Word: wind-up
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...terms of timing, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle also beats Dellio in the premillennial funk literature sweepstakes. Although the English translation is just now reaching bookstores, Murakami's book was released a few years ago in his native Japan. Published in a three-part serialization, it is one of the most popular novels in recent Japanese literature. Critics have proclaimed Murakami, also the author of the much-lauded Dance Dance Dance and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the heir-apparent to the great Yukio Mishima (Decay of the Angel...
...Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a fairly easy read--little seems to have been lost in Jay Rubin's excellent translation. Each chapter, with such titles as "An Inquiry into the Nature of Pain" and "The Story of the Monkeys of the Shitty Island," has enough comedy and matter-of-fact prose to keep the narrative moving along quickly. However, beneath the deceptive surface-simplicity, the novel is so richly textured that it deserves repeated reading. Filled with brilliant throwaway lines ("her voice like a little broom sweeping off the dust that had piled up on the slates...
...into Japanese and recently taught at Princeton--has been perfectly positioned to serve as the voice of hip, Westernized Japan. His Norwegian Wood (note the Beatles reference) sold more than 2 million copies around the globe. Yet none of his earlier books prepare one for his massive new The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Knopf; 611 pages; $25.95), which digs relentlessly into the buried secrets of Japan's recent past to explain the weightless, desultory disconnections of a virtual society where nothing feels real and nobody really feels...
...most convincing antagonist of the three ballets. Along with dark figures running on stage called The Past (played by students of the Boston Ballet School), Wallace frightens and enchants at the same time. Ribeiro is delightful as the Mechanical Nightingale, with her precise movements. She is a cold, elegant wind-up doll, entertaining the Prince with the same repetitive moves until they are comical...
...eagerly await the accompanying presents. Their mysterious and magical godfather, Dr. Drosselmeyer (Laszlo Berdo) enters once all the guests have arrived with a number of surprises that delight the children on stage and off--a scarf turns into a bird, the clock magically obeys his hands, Harlequin and Columbine wind-up dolls (Pollyana Ribeiro and Gabriel Otevrel) dance beautifully and humorously, and most importantly, the godfather presents Clara with a much desired nutcracker. The inclusion of a new and wonderfully executed pas de deux between Clara (Brittany Braga) and Dr. Drosselmeyer, in which Clara tries to get the nutcracker...