September 5, 2011: “Town of Cats” by Haruki Murakami
This “story” by Murakami is excerpted from his new long novel, coming out this year in English. (For a nice change, this one is not hidden behind TNY’s pay wall.) According to the interview with Murakami, the novel goes back and forth between realities. This piece, though, is mostly realistic, except for the internal story that Tengo, the protagonist, reads—“Town of Cats”—which is anything but realistic.
The excerpt stands reasonably well on its own, although it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Tengo decides to hop on a train and go to visit his father who is in a sanatorium where he is being treated for a “cognitive disorder” (Alzheimers?). We learn that Tengo and his father are estranged, and that the father may or may not really be Tengo’s biological father. There is a shadowy memory Tengo has of seeing his mother with another man, and he is convinced that she didn’t die, as the father has always maintained.
On the train, Tengo reads the story about a man who arrives in a village occupied entirely by cats. Intriguingly, when the cats smell the presence of humans, the man is convinced he is done for, but the cats can’t find him. When he tries to leave on the train that brought him, the train won’t stop—as if the engineer doesn’t see him. While the relevance of the story Tengo reads isn’t clear in this excerpt, it isn’t hard to imagine how it could be important to the novel as a whole. Murakami says as much in the interview: “In any case, this episode performs a symbolic function in the novel in many different senses—the way a person wanders into a world from which he can never escape, the question of who it is that fills up the empty spaces, the inevitability with which night follows day. Perhaps each of us has his or her own ‘town of cats’ somewhere deep inside—or so I feel.”
Tengo arrives at the sanatorium and has an awkward visit with his father, in which they discuss the story about the cats, and also Tengo’s questions about his mother—questions that don’t get answered. Read the book, I suppose. Enjoyable “story,” though, so I just might.
Tengo arrives at the sanatorium and has an awkward visit with his father, in which they discuss the story about the cats, and also Tengo’s questions about his mother—questions that don’t get answered. Read the book, I suppose. Enjoyable “story,” though, so I just might.
6 comments:
Love Murakami's writing. Thanks for this--I'll be sure to pick it up! :)
I loeved this story. I have already pre-ordered 1Q84, although I think I should have waited for the Kindle version. Beast is 1000+ pages. But, I love Murakami's world view, so I'll put up with the weight.
1Q84 was one of the first hardcover books I've bought. I am usually patient enough to wait for the paperback to come out. but I'm a hard-core Murakami fan.
I ran into this site because I ran into the part of the novel where Tengo reads "Town of Cats" on the train. I thought "Wait a minute...isn't that a Bruno Schulz story?" I felt pretty stupid when it turned out to be a story by Murakami himself, which I had just read a couple of months ago!
I was also persuaded to buy the hardcover--kind of wish I'd bought in my kindle, though. Anyway, Schulz would have been a good guess, except for the part about having read the story a couple of months ago! Not sure when I'll get to it--900 pages is a lot of pages.
"Town of Cats" is nothing but a spellbinding one. Murakami subtly mesmerized me a lot. I got lost when I went through with Tengo.
Ooops, the poor Tengo, who is still, I think, in confusion while haunting his memory overshadowed with a silhouette by his mother's side, sucking his mother's breast, surprisingly who is no way of his father.
The story leads the path to realty to virtuality. I love Murakami's ability to spell the magic in the minds of the readers as well. I eagerly wait to find Murakami in the list of Nobel winning writers.
Im reading 1Q84 right now and the story hes reading to his dad starts on page 399. After hearing a little bit of it I looked it up on google and saw murakami wrote it. I also want to read this book too. I found this author by accident. I was killing time at a library one wedesday morning while waiting for my husband to get out of drug class. For some reason the book sorta called out my name as I walked by so Ipicked the book up and read the inside flapped and put Iit back but not even two seconds later I picked it back up and said what the heck. I have to read this book and I dont know why. Its speaking to me. So I checked it out.I started to read it and its the best book I've ever read. I love how his words wrap around your soul and suck you in. Im 24. I dont read books because they are poorly written or boring but this book is different. Ive been called by other books. But this one was stronger. I did research on him and hes a famous Japanese author. I had no clue prior to that. Anyways, I look forward reading the town of cats book. Im happy I came across this book by accident.
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