What do cats, a neurodivergent elderly man, a 15-year-old bookworm, World War II, and a cabin in the woods share? Absolutely nothing, or maybe everything.
Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore is a difficult one to read, let alone understand. Its prose is simple and direct; its imagery vivid and captivating. But Kafka is much more than a great work written by a descriptive wordsmith.
The book contains three (maybe four, or five, or six) parallel narratives, each full of twists and turns, preposterous events and heartwarming episodes. I began reading with several expectations. For one, I expected to read through one cohesive plot, with surprises, sure, but with a clear linear progression. I presumed the narratives would converge eventually, but that was only a presumption. For more than half of its 400-something pages, the links between these parallel plots remained obscure. I struggled to keep up with the book's slow rhythm. The "deep" monologues I had foreseen rarely occurred, and I became lost in pages of seemingly trite details about a resolution so distant I was losing interest in it.
In hindsight, this disorientation is precisely what makes the book worthwhile. Its scattered narrative demands patience, invites us to discard our wish for cozy deliveries of prepackaged "wisdom," and proposes instead that we search for the answers we seek ourselves. Perhaps the question, Murakami seems to hint, shouldn't be "what's this book saying?" Rather, it should be "what do I want this book to tell me?"
After reading through each of its 400-something pages, I'm still unsure what the answer to that question could be. And why should I not be? Kafka stirred thoughts and emotions I didn't know I could feel. Expecting expedient clarity from a work so complex is a gross demand. —If there's one thing Kafka did reveal clearly, it's that great art defies expediency; deserves longevity. No, it doesn't "deserve" anything; we give it little. It puts us in a position where all we can do is pause, gaze a the mirror with a confused frown, and dwell in the feelings it magically evokes.
The book is about love, guilt, freedom, music, the unconscious. But those are just words, and words fade easily.
"Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear."
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