never mind, don’t lock horns about it.  Some thoughts half of
the way through 1Q84-  With a writer like Murakami, you have to
adjust your standards, and, not only that, but your definition
of standards. You must understand that symbolism will set
heavier than gravity on one particular scene, two characters
holding hands and looking exactly into each others’ eyes, while
whole swaths of text filled with they’ve-just-got-to-be symbols
(the presence of a second moon in the night sky, a recurring
musical piece, the murder of a trusted dog) are not. Simply, are
not. You must also allow that characters will speak their
emotions (“I am surprised,”) rather than feel them. Murakami has
a brilliant way of making all of his characters, across all of
his books, robots half-disguised as people. They are rational to
a point of absurdity, and use memory in the same way a computer
would; as storage. Occasionally, characters in Murakami’s work
will say (or have grafted onto them) they are haunted by the
past. However, you get