Murakami's first book...the one he decided to write after coming home from a baseball game where he suddenly had the epiphany that he could, in fact, write a book, despite never having real aspirations to do so. The book that launched the Rat Trilogy, and a career that would touch millions of people all over the world. This is monumental to me, particularly as this book isn't that easy to come by.

But is it good? Murakami has claimed several times that his first two books were warm ups, and that going back to them now, he finds them to be amateurish and it wasn't until Wild Sheep Chase that he started coming into his own. I can see why he would think that, after reading through Hear the Wing Sing in the span of a day. It's more of a novella than a novel, but that doesn't mean it isn't good, and if this is what amateur writers should be shooting for, then it's going to be much more difficult to get published than I'd have ever thought.

So yes, Hear the Wind Sing is good. It's not his best, certainly, but it's his writing through and through, and that makes it pure quality. It's more disjointed than any of his other work, and the idea of a story is never really present here. The novel follows its protagonist basically through one summer of his life, jumping around seemingly at random. We meet several different characters, all of them somewhat strange and important to the protagonist. And what's really kind of remarkable is that this book sets a tone for nearly every one of Murakami's later works. The protagonist is kind of odd, likes music, likes beer, doesn't fit in to the norms of the day necessarily. He meets an equally strange girl who isn't beautiful but who has something that catches his eye and heart. He often reminisces about former girlfriends. He has a strange friend with whom he exchanges banter and often more meaningful conversation. These are the things that make up a Murakami novel, often with something supernatural thrown in for good measure. You would think after a dozen or so of these that the writing or structure would start to bore me, but it never does. I continue to revel in the words and images that Murakami blooms in my mind, and I'll continue to do so until one of us dies. That's not meant to sound grim!