Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

出版者:7-09999

作者:[日] 村上春树

页数:362

出版时间:2007-7

价格:58.00元

isbn号码:9780307386328

具体描述

Book Description

Following the best-selling triumph of Kafka on the Shore—“daringly original,” wrote Steven Moore in The Washington Post Book World, “and compulsively readable”—comes a collection that generously expresses Murakami’s mastery. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. As Richard Eder has written in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, “He addresses the fantastic and the natural, each with the same mix of gravity and lightness.”

Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be the closest of all.

“While anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream,” Laura Miller wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “it’s the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves”—a feat performed anew twenty-four times in this career-spanning book.

From Publishers Weekly

[Signature]Reviewed by Lily Tuck One of my favorite Haruki Murakami stories is "The Elephant Vanishes"—part of an earlier collection published in 1991—in which the narrator watches as an elephant in a zoo grows smaller and smaller until finally the elephant disappears. No explanation is given, there is no resolution, the vanished elephant remains a mystery at the same time that the narrator's life is changed forever.Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami's new collection of 25 stories, many of which have appeared in the New Yorker and other publications, also describes these epiphanic instances. In the title story, a character who is half deaf, alludes to a John Ford movie, Fort Apache, in which John Wayne tells the newly arrived colonel that if he actually saw some Indians on his way to the fort that means there weren't any. Everything is a bit off—including of course the blind willow trees whose pollen carry flies that burrow inside a sleeping woman's ears—as in a dream, where explanations are always lacking but where interpretations are plentiful. In "Mirror," the narrator sees someone who appears to be both himself and not himself in a mirror and then finds out the mirror does not exist; the disaffected woman—a lot of Murakami's characters are handicapped or incapacitated in some physical way—in "The Shinagawa Monkey," loses her own name; in "Man-Eating Cats," the narrator's girlfriend disappears and as he searches for her finds that "with each step I took, I felt myself sinking deeper into a quicksand where my identity vanished." Murakami's stories are difficult to describe and one should, I think, resist attempts to overanalyze them. Their beauty lies in their ephemeral and incantatory qualities and in his uncanny ability to tap into a sort of collective unconscious. In addition, a part of Murakami's genius is that he uses images as plot points, going from image to image, like in the marvelous story "Airplane," where, while making love, the narrator imagines strings hanging from the ceiling and how each one might open up a different possibility—good and bad. It is clear that Murakami is well acquainted with the teachings of Buddhism, western philosophies, Jungian theory; he has a deep knowledge of music and, also, I have been told, is a dedicated, strong swimmer. In his stories, he roams freely and convincingly through all these elements (and no doubt many more) without differentiating to create a world where cats talk and elephants disappear. In the introduction to this collection, Murakami writes how, for him, writing a novel is a challenge and how writing short stories is a joy—these stories are a joy for his readers as well.Lily Tuck's most recent novel, The News from Paraguay, won the 2004 National Book Award.

From Bookmarks Magazine

"Everything I write is a strange tale," Haruki Murakami says in his preface to this collection. Admittedly, his fusion of Eastern and Western elements of story and reality to create a uniquely surreal landscape of human and otherworldly experiences may be a little too strange for some readers. In addition, he asks more questions than he answers about his protagonists and their unusual situations. Yet those accustomed to his weird ways will find a lot to enjoy here, including many of his most popular New Yorker pieces. While it's clear that many of the stories are sketches made in preparation for the grand artistry of his novels, most, if not all, stand very well on their own.

From Booklist

This well-honored and avidly read Japanese writer, who is the author, most recently, of the novel Kafka on the Shore (2005), extols the virtues of, as well as admits to a fondness for, the short story form ("a joy") in his introduction to this selection of 25 of his short works. Readers who fear the short story, particularly by writers with a high literary reputation, need to set hesitations aside here. Murakami is an open-armed, hospitable short story writer who avoids the obscurantism often caused by the concision that the form requires. His stories have an oral tone, a greatly appealing and embracing personal narrative voice. "Yep, that's life all right," says the narrator of "A Perfect Day for Kangaroos," on the subject of finding a suitable day--what with inclement weather and health issues--to visit the zoo. The sheer perfection of that story is counterpoised by "Tony Takitani," a longer and more elaborate but no less jolting story about a man's life, which begins and ends in loneliness. The title story is a low-key but poignant memoir-type narrative about a young man's caring for his hearing-impaired cousin, and the pleasure of "The Mirror" arises from the feel it gives of an Edith Wharton ghost story. The beauty of the author's prose style seals every story's sharp delivery.

Brad Hooper

Book Dimension

length: (cm)19.7 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.8

用户评价

这本书在对环境和氛围的刻画上，简直达到了令人拍案叫绝的境地。它并非那种仅仅描绘风景优美的流水账，而是将环境深度地融入了角色的心境之中。比如说，某个城市角落的潮湿与阴冷，不再仅仅是气象描述，而是直接成为了角色内心压抑和困顿的具象化外显。作者对光影的运用尤其高明，无论是清晨透过百叶窗投下的斑驳光束，还是黄昏时分那种略带颓废的橘红色光晕，都仿佛是特写镜头，聚焦于人性中最脆弱、最不设防的瞬间。阅读过程中，我仿佛真的能闻到那种混杂着灰尘、陈旧木料和某种淡淡花香的独特气味。这种沉浸式的体验，得益于作者词汇选择的精准与丰富，但更关键的是他对细节的敏锐捕捉能力——那种只有真正用心生活、用心观察过世界的人才能捕捉到的微妙质感。这本书构建的世界是如此真实，以至于你读完后走出门，会对熟悉的街道产生一种全新的、略带疏离感的认知，仿佛你刚刚从另一个维度回到了现实。

我非常欣赏作者在处理“缺席”和“遗忘”这一主题上的细腻笔触。很多故事的核心冲突似乎都源于那些没有发生、没有被说出，或者已经被时间彻底抹去的东西。人物的行为逻辑往往不是由眼前的事件驱动的，而是被过去某个关键性的缺失深深地塑造着。这种“失语症”般的美学，使得人与人之间的交流充满了张力，因为每个人都在试图用残缺的语言去拼凑一个完整的世界。它探讨了记忆的不可靠性——我们自以为记得清清楚楚的事情，可能早已被自我美化或扭曲了。这种对“空白”的执着书写，反而比对“充实内容”的描述更具穿透力。读完后，你可能会花很长时间去琢磨某个角色为什么会选择那样做，最终可能会意识到，答案就在于他生命中那个永远无法填补的空洞。这是一种非常高级的叙事技巧，它尊重读者的智力，不提供廉价的答案，而是留下一片广阔的思考空间。

这本书中人物的对话场景，简直可以拿来做戏剧或电影的教科书范例。它巧妙地避开了那种刻板的、用来推进情节的对白。相反，这里的每一句交流都充满了潜台词和错位感。角色们可能正在谈论天气、谈论晚餐，但你从他们语气的轻微变化、停顿时机，甚至标点符号的使用上，都能读出他们真正的焦虑、不满或爱意。这让我联想到了现实生活中那些最真实的交流——我们很少直接说出“我爱你”或“我很害怕”，更多的是通过附加信息来传递核心情绪。作者对这种人际互动中的“噪音”和“信号”的把握堪称大师级别。有时候，一个角色的沉默比他所有的台词加起来都更有力量。这种对白的设计，极大地增强了作品的现实主义色彩，让读者仿佛置身于一个密闭的空间，倾听着一场充满着未尽之言和微妙试探的真实对话。

这本书的叙事节奏把握得极其精准，仿佛一位技艺高超的钟表匠，将时间的滴答声调校得恰到好处。它没有那种拖泥带水、让人昏昏欲睡的冗长铺陈，相反，每一个场景的切换都带着一种干净利落的效率感。我尤其欣赏作者在处理人物内心挣扎时的那种克制与精准。那些最深刻的痛苦和最隐秘的渴望，往往不是通过大段的内心独白来展现，而是隐藏在一次不经意的眼神交汇、一句未说完的话语，或者某个日常物件的摆放位置之中。这要求读者必须全神贯注，像一个经验丰富的侦探一样去搜寻那些潜藏的线索。这种阅读体验是主动的，它不是把所有东西都摆在你面前喂给你，而是邀请你进入一个精心布置的迷宫，让你自己去发现出口。那种在看似平静的表面下涌动着暗流的张力，让人读起来既紧张又着迷，生怕错过任何一个微小的暗示。这种叙事手法，使得即便是最平淡的日常事件，也带上了一层不可名状的重量感，让人读完后，回味无穷，总觉得有什么重要的东西在字里行间轻轻地溜走了，需要再读一遍才能抓住。

从文学风格的演变来看，这本书展现出一种令人振奋的、超越了流派界限的特质。它既有古典文学中对命运无常的深刻洞察，又融入了现代主义对个体存在异化的尖锐剖析，但它却丝毫没有落入矫揉造作的学院派陷阱。作者的语言是如此的精准而富有雕塑感，每一个词语似乎都经过了千锤百炼，但整体读下来却感觉浑然天成，毫不费力。更难得的是，在如此高密度的文学技巧之下，故事依然保持了强大的人文关怀。它没有沉溺于形式的炫技，最终落脚点依然是人性的复杂与脆弱。它探讨了我们在面对宏大、不可控的世界时，如何努力维持住自己微小而私密的尊严。这种平衡——技巧与情感、形式与内容的完美融合——是极其罕见的，也正是这本书能在我心中占据如此重要位置的原因，它提供了一种既智力上满足又情感上慰藉的独特阅读体验。

那個，我覺得有些時候村上的口味還是有點變態的...不過很喜歡螢火蟲，應該是挪威森林的前身吧。很短的故事，反而更回味無窮。

Engrossing . . . Although Murakami's style and deadpan humor are wonderfully distinctive, his emotional territory is more familiar--remorse, unresolved confusion, sudden epiphanies--though heightened by the surreal . . . For all its peculiarity, Planet Murakami offers a recognisable landscape of our fears.

A few highlights: *New York Mining Disaster, Man-Eating Cats, Chance Traveller, Crabs

Engrossing . . . Although Murakami's style and deadpan humor are wonderfully distinctive, his emotional territory is more familiar--remorse, unresolved confusion, sudden epiphanies--though heightened by the surreal . . . For all its peculiarity, Planet Murakami offers a recognisable landscape of our fears.

那個，我覺得有些時候村上的口味還是有點變態的...不過很喜歡螢火蟲，應該是挪威森林的前身吧。很短的故事，反而更回味無窮。