Haruki Murakami - Commending Killatory - dramatic new book review....

wow, did I really just call it that, Commending Killatory? That would appear to be the new accidental name for Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatori from Harvill Press just released in hardback.

Remember, I’ve been Haruki Murakami’s #1 fan for like donkey’s years. Well, this is a bit of an exaggeration, “I like the way he writes softly-surreal dip-in anecdotal fiction that seems to have NO BEGINNING and NO END.” that’s brave. I respect that. Especially when your book is 700+ pages long and is sloooooooow. That’s not too bad, it was an easy read, and I didn’t once get bored. I really enjoyed it, in fact…

but this uncomfortable spectre hanging over all those pages… this “my tits aren’t growing” thing, from the young girl painted in the book at the whim of her might-be-father. More on that later.

MURAKAMI now, remember; not Haruki Murakami s he’s been for the last dozen works…

That’s the name he’s using now on his book covers? Just MURAKAMI in an all-capitalised corporate-logo fashion. No. Wrong, very wrong. Any decent numerologists would be dancing in his gypsy knickers going, “No, don’t change your public persona like this!” don’t do it. Dropping the Haruki from your known-writer name is PERSONALITY SUICIDE. Better to just come up with another pseudonym that more closely reflects the original numerology of the Haruki Murakami name, as JK Rowling did. Make it numerically relevant, again, if vibrationally different due to all the letter changes. But this? He doesn’t know it. I’m sure he hasn’t even thought about it. But he’s changed HIS WHOLE PUBLIC VIBRATION of what it means (for him) to be a writer. He’s now seen in a totally different light, and his future fiction will have to reflect this.

What’s the book about? Voyeurism. No, seriously, it’s about art. It’s a book about the ponderous art process. Which is in itself, at every level, voyeurism. Man takes on an old, famous, dying, artist’s place in the woods and tries to carve himself a new art identity. Real portraits of real people, as they are, not as they want to be portrayed in the commercial world of dull grey corporate portraiture for cash. He’s good at this, but it’s not enough and he ventures on out his own. A new direction involvingn the archaic plane. A strange new adventure filled with characters who are just cracked-open strange. 

BANNED IN CHINA this book, some said, for the explicit depiction of the sexual act between consenting adults in KC. I thought he did really well in this respect, better than Titchmarsh. But I don’t think it was that. I think (or suspect) that the whole painting a 13 year old girl who fixates on her breasts not growing is the real reason why this book was banned in China. It’s just all too uncomfortable to read but I know Murakami likes to do this, he had Boris the Skinner in Wind-up. But… what? Is he just hoping every reviewer mentions this like he’s now some kind of outre Bukowski-like fetish monster? Does he really want to be remembered for this episode when he’s written so much worthwhile wordage?

Storywise, just read it. It’s what he’s good at, soft surrealism at its best. Murakami does it for you, or you’re wrong.