing many of the running motifs and themes that occur in Murakami's books (wells, corridors, birds, and elephants, to name a few). It is clear that Rubin has a hard time being a Murakami fan and a Murakami scholar at the same time, but he seems to do a good job remaining impartial (although it is clear which books are his favorites and which are not!)My first experience with Murakami was when I read "A Wild Sheep Chase" a year and a half ago, and before I knew it I had read every major novel and short story he'd written, finishing Pinball 1973 just last week. I read the books in an order that pretty much had nothing to do with the order they were written (beware that the order that the English translations came out in is often quite different than the original order). As a result, reading the details Rubin gives behind each of the books and about the growth that Murakami experienced along the way were among the highlights of the book for me and helped to solidify the ties that hold his books together. Murakami fascinates me because he is still growing rapidly as a writer and a person and the growing pains as well as the links to his past work are found in each work if you know what to look for.
This book is about 50% Rubin's analysis of Murakami's work, about 30% biographical, about 10% about the translation work and differences between Japanese and English, and about 10% "interview style" where we get a few inside details on The Man Himself. This much is true: Anyone expecting a lot of information about The Man Himself should be a little disappointed. The book bills itself as granting more info than it does. I suspect this is out of Rubin's own deferrence to Murakami's privacy. He treads delicately on the info of the author's life in the biographical sections and when we do get a smattering of Murakami's own words about himself (and it's rare), it feels like nuggets culled from stray emails rather than from a sustained closeness of the translator to his author-friend. That's a shame, but it doesn't mar the book, which is a real resource for English readers without a real roadmap of his lesser works. Knowing which stories I need to seek out is so much easier, and understanding the significance of Murakami's first two novels is much better illuminated than before-- given their basic unavailability in print in English.For me, Rubin's translations are my favorites. I simply have to disagree with the reader from the dolphin hotel. The touch that Rubin gives to his translations is very delicate and appreciated. I too have had a chance to peruse Binrbaum's NW translation, and although I can't find it directly lacking in any way, I simply prefer the Rubin version.I really wish Rubin had gone a lot further into understanding what it takes to translate Murakami. This is the area in which he has very unique knowledge compared to the rest of us and he only rarely tells us much about it.
Jay Rubin is the English translator for such Murakami releases as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood and after the quake. In this book, he brings some interesting insight from Murakami into the novels that have captured such a level of interest in the US. While most US Murakami fans probably only first learned of this author in picking up a copy of A Wild Sheep Chase (for me, it was finding "TV People" in the fantastic anthology Monkey Brain Sushi), Rubin shows us how Murakami has developed a much more thorough career in Japan and has put out not only an impressive number of translations of classics from the English (which was the way he first received any notoriety in the US) but travel writing and even has a website where fans can actually get responses from H.M. himself.By using a nice array of tidbits from interviews and insight from Murakami himself, Rubin provides a wonderful perspective of Murakami's simple and artistic pursuits in his writing. How Murakami uses inspiration from detective novels to provide novels that have trhe rhythm and drive of a mystery, but the mysteries themselves become unsolveable ones - the influence of Murakami's own disillusionment with the protests of his youth - the influences of jazz and other popular music on Murakami's writing - how Murakami has tried to tackle different genre as his career continued.
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words Yuri Murakami GIRL B (Japanese Edition) Yuri Murakami Photograph Pure Sweet (Japanese Edition) Yuri Murakami GIRL A (Japanese Edition) Flash Action Software Combo Wonder Words: Beginning Sight Words & Picture Words Maranatha! Music Praise Hymns and Choruses Classic Songbook Expanded 4th Edition Words and Music Swear Word Coloring Book : 40 Swear Words, Obnoxious Words and Insults: Release Your Anxiety and Stress. Sweary Beautiful Designs : Patterns, Flowers, Mandalas (Swear and Relax) Cats Talking Shi#!: Shut the F*ck Up and Color (3): The Adult Coloring Book of Swear Words, Curse Words, Profanity and Other Dirty Stuff! (Volume 3) OrnaMENTALs Feel Good Words To-Go: 50 Portable Feel Good Words to Color and Bring Cheer (Volume 5) Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction (6th Edition) (Words Their Way Series) Words Their Way with English Learners: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling (2nd Edition) (Words Their Way Series) The First Thousand Words in Russian (Usborne First Thousand Words) (Russian and English Edition) Swear Word Coloring Book : Adults Coloring Book With Some Very Sweary Words: 41 Stress Relieving Curse Word Designs To Calm You The F**k Down (Swear Words Coloring Books for Adults) (Volume 1) Adult Coloring Books Swear words: Shut up twatwaffle : Escape the Bullshit of your day : Stress Relieving Swear Words black background Designs (Volume 1) Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Big Words) 1000 Mandarin Chinese Words (1000 Words) Essential Words for the GRE, 4th Edition (Barron's Essential Words for the GRE) Hot Words for the SAT ED, 6th Edition (Barron's Hot Words for the SAT) Essential Words for the IELTS with MP3 CD, 2nd Edition (Barron's Essential Words for the Ielts (W/CD)) Bob Marley: In His Own Words (In Their Own Words)
