Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami

After a baseball match, Murakami picked his pen and began writing by the kitchen stove; since then he has been weaving magic through lucid narratives making pedestrian events phantgosmagorical.

Reading the twin novel “Wind/Pinball” which spans from 1969-73,  will make one realize there’s magic around us if we pick up a magnifying glass and carry it with us – or have a keen writer’s eye. Murakami adheres to  style which requires love for lyrical prose, music and nature and in this novel: The Pinball.

It was a Sunday morning and the sky was piercing blue. The grass beneath our feet was filled with the premonition of its approaching death until next spring. Before long, it would turn white with frost, and then disappear with a blanket of snow. The snow would glitter in the crytal-clear morning sunlight. The pale grass crunched beneath our feet as we walked along.

Back to novel one, it spans for eighteen days and it takes us through the life of the narrator (since it’s in first person, his name is not revealed – how clever!) and it takes us through the lanes of his life—his friendship with Rat and at J’s bar, where they drink beer, listen to Jazz, play pinball. The narrator is acquaints a woman with nine fingers and Murakami, through the narrator, creates an evocative imagery of her time with her—at the ocean, through the lanes of Japan. The narrator listens to radio, records, and authors, and is a fan if Nietzsche and Kant. The prose flows like a wonderful ghazal on a skylight night  and you do not want it to end.

In the second part of the novel, the narrator has moved to Tokyo and is now a translator – he co-owns a Translation company ; he lives with strikingly similar twins, who make coffee for him, who clear his earwax, and make food for him. These girls are diametrically opposite in character to the first novel’s women. I felt bad for these two girls, who just stay with him. Of course the narrator doesn’t take undue advantage of them but beyond a point they seemed like his children than his roommates.

The twins woke me up on Thursday morning. Fifteen minutes earlier than usual, but what the heck. I shaved, drank my coffee, and pored over the morning paper, so fresh from the press that its ink looked ready to smear my hands.

Rat is heartbroken and is transfixed on the woman. He seeks the help of J, the bartender and seeks solace in books, salads, cigarettes (until he decides to quit it).

Also, the narrated obsesses over Pinball (three-flipper Spaceship) and after there are no Pinballs in Tokyo, he comes in contact with one of the suppliers, a Spanish instructor, and thus begins their quest. The rest of the novel follows Rat’s departure from Tokyo, the quirky relation with the twins, and the adventure to find the pinball.

On the birth of the Pinball:

Raymond Moloney’s life has none of the mythical aura surrounding the lives of figures like the Wright brothers or Alexander Graham Bell. There are no heartwarming stories of childhood exploits, no dramatic eureka moments. Just one slight mention on the first page of a book written for trivia geeks: 1934—the first pinball machine invented by Raymond Moloney.

Murakami is a fan of Mozart, Beethoven, Beatles and the novels are sprinkled with references and I enjoyed the song: Penny Lane. I am a pauper when it comes to music but I did enjoy the playlist and I think I'm a fan of the song and also, enjoying listening to the Beatles (pardon me, I grew up with ghazals and Bollywood numbers). The fact that an entire playlist is created on his website from his books screams out his devotion towards music.