Sputnik Sweetheart | Haruki Murakami

This episode of Books for Men features Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. It's about an aspiring young female writer who falls for an older woman and then mysteriously goes missing on Greek Island while on vacation with her. Line for line, nobody hits harder than Murakami. Listen for more!

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. And so this week I am going to be featuring another Japanese author, and I thought it would be cool to follow suit from the last fiction book that I shared with you, which again was Fuminori Nakamura’s The Thief. And you can go back and you can listen to that episode. This week's episode is going to be Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. So I guess it'll just be a good idea to start with the nuts and bolts of this book. And that is that it was originally published in Japan in 1999, and then three years later it was translated and first published in English in 2002. And so it's a shorter book around 200, 220 pages. But don't let Its Land fool you. And I know I say that quite a bit because it's true mostly in that when something is really condensed, it tends to be very, very powerful if done well, when you span something out or you spread something thin, it could dilute the core story or the core elements that make something really, really powerful.

(01:20)

And it's not to say that that can't be done well because it obviously can. There are great epics and great novels of all kinds of lines. But with that being said, I think that, again, I don't want to belabor on it because I talk about it a lot, is the shorter novel if done well, really can leverage that aspect of consolidated power and really drive home something in a very visceral and impactful way. So another really important aspect of this novel is the genre that it sits in. And it is a literary work of fiction like most Haruki Murakami books. It also has a sub-genre of mystery, but probably most importantly it is magical realism. And that is something that Murakami is sort of known for. He's probably one of the more important authors in the genre, or I should say style, because technically magical realism isn't a genre, it's a literary style in which someone writes, basically, it's a story that is set in the real world, but often blurs fantasy and reality.

(02:27)

So there's a lot of dreamlike states, and it's not totally off in fantasy like you would say, I don't know, Game of Thrones or something of that nature. It's based in reality, and that's what makes it magical realism, right? So it's subtle, it's kind of obscure, and it often leaves you having to think a little more deeply about what is happening because you're not sure if it's actually happening in the plot or in the storyline or if it's happening inside of the head of a character. But that's what makes it fun to read. And if done well, as you can imagine, I think that it is with Murakami, then it provides this element that is really hard to imitate. And all of Murakami’s work has that very dream-like state to it where you almost feel like you are living a dream as you are reading his novels.

(03:25)

And that's not to say that some of 'em don't go off into LA land or some really weird places because they do. But I honestly will tell you that I am slowly working my way into that type of Murakami in most of the books that I've read to date, which is a significant amount of his backlist, maybe seven or eight titles in total, both novels, memoirs, and short story collections. They've all been more on the realist aspect of his catalog as opposed to the surrealist or more magical side of his catalog in that world. He actually gets into some sci-fi-ish places, and I don't know if I'll ever read those novels, but I am definitely working my way through his backlist and hinting a little bit more at a time at incorporating things that I normally won't read. And that's really a testament to Murakami because I just love his sensibilities as a writer.

(04:36)

And to me, that's like an X-factor for a writer. Everyone has their own unique sensibility, and if you find someone who you really enjoy their sensibility, then you've got to double down on that author because you're going to find things, but you're not going to find that anywhere else. And I think that that's what makes all creators unique, what makes all writers unique, what makes all artists unique, anybody. And so that's why I'm willing to go along this journey with him into books that I typically wouldn't read or styles that I would not read. With that being said, I think that to date this book has been my favorite Murakami book because it really gets at what it means to be human in a totally sad and pathetic way almost. It's about loneliness, it's about searching, it's about dreaming, it's about unrequited love, sexual desire.

(05:35)

It's about a lot of things. But for me, pound for pound, line for line, nobody hits harder than Murakami does. You have no choice but to absorb everything that line has just hit you with, and it makes you think so intensely about life and your own life. And if you don't enjoy that thing, you're probably not going to like me. But again, every author is a required taste. Every artist is a required taste. So either you're going to get down with his sensibilities or you're not. And I think I'm probably in the majority with this one as opposed to the minority. Murakami is massively successful. I think he's been translated into 50 or 60 languages or something of that nature, and he sold millions and millions of books. So this is not a new revelation for a lot of people. With that being said, he has a pretty cool startup story or a founding story.

(06:33)

I think everybody has their own version of that. But his is that he once owned a jazz bar, and he did up until his thirties, and this was in the late seventies. And one day he was at a professional baseball game in Japan, and on a whim, he basically decided that he should write a novel. Now, obviously, he was a big reader and he enjoyed novels and he enjoyed the arts and everything, but the idea of writing a novel never had occurred to him until that day. And so he went home and he ended up writing this short novel called Hear the Wind Sing. And per his own words, it was not very good. And so he didn't have much expectations for it. With that being said, he still sent it off to this Japanese literary contest and just went about his own life. And in a short time, he actually ended up winning that award. And then the rest is sort of history, I guess.

(07:27)

But he's very outspoken about literary prizes and accolades and all of that stuff. He, he's really got a keep to himself write what he feels like writing mentality. And you would expect that from somebody who got their start in the literary world the same way he did right? Now that doesn't come without its challenges, obviously, as you evolve and navigate different genres in which, as I already alluded to earlier in this episode, he spans across a pretty wide range, and that's what makes him really interesting, right? Not only is he a novelist, he's a short story writer, and he's a memoirist. And you could read about his life and his philosophy and ideas on craft. Most importantly, luck. He is not someone who shies away from the luck component of being able to do what he does and has been fortunate enough to be able to do what he does.

(08:31)

And I think that honesty about everything really makes him an endearing person, even if it's not his intention. And that's not always the case, right? Especially with creators who could be quirky or odd and their own person in a way, he seems to be very earnest, and it really comes through in both of the memoirs really, that he wrote. One of 'em just got published last year, Novelist as a Vocation. I've mentioned it on this podcast prior, and one of my favorite memoirs, I think I've read to date, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, it's a writing memoir in which he compares running with writing. And so the pain, the endurance, the suffering of running long distances with the act of writing. And it's just interesting. And if you're a writer, you'll probably take a lot out of it. Now, I can't believe I've done this entire episode and I haven't shared anything about the plot, so I will wrap this up by doing just that.

(09:37)

So this story, Sputnik Sweetheart, is about a female aspiring writer named Sumire in her mid-twenties, quirky meandering around life basically. And she falls for this well-off, yet peculiar older woman named Miu and Sumire starts to work for her abandoning her only friend at the time. K, who is a male teacher of the same age as her longs for Sumire. And the story takes a turn when Sumire goes mysteriously missing on a Greek island while on vacation with Miu. Now, I don't want to ruin the story. I don't want to ruin the ending. The ending is definitely left up for interpretation, and I think that that's really fun. And you could read it maybe 3, 4, 5 times. Not the whole book, of course, just the ending, which is a very magical realist type of ending. All right, so that is all I've got. I will say that this book line for line has so many great quotes, and I think you'll really enjoy it.

(10:40)

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