Job Ideas for Teens

This morning I finished reading After Dark by Haruki Murakami.  I’ve known a lot of people who likes Murakami. Intellectual people. Really poetic people. So when my teacher told us he was a great author, I thought to myself I wouldn’t understand or like him (if I did understand) because the only people I know who read Murakami are people with much depth. And I’m not one of them.

About two months ago however, out of boredom and not having anything to read at all, I picked up a Murakami. The title arouses curiosity, I’ll give you that, but when I began reading, Murakami lost me within the first few pages.

I put the book down and decided to wait just a little longer and prepare myself before reading it (I had just finished rereading The Catcher in the Rye then), so I still had a major Holden hangover.

After a few weeks, I reread the first few pages, and paid much more attention this time, absorbing what Murakami has to present to me. Later on I found myself halfway through the book, and absorbed with the characters’ issues.

I can’t explain how the story actually goes in simple words, because there is absolutely nothing simple about it. The least I can say is that it’s like a look at another world that happens in another time, at the same time that it happened in Tokyo in the wee hours of the night. Everything happened in one night, and everything happened for years at the same time.

Murakami describes every detail in the sense that you and he are in this together. Like you and he are both spectators on what’s happening with the characters, and that it’s his responsibility to explain to you whatever it is that is happening around you.

I can’t say I’m too crazy about the book. If you strip it with all the abstractions and flowery details, it would be a typical story. But that’s it. You can’t, so it’s not.

I’m not too crazy about Murakami either, but I’m curious about his other books now. If he writes like how he wrote After Dark in his every book, maybe he really is a great author.