IQ84 <\/i>is the latest novel by Haruki Murakami, probably Japan\u2019s best-known and best-selling living author. He\u2019s an astonishing story-teller with a pyrotechnicolored imagination and a Shun-sharp eye for the minutiae of consumer culture. I had the huge pleasure of meeting him a few years ago when he visited Bowdoin. Murakami is as charming, modest, and down-to-earth in person as his stories are wild, frenetic and scary. We discussed, among much much else, how some story-tellers keep their magical and spiritual realms separate from the \u201creal\u201d world: you get from one to the other through a clearly-defined passage such as a wardrobe, a beanstalk, a tollbooth or the River Styx. In Murakami\u2019s stories, there are no such distinctions: cats, crows and sheep talk while Johnny Walker, Colonel Saunders and giant frogs come and go as they please. I\u2019m especially excited to read IQ84<\/i> (Q sounds like the Japanese word for \u201c9\u201d) because the seed for this very long novel is the very short story On Meeting My 100% Woman One Fine April Morning<\/i>. This lovely story of lost (and found?) soulmates will be familiar to captive audiences at Loose Leaves, Burnett House, and my Japanese Politics class, to whom I have recently had the pleasure of reading aloud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IQ84 is the latest novel by Haruki Murakami, probably Japan\u2019s best-known and best-selling living author. He\u2019s an astonishing story-teller with a pyrotechnicolored imagination and a Shun-sharp eye for the minutiae of consumer culture. I had the huge pleasure of meeting him a few years ago when he visited Bowdoin. Murakami is as charming, modest, and … <\/p>\n