海角大神

Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Perrault, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Jean Sibelius, Simone de Beauvoir, M. C. Escher, Sigmund Freud, Lewis Carroll, Robert Bloch (that鈥檚 right, Hitchcock did not write "Psycho"), Edvard Munch, the meanest schoolteacher you can remember, Pan, Richard Feynman, a handful of specters and spooks and shades and demons, a world-famous spelunker, a renowned Manga artist, a coyote, and Edward Gorey walked into a bar. They have been charged with finding a writer for a particular book. They took a table and had a few drinks. A few had more than a few.

鈥淏ut Knopf said they wanted it to haunt and menace,鈥� pleaded Bloch.聽聽聽聽聽聽聽

鈥淣o, Robert,鈥� de Beauvoir rolled her eyes. 鈥淵ou can forget about shower scenes. It takes place in a library, pour l'amour de Dieu. Sort of a library, anyway.鈥�

鈥淭his is supposed to be a book for kids, Robert. Kind of. Although where the dire existentialism is going to fit in is anyone鈥檚 guess,鈥� said Franz Kafka, or would have had he been there. At the moment, he was in Czechoslovakia managing the asbestos factory.

鈥淚t certainly makes sense to douse the story with terror, like any fairytale worth its salt,鈥� agreed Perrault and the Grimms (the grim Grimms, not the bowdlerized versions).

The ghosts couldn鈥檛 speak, but they nodded in agreement with what passed for their heads.

鈥淵es, fear. Fear is key,鈥� piped in Mrs. Stoat the schoolteacher, predictably.

Feynman liked the aspects of randomness and chaos.

A rabbit hole 鈥� where anything can happen 鈥� appealed to the spelunker; 聽borderlands 鈥� where everything else can happen 鈥� appealed to the coyote.

Pan thought it would be crackerjack if there was a guy dressed as a sheep.

Freud wanted dreams. Enough said.

鈥淎nd art鈥�, said Gorey, Munch, Escher, and the manga woman in unison. 鈥淐reepy, spidery, but some Pop, too. And some of those high-velocity cartoons. It鈥檚 a kid鈥檚 book ... like鈥�

鈥淒on鈥檛 forget music, though not Pop-cartoon bouncy.鈥� That from Sibelius, never one for the light of heart.

鈥淥kay, then. Pretty obvious. Get Haruki on the phone.鈥�

聽鈥淗ey, it鈥檚 flowing like molasses around here. Where鈥檚 the barkeep?鈥� demanded Poe.

Welcome, hopefully once again, to Murakamiland: sheep men, waifs, quests, attentiveness to little (odd) things, a labyrinth, a stairway down (鈥淟ong enough, it seemed, to reach Brazil,鈥� notes the young protagonist, which may not be good 鈥� no offense to Brazil), absurdity and irrationality, the tension between the fantastical and the everyday, real and unreal, sadness and loss, then sudden shifts out of the blue, and plenty of the plain runic. 聽聽

The Strange Library is a kid鈥檚 book, no matter how many allegories, semiotics, characteries, parables, and paradiddles you drape on its shoulders. Ninety-six pages don鈥檛 make it a kid鈥檚 book, necessarily, even with the full-page, color artwork. It鈥檚 a kid鈥檚 book that happens to plumb the kind of questions that leave us all wishing for more room to breathe: the singular and ever-solitary individual 鈥� 鈥淭he sheep man has his world. I have mine. And you have yours.... [E]ach treads his own path,鈥� 鈥� the loss of identity (for better or worse), groping in the dark, self-understanding in an unknowable world, the dignity of idiosyncrasies.

The narrator, an adolescent boy, drops into his neighborhood library to return some books. He is a frequenter of the library, so he notices when the woman at the front desk is unfamiliar. And rude. When he asks to check out some books, she directs down some stairs to Room 107. This is all new to the boy, but down he goes. Finding Room 107, he knocks (鈥渁 normal, everyday knock, yet is sounded as if someone had whacked the gates of hell with a baseball bat鈥�, enters, and finds an old man behind a desk. At first the old man is solicitous, but he gradually grows more ominous, as does the atmosphere. The boys requests three fat tomes on Ottoman tax collecting, which the old man retrieves from the stacks, but forbids the boy to check out. 鈥淭hose books have to be read here.鈥� In a yet more inner room, to boot.

Criminy, thought the boy. His mother will have a fit if he is late. He agrees to the now frankly menacing old man that he will stay and read for thirty minutes. He is led down corridor after forking corridor, through doors into yet more forking corridors, some 鈥渁s dark as if a hole had been pierced in the cosmos,鈥� until they reach the reading room. It鈥檚 a jail cell. The old man has no intention of the boy leaving until he has memorized the three books, he says. The boy鈥檚 jailer is a sheep man and a kindly old soul, whom the mean old man whips mercilessly with a switch. The sheep man has some good news and some bad news. Bad news first: when the boy finishes reading, 鈥淭he top of your head鈥檒l be sawed off and all your brains鈥檒l get slurped right up.鈥� (Brains full of information are 鈥渘ice and creamy.鈥� The good news: the sheep man makes top-notch donuts, and as the initiated know, good donuts are cure-alls.

Another visitor to the boy is a beautiful girl 鈥� 鈥渟o pretty that looking at her made my eyes ache鈥� 鈥� who brings him his meals (and what meals: sea urchin soup, white asparagus with sesame-seed dressing, Toulouse sausage, stuffed snapper). She speaks with her hands, comfortingly and wisely. She appears unexpectedly, sometimes in different guises, and she conspires with the sheep man and the boy to escape.

No spoiler alerts, other than to mention a few of Murakami鈥檚 outlandish incidentals and observations: a vicious dog with a giant sparrow in its mouth; 鈥淟ike a blind dolphin, the night of the new moon silently drew near鈥�; that the boy had facility with classical Turkish though never having made its acquaintance; the old man sneering, 鈥淚 can read the two of you as easily as I can a watermelon patch in broad daylight鈥�; the suggestion it all may be a dream. (Murakami has said in an interview that he doesn鈥檛 remember his dreams, except one about a bowl of rice speckled with tiny pandas. Sigmund, we need you.)

And there are familiar, deep-running Murakami concerns and tactics. That of identity: 鈥淎s I flipped the pages, I became the Turkish tax collector Ibn Armut Hasir....The air was filled with the scent of fruit and chickens, tobacco and coffee.鈥� He also has three wives, six children, a scimitar, and a parakeet. Boundaries: a charged landscape, the threshold of mystery, where the avant-garde meets the primitive. The spirit and tone of the writing: As if Murakami is driving down a strange road, not know what鈥檚 to come around the next curve: alert, aware, but as in the dark as the reader. He is, however, a really good driver.

聽Lastly, a floating, seemingly extempore Coda: 鈥淢y mother died last Tuesday.鈥� Camus wasn鈥檛 in the bar that day. He had to smoke outside. Pity.