Kafka on the shore.
I killed my own father and slept with my mother and sister.
Kafka on the shore is a book, that I could probably never describe… because I don’t understand it myself. It’s a novel by the Japanese novelist, Hakuri Murakami.
This book is strange, it’s weird yet utterly fascinating. Someone on the internet wrote, “It’s a book that takes you on a LSD trip” and I can’t argue with that (not that I have done LSD myself, mind you lol), it’s so strange that nothing makes sense, yet so beautiful that you keep coming back to it. This book embodies a genre of fiction called, “surreal fiction”, and as you can guess my brief description of it, it lives up to its name.Fiction in itself is imaginary (not real), now put a fictional book on drugs: that is Kafka on the shore.
I have, a bit of a personal history with this book. I wasn’t looking for this book, I came across it on a whim while looking for something to read at my cousin’s home (he was an avid reader back in the day, and has a huge collection of books). There it was, on that dusty bookshelf, squeezed between books just like it; waiting to be picked up by someone… anyone in years, since they had be touched by the warm hands of a reader on their old, fading bodies (damn that was almost poetic lol). And well, I could have picked any book to read, there were hundreds of them, but I chose this one.
“Bad choice”.
My cousin had said. I was like, “well, um it’s just a book… why?”. Then he told me, actually warned me, that I was not old enough to read this book. I, being a dumb-ass teenager that I was back then, thought he was just trying to scare me and make me look like a pussy. So, as you could imagine, his words had the opposite effect, and I became adamant that I borrow this book for the summer. He, being the older cousin he is, reluctantly let me borrow it (mind you, he had never told me “not to read” anything before… only this time…), and I finally got the “forbidden” book, you might say lol. But all the while I was taking my prized possession home that day, I kept thinking, “why did he tell me, not to read this book?“
Then sure enough, I found out why.
I killed my own father and slept with my mother and sister.
I started reading this book in the holidays after my grade 10 exams. I was maybe, 17 back then? Well, 17 is too young an age, an age when I was accustomed to reading action novels, where the hero always wins (with the help of the usual suspects of course, some magic and cool gadgets lol). You know… simple stuff, but not this. This book was way out of my league. In the first chapter of the book, the author talks about a curse, which bounds the fifteen year old Kafka Tamura to a horrendous destiny; He is destined to murder this own father and have sex with his own mother and sister. Whoa, whoa, whoa! hold on a second. That’s everything a young man should not be reading about lol. The introduction, had everything a “good” book should not have; it had taboo, explicit sex and violence. But you know, as they say, the forbidden fruit looks the most delicious (I mean, didn’t Adam and Eve eat the ‘apple’?), that made the book all the more exciting for me ; )
So there I was, with the weirdest, book I had ever held in my life up until that time; ready to read, read to explore what this book with strange covers had inside. So, I took a deep breath, and dove right into it.
Then everything started getting fuzzy and my head started spinning….
As I kept reading, the deeper I went into the story, the weirder it got. Everything was fine until… a mentally impaired old man who had been traumatized by the Hiroshima atomic blast in his childhood days started talking to cats in his neighborhood, fish started raining from the sky, someone had sex with an imaginary ghost prostitute, the spirit of Colonel Sanders (you know the guy who’s face is on KFC chicken) started roaming around Japan as a pimp, dead soldiers from second world war started guarding some strange door in a forest…. and more. I couldn’t take it. This book was way too strange for me to comprehend what was happening. Things moving left to right, metaphors after metaphors, parallel story lines, hidden meaning behind seemingly trivial events that I could not decipher. This book made my head spin. It was like that red pill in the Matrix movie, I took it, but perhaps I was not ready for it.
My cousin was right after all (well as he should be, he is smarter and way more mature than me lol).
And so, tho I didn’t want to quit, I decided to give up halfway through. I learnt my lesson and with deep bitterness, returned the book like any good cousin should.
A year passed by. Grade 11 rolled into my life lol.
But I still couldn’t get that book out of my head.
Remember I said that that this book is so strange and confusing, yet so beautiful that you keep coming back to it? So it was it’s beauty that didn’t let me move on, that kept pulling my heartstrings all the while I was trying to forget it… and guided me back to it again; in the winter break of my first year of high school, after one year, to my cousin’s home asking for that same book that gave me so much trouble the last time I laid my hands on it. I was hooked on Murakami’s words, I had to complete the story. I had to see where fate leads Kafka. I had to do it… for my own sake.
So after a full year’s break, with a fresh mindset and hopefully a bit more maturity (tho I am pretty sure I was equally stupid back then too lol), I held Kafka on the shore, once again. This time, I was determined to get through it, not get distracted by the intricate illusions and surreal happenings, that had lured me the last time I read the book, just as one lures a child with candy. Lured into oblivion. This time, I was determined to stick with the story. This time, I was determined to not let go of Kafka’s hand, as he runs… runs from his home, runs from his life, runs from this world, runs till his legs can’t, runs to escape that horrible curse, to escape his destiny.
The curse.
I killed my own father and slept with my mother and sister.
I imagine how destiny dooms Kafka. He runs. He runs as far as can, as fast as he possibly can but, is destiny something you can outrun? This is the whole premise of the book I believe. Murakami plays on our fears that destiny is all encompassing, that fate is unavoidable, and the no matter what you do in your life, you have no control over that, which is inevitable; the destiny which is written on the pages of your fate, the moment you were born. But Kafka knows his destiny, and so he runs, desperately hoping to avoid doing the unspeakable, to avoid doing what his destiny demands him to do. To kill his own father and fuck his own mother and sister. (Talk about being called a motherfucker and sisterfucker for the rest of your life lol, literally). And on his lonely journey, he meets people; people whom he had never met, people who have stories of joy and sorrow of their own. He does things, things he had never done and goes to places which he had never seen. He changes as a person, and you as a reader become a part of his journey, a part of his change. It’s an experience like no other.
So, what does Kafka do? Does he manage to outrun his destiny, which slowly creeps on him no matter how fast he runs? Or does he succumb to his fate, accepts the inevitable and does the despicable?
That… you need to read and find out ; )
So that’s the story: Kafka’s story. And well… that’s my story as well; my strange relationship with this strange book.
Kafka isn’t real, nor is his story. But, this book has been a real influence in my life.
Kafka was just 15 when he ran from his home. He was alone in that vast world, with no clue of what to do next (after all he is just a teenager). But he ran away from home regardless of what lay ahead in that crazy world of his. He met new people, he made new friends, some of whom even helped him. He did queer jobs to buy food. He moved from one place to another on his own. He stayed humble, and thankful to those who helped him. There is one quote in the book, where the voice in Kafka’s head which he calls, the boy named crow, reminds Kafka, “My point is: in this whole wide world the only person you can depend on is you”. The boy named crow, tells Kafka to be stronger, because if he is on his own. And Kafka becomes stronger as he pushes past difficult times. Even tho he is a teenager, he forces himself to become a man. He has no family to depend on. No one to stay and console him with his emotional troubles. He takes his journey himself, and tries to fix his broken soul, with none to do it for him. He literally stays in a forest wood cabin all by himself, in the middle of nowhere (and I get scared when I hear a sound in the middle of the night lol). He is independent.
And so I compared myself to Kafka. I am no where as strong as he is. I am dependent of everyone and everything. I have all the things that Kafka didn’t have, yet I am weaker than him. Kafka became an inspiration for me. I wanted to be strong, strong like Kafka.
And off I went to a foreign country, where people speak a language I do not understand. Where I am literally on my own (tho not as much as Kafka), where I have to think about things I had never thought about, like monthly food budget, buying clothes, taking care of myself, going to the doctor, not offending people, respecting another culture and more. I wanted be alone, just so that I could become more like Kafka.
This book has literally shaped some of my most important life decisions, and I am thankful that I got to meet Kafka (tho it was in my imagination lol).
Who says fiction isn’t important in life? ; )
Cheers.
= )
#btw I did finish the book if you were wondering, tho I still don’t understand ‘most’ of it lol. ; )
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