69 (Kodansha Modern Writers) - Softcover

Murakami, Ryu

Softcover

ISBN 10: 4770019513 ISBN 13: 9784770019516

Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc, 1995

Synopsis

Ryu Murakami, along with Haruki Murakami (no relation), is one of the best-selling writers in Japan and a major figure in contemporary popular culture. Since publishing his first work, Almost Transparent Blue, which won Japan's most coveted literary prize in 1976, Ryu has produced a steady stream of novels, stories, and essays that consistently astound and delight readers with their wild flights of imagination, irreverent humor, and brilliant, convincing portraits of some of the quirkiest characters in Japanese literature.

69 is a roman a clef about coming of age during a time that left its mark on baby boomers around the world--a time when we really believed we could change the world before it changed us. By turns hilarious, cynical, frivolous, and poignant, the book is infused from start to finish with Ryu's relentless energy and optimism; it simply refuses to get tedious, preachy, or "literary" for a single moment.

The book is composed of the following: "Arthur Rimbaud," "Iron Butterfly," "Lady Jane," "Daniel Cohn-Bendit," "Claudia Cardinale," "Power to the Imagination," "Just Like a Woman," "Alain Delon," "Lyndon Johnson," "Cheap Thrills," "Amore Romantico," "Wes Montgomery," "Led Zeppelin," "April Come She Will," "Velvet Underground," and "It's a Beautiful Day."

About this title

About the Author

Ryu Murakami was seventeen in 1969. The only son of schoolteacher parents, he grew up in the port city of Sasebo in southwestern Japan. After graduating from a local high school, where he played the drums in a band called Coelacanth, he went to an art college in Tokyo. It was while studying there that he entered his first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, in a competition for new writers. Published in 1976, the book won a major literary award and sold over a million copies. Since then, he has worked for a publishing house, presented a weekly music and interview radio program, and hosted a TV talk show. His literary output includes two collections of stories Run, Takahashi (1985) and Topaz (1988), and the novel Coin Locker Babies (1980), which made its debut in English early in 1995. He has also directed four movies based on his writing, causing a sensation at an Italian film festival when Tokyo Decadence was shown there in 1992. His latest film is set in the U.S. and Cuba.

The translator: Ralph F. McCarthy is a writer, lyricist, and translator from Michigan and California who has spent many years in Tokyo. Among his other translations are Self Portraits and Blue Bamboo, both collections of short stories by Osamu Dazai.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

[The following excerpt is from "Power to the Imagination.]

The building was absolutely silent, and the only light was from the moon, streaming in through the windows; it was like being on a different planet. The fact that this was a place we clattered through in a noisy crowd almost every day only made the tension worse. We pulled Nakamura to his feet and dragged him away from the entrance, as far as the door of the principal's office. Getting away from the watchmen's room was a bit of a relief, but now Nakamura was hyperventilating. "Asshole," I said. "Go back to the pool." Nakamura shook his head. "You don't understand. I ... I..." Sweat was pouring down his face. "What? What is it?" Nakamura wagged his head again. Adama shook him by the shoulders. "Tell us. What is it? Ken and me are scared, too, man. There's nothing to be ashamed of. What's the problem?"

"I have to go doo-doo."

It wasn't fair: why should his bowel problems give us a stomachache? I rolled on the floor trying to smother my laughter, with my right hand over my mouth and my left holding my belly, heaving with hiccoughing spasms. Adama was doing the same. Tension only encourages laughter: it's never so hard to stop laughing as when you mustn't laugh. All we had to do was mutter "doo-doo" and the giggles would burst in our guts, then come bubbling up our throats. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the saddest things that had ever happened to me: the New Year's Day when my parents hadn't bought me the Patton tank model I'd wanted; the time my father had had an affair and my mother left home for three days; my little sister being hospitalized with asthma; the pigeon that didn't come back when I let it loose; the time I dropped my pocket money at a local festival; a penalty shootout in the prefectural junior high soccer finals, which our team lost. None of them worked. Adama had both hands over his mouth and was shuddering and wheezing. I'd never realized how hard it could be to control the giggles. I drew a picture of Kazuko Matsui in my mind: her slender, milky calves, her Bambi eyes, her white arms, the awesome curve of the nape of her neck--and the spasms finally stopped. Such is the power of beautiful women: they can even stifle laughter, make a man sober and serious. After a while Adama, too, stood up, drenched with sweat. He told me later he'd pictured the charred corpses he'd once seen after a mine explosion. Being forced to remember a scene like that must have made him angry: he rapped Nakamura on the head with his fist.

"Asshole. I thought I was going to lose my mind," I said and quietly opened the door to the principal's office. "Hey, Nakamura."

"Yes?"

"Is it diarrhea?"

"I don't know."

"Can you do it right away?"

"It's already poking its head out."

"Do it up there."

"Eh?" he said, and his jaw dropped. I was pointing at the principal's desk.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 4770019513
• ISBN 13: 9784770019516
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192