Kafka On The Shore

Didn’t you just hate when you were given a book in English in high school and had to do a book report
on it. For Christmas 2017 my daughter gave me Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami to read.
She did this so we could compare notes after we’d both read it. She’s not an English teacher but she
enjoys critically dissecting and discussing a “classic” book or idea.

As I read Kafka on the Shore I got that deja vu feeling. I realized I’d started reading it many years ago
but had put it down. Why would I do that if it were such a good read? After all it had been on the
New York Best Selling List.  I thought it through.

First, I’ll tell you what I’m going to tell you.  This book is unadulterated crap. It is a fantastical, mystical,
hogwash, spiritual, hocus pocus waste of time. It’s only redeeming quality might be for an English
teacher to use it as a tool to determine a student’s incredulity or critical thinking and perhaps to show
a student what not to read.

I felt like the character Kevin Pearson in the pilot TV series This is Us where he denounces the crappy
script he must read. Because it was a gift this time I soldiered on reading to the bitter end. It never
gets better from “entrance” to exit. Like Kevin Pearson I don’t blame the author for writing such tripe
as much as the audience that laps it up. How could it get such good reviews and sell so many copies?

The author references the old idea that life is but a metaphor and continues with this idea ad nausea.
The whole plot revolves around nonsense instead of grounding itself in any form of reality.  There is
continual implication that most people doing a normal job are just all hollow people with no substance.
How ironic is that. The characters depicted are all hollow spiritual ghost-like holographs. The projecting
by the author of himself comes to mind. A telling reference in this regard is made to Charles Darwin’s
ten page description of something or other.  Whatever Darwin described in 10 pages, corals or clams,
it would be much more insightful than what Murakami’s does in his 450 pages of empty drivel, where
ghosts and cats talk to people and a stone acts as an entrance to another world.

I love fantasies but I would much prefer reading an honest book on fantastical things such as
Harry Potter, Jurassic Park or Animal Farm.  Here impressionistic people can clearly tell fantasy from
fiction. But in Kafka on the Shore the nonsense is depicted as though it could be someone’s reality. It’s
not made clear though that this would only be an insane person. I had the same repulsive response
when I read the Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho. At least most people realize that Coelo had
been institutionalized for his way of thinking and could consider the source before plunging in further.
After completing Coelho’s Devil and Miss Prym I swore I would never read another such book of this
genre. Life is too short and quite frankly, as Darwin realized and described, life is much stranger than
could be revealed by anyone’s imagination.

I have a sister who perpetually loves this spiritual way of thinking. Instead of the nonsense perpetuated
by religion she substitutes spiritualism for her superstitious predispositions. She’s not a critical thinker
and can thus be led to believe almost anything. Unfortunately there are enough Murakami’s and
literature critics out there to perpetuate her fantasies.

While reading Kafka on the Shore I also discovered Bach’s sublime and hypnotic motets. Bach’s music
transcends the religious and spiritualistic words used. Too bad there is no such redeeming quality to
Kafka on the Shore.

Now I’ll tell you what I really think. Reading Kafka on the Shore is a mammoth waste of time.