Reviewing the reviews of 1Q84. They suck!

Title: 1Q84

Author: Haruki Murakami

Progress: 50%

Amazon Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #25 (but was in the top 10 for a while)

Book 7 out of 107

When I put down “1Q84,” I feel as if emerging from a dream. I’m a bit disorientated, a bit disturbed, melancholy and a might creeped out. I’ve never read anything like it.

Given the long passages of backstory, of exposition, of exposition delivered as long episodes of dialogue, all the extended asides into minutia, it has no right to be as compelling as it is, to have the power that it does. And yet it has a hold on me that I’m going to miss once I finish it.

I think it’s the work of a genius.

So I was surprised by its reviews, which range from dismissive to disappointed to angry. Not so with many reader reviews. The amateurs at Amazon and Good Reads have plenty of positive things to say. Search for #1q84 on Twitter and you’ll find a legion of happy Murakami-heads. 


The professionals, not so much.

Janet Maslin of the New York Times throws several haymakers to the literary jaw of Mr. Murakami. To her, reading “1Q84” is akin to be “stuck in quicksand.” It’s a “stupefying” experience, she says.

My review of bad reviews of "1Q84"

To Nathan Heller over at Slate, Mr. Murakami isn’t even a good writer. In fact, according Mr. Heller, the wildly popular author has never been a good writer. Apparently, his first writing award as "best new young writer" was given half-heartedly by judges who in essence gave the entered work a grade of C. 


Why it won if it was so mediocre Mr. Heller doesn’t actually explain. It’s an unanswered question of the kind Ms. Maslin hates so much.

Across the pond, Matt Thorn at the UK’s telegraph calls it a “tedious waste of the reader’s time.” You read that aloud with a British accent and it has a serious sting.

All my life, I’ve been fascinated by works that get uniformly good reviews. If critics become unanimous about something, I want to know why and immediately digest whatever obscure foreign film or independently published novel is getting buzz from the professionally opinionated.

Sometimes, they are absolutely right. Sometimes, critics herald amazing works like “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” "Breaking Bad" and “Memento.” Thanks critics! You have made my life that much more enjoyable by celebrating what the Pop Culture Machine would not otherwise have put in front of my eyes.

On the other hand, I sometimes take it personally when something I love takes beating. Guess what? I liked “Thor” and “Captain America.” I liked “the Da Vinci Code” (the book, not so much the movie). I liked “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the book and movies (US and Swedish). 


I really loved Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works”. “Midnight in Paris” is getting huge kudos this year, and it’s great, but “WW” with a bitter, sarcastic and lovable Larry David makes me smile just thinking about it. And critics hated it.

And they loved “Greenburg: (75% at Rotten Tomatoes.com!), which is a stinking pile of unfunny dreck full of critic bait.

When I read a bad review of something I love, I try to decipher why the critic is disapproving, and figure out if maybe I’m wrong. What flaws do I have that I missed such glaring shittiness?

Let’s break down a few things Slate’s Mr. Heller offers as evidence of Mr. Murakami being a bad writer.

This is from his review…

“And yet for all of its plotting flourishes, 1Q84 reads, paragraph-to-paragraph, as some of Murakami’s weakest writing in years. Obvious things are overexplained. (“If we're through choosing, we'd better close the menus,” Aomame at one point instructs. “Otherwise the waiter will never come.”) Figurative language is often forced. (“Little children might pee in their pants, the impact of her frown was so powerful,” goes one description.) And when the book’s frenetically evolving plot requires explanation, as if often does, much of the crucial data is simply dropped into the mouths of characters…”

When I read the cited passages in the book, they didn’t strike me as bad writing. Maybe I’m a barely literate idiot, but they didn’t.

With the menu business, the stilted dialogue between two characters happens while they are just getting to know each other. They are young women who aren’t used to having friends. They are nervous and worrying about what the other is thinking and what they should think about the other. That kind of social situation leads to saying overly obvious things like: “We should put our menus down or the waiter will never come.” That line seemed perfectly suited to the situation and the mindset of the characters.

With the second example, citing the “forced” figurative language, this thought happens in the head of a character suffering from sharp self-esteem problems. And while a beautiful girl, she can become inordinately scary looking when grimacing. It’s something she worries about a lot and will often force a smile from her lips for fear of letting slip her frightening expression. So again, that line, the childlike tone of it, the simplicity of it, I had no problem with.

I’m trying to prove anyone wrong. When it comes to art, there is no right and wrong. People like or dislike, and some people can explain with entertaining clarity why it is something repels are attracts them.

In the case of “1Q84”, all I can say is that I love it. It has a hold on my imagination. I know, like and hope for the two main characters. My perception of the real world seems a bit shifted after a long session of reading this beguiling book; things seem a bit unreal and mysterious, filled with strange connections. I half expect to look up into the sky and see a second moon, a green one, and feel the pull of the vacuum of fate, which is what I think this book is actually about.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Who knows?

I do know this about reviews and critics.

As much as I appreciate their work, a critic has never moved me. Mr. Heller will never make me re-examine the nature of life and fate. Ms. Maslin will never make me cry or laugh or write anything that will make me say wow. Critics, at best, can point to works that would otherwise go unnoticed. But do they have anything to teach me? I think maybe not. Not much anyway.

So here is a new rule for this project. I’m not going to read reviews, professional reviews, until after I’ve read the book and learned what I can from it.

My task is to discover the power and secrets of how these novels work, reverse engineering them so I can put one together myself. I’ve read enough how-to-write books and reviews, and if you could become a novelist just through reading those, I’d be rivaling Stephen King by now.

Now, back to year 1Q84. Some crazy, crazy stuff is happening, and I’m sure Janet Maslin doesn’t approve of any of it.  

1Q84 -- Give me that old time sexy assassin surrealist novel

Title: 1Q84

Author: Haruki Murakami

Progress: 25%

Amazon Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #25 (but was in the top 10 for a while)

Book 7 out of 107

I had read a few commercial thrillers in a row and was craving something a little deeper.

Mr. King’s “11/22/63” almost scratched that itch, but not quite. I wanted my brain fed something a little more substantial, chewy and satisfying.

“1Q84” seemed to fill that bill. And it almost adhered to my rules for this project. It was a New York Times bestseller, and did indeed feature a crime, murder in fact. I jumped right in.

Woah. Trippy.

First off, I went into it not expecting what I like in crime thriller fiction, namely, sex, violence, a sense of danger and a taste of darkness. I was expecting an arty, dense, and deep read, but without much fun. I guess I was expecting a Japanese version of a Franzen novel with a little surrealism thrown in. (When discussing Mr. Murakami, people talk about surrealism a lot.)

Not too far into the book, a sexy female assassin kills a man with needle to the base of neck.

That’s the kind of thing that might happen in a Sandra Brown novel, but not a book by a writer who collects literary awards like he’s an 8-year-old collecting little league participation trophies.

And there is sex too, not graphic scenes, but adult thoughts about erotic situations, followed by the emotional aftermath of such encounters.

To my surprise, I’m getting my thriller itch scratched and my artful literature muscle massaged. I have cake and am eating it too. Nice. Thank Mr. Murakami!

From the first 25% of “1Q84”, here is what I’ve learned…

I like character development. Pages and pages are devoted to careful construction of living characters who have been grown, groomed and perfected like perfect little origami trees, each complete unique and yet each defined to the point that there is an elegant discipline evident in the eye of the creator.

I like weird coincidences, and this novel is full of them, small patterns and references that tie to each other, creating a support structure, but for what I’m not sure yet. The mystery that drives this book isn’t an obvious one. It’s subtle, delicate. How are these two characters (the sexy assassin and the bookish giant) going to come together?

Two stories are being told, each completely separate, and toward the end of quarter one, they have begun to flirt with each other, winking, touching hands, but not quite joining yet.

The whole thing feels Japanese, the patience of it, the elegance, the simplicity that belies a deep, perhaps incomprehensible, dare I say inscrutable, complexity.

Also need to note this…Mr. Murakami, like the previous authors I’ve read, also seems to be an outliner, even though he denies it in interviews. His plan seems quite clear for Quarter One, develop the two stories, and the two main characters, and then begin the connection process at precisely the 25% mark. It happened right on schedule and the next quarter is going to go in quite a different direction now that the two halves of this novel have begun to impact each other.

Underneath it all are the mysteries that make it hard to put the book down. Who are the Little People? What’s up with the second green moon? Did the world change somehow when Aomame went down that ladder?

If this is ever a movie, and it never will be, David Lynch should write and direct. Only the auteur behind Mulholland Falls and Inland Empire could capture anything close the dizzy feeling this hypnotic novel creates.

What have we learned? First off, we learned that even an arty novel can have sexy female assassins. Good to know. Second, don’t be so afraid of character development. If they are good characters, fleshing them out with deep backstory is fine. Sometimes modern commercial thrillers speed along so fast they read more like story outlines than completed novels. At 1,000 pages, I think 1Q84 is complete, and if the first 250 are any indication, each one will be worth reading.