What do you think?
Rate this book
Almost Transparent Blue
Almost Transparent Blue is a brutal tale of lost youth in a Japanese port town close to an American military base. Murakami's image-intensive narrative paints a portrait of a group of friends locked in a destructive cycle of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. The novel is all but plotless, but the raw and often violent prose takes us on a rollercoaster ride through reality and hallucination, highs and lows, in which the characters and their experiences come vividly to life. Trapped in passivity, they gain neither passion nor pleasure from their adventures. Yet out of the alienation, boredom and underlying rage and grief emerges a strangely quiet and almost equally shocking beauty. Ryu Murakami's first novel, Almost Transparent Blue won the coveted Akutagawa literary prize and became an instant bestseller. Representing a sharp and conscious turning away from the introspective trend of postwar Japanese literature, it polarized critics and public alike and soon attracted international attention as an alternative view of modern Japan.
126 pages, Paperback
First published July 9, 1976
About the author
Ryū Murakami
254 books3,099 followersRyū Murakami (村上 龍) is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is not related to Haruki Murakami or Takashi Murakami.
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.
Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.
Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.
Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.
Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,068 reviews
February 26, 2020
"I put the thin fragment of glass, dripping blood, in my pocket, and ran out into the misty road. The doors and windows of the houses were shut, nothing was moving. I thought I'd been swallowed by a huge living thing, that I was turning around and around in its stomach like the hero of some fairy tale."
Almost Transparent Blue
A warning to any potential readers of this book. There is explicit, graphic sex in the first half of this novel. If you are prudish about group sex, alternative sex, or say sex involving a foot that will be seared into your memory for the rest of your life you should avoid this novel. If you have issues with rampant drug use and drug/alcohol induced vomiting you should avoid this novel.
The first cool thing about this novel is the fact that it was published in 1976 almost a full decade before Bret Easton Elliscame up out of his own drug induced haze to write the novel Less Than Zero. I read Ellis and I read Bright Lights, Big City, and later The Secret Historyand enjoyed them to varying degrees. I'd heard of the other Murakami, but his books were somewhat elusive to me in the 1980s. So finally here in 2012 I read this book and discover that if I had read this book back in 1985 I would have laughed at the feeble attempts of the "brat pack" to write "edgy" novels.
I wonder did Ellis read this book before he wrote Less Than Zero?
This book kicks you in the nuts and as your falling to the ground you catch a knee to the chin that stands you back up so Murakami can slug you a few more times before letting you fall into bloody heap wishing you could reach that syringe full of smack just beyond your blood dripping reach.
Our characters get into an altercation with a security guard. They break his arm, but they don't stop there. By the time they are done he is a mess.
The blood smeared and dripping over the lower half of his face was a black mask. The veins in his forehead bulging, he tried to pull himself along by his elbows. Perhaps seized by some fresh pain, he mumbled, lay on his side, his feet trembling. His vomit-covered belly heaved up and down.
There is a lack of humanity running through this novel. The main characters are horrible to everyone including each other. Ryu, the main character and also the stand in for the author, does show some real tenderness towards his friends, but not without some sensual benefit to himself. There is a lack of soul, not in the religious sense because that is all silly nonsense (as if my life force can be bartered with), but in the lack of substance in these characters.
I read a book several years ago, part of a trilogy of which only two parts have been published, by a guy named James A. Mangum. In one of the two books, memory escapes me, he talks about these "soulless" creatures walking the Earth, the offspring of "Angels" and human females. They lack a soul because they are not exactly human, but they are able to assimilate with their soul carrying brethren. They lack that important part of humanity that allows us to really care about each other. I think we've all met people that resemble that description. The really scary part about accepting any of this as potentially true is that as these soulless creatures mate with other humans their offspring is also soulless. With each generation more humanity is lost.
I read Less than Zero for a second time a couple of years ago before I read Imperial Bedroomsand I thought about the Mangum concept then as well. There is something missing in these characters and of course the drug use, the promiscuous sex, random violence, alcohol induced vomiting is all an attempt to feel something, anything.
The crew goes to party with some American black men from the military base that is near where they live. Ryu is sharing a description of the scene.
I was completely stoned. I felt as if my insides were oozing out through every pore, and other people's sweat and breath were flowing in. Especially the lower half of my body felt heavy and sore, as if sunk into thick mud, and my mouth itched to hold somebody's prick and drain it. While we ate the fruit piled on plates and drank wine, the whole room was raped with heat. I wanted my skin peeled off. I wanted to take in the greased, shiny bodies of the black men and rock them inside me. Cherry cheesecake, grapes in black hands, steaming boiled crab legs breaking with a snap, clear sweet pale purple American wine, pickles like dead men's wart-covered fingers, bacon sandwiches like the mouths of women, salad dripping pink mayonnaise.
There are cockroaches that spew different colors when crushed. There is a pet rabbitcide. There is a doctor that explains to Yoshiyama, being treated for a suicide attempt, the absolute best way to kill himself next time. They ingest mescaline, acid, heroin, Hyminol, Nibrole, glue, marijuana, and something called a Crystal Ship. They don't want you looking at them, but they do everything they can to insure that you are watching.
Even moments of beauty are seen with jaded eyes.
At the edge of the wide grounds was a pool, and around it flowers were planted. Like the eruptions on a rotting corpse, like a serum with multiplying cancer cells, the flowers were blooming. Against the background of a wall that rippled like white cloth, they scattered on the ground or suddenly danced up in the wind. I'm cold, as if I were dead.
The Other Murakami
I was uncertain of this book for the first fifty pages. If I were one of those reviewers that reviews books that they don't finish I would have given it two stars, but as the book moves forward I started to begrudgingly change my mind about the book. It is hard to adjust first impressions, but the accumulation of stark images started to impress me. You may toss this book across the room a few times (hopefully not the first edition hardcover as it is becoming rather rare), but let it set for a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days and then pick it back up again. This book broke ground and the imitators that came later don't measure up.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Almost Transparent Blue
A warning to any potential readers of this book. There is explicit, graphic sex in the first half of this novel. If you are prudish about group sex, alternative sex, or say sex involving a foot that will be seared into your memory for the rest of your life you should avoid this novel. If you have issues with rampant drug use and drug/alcohol induced vomiting you should avoid this novel.
The first cool thing about this novel is the fact that it was published in 1976 almost a full decade before Bret Easton Elliscame up out of his own drug induced haze to write the novel Less Than Zero. I read Ellis and I read Bright Lights, Big City, and later The Secret Historyand enjoyed them to varying degrees. I'd heard of the other Murakami, but his books were somewhat elusive to me in the 1980s. So finally here in 2012 I read this book and discover that if I had read this book back in 1985 I would have laughed at the feeble attempts of the "brat pack" to write "edgy" novels.
I wonder did Ellis read this book before he wrote Less Than Zero?
This book kicks you in the nuts and as your falling to the ground you catch a knee to the chin that stands you back up so Murakami can slug you a few more times before letting you fall into bloody heap wishing you could reach that syringe full of smack just beyond your blood dripping reach.
Our characters get into an altercation with a security guard. They break his arm, but they don't stop there. By the time they are done he is a mess.
The blood smeared and dripping over the lower half of his face was a black mask. The veins in his forehead bulging, he tried to pull himself along by his elbows. Perhaps seized by some fresh pain, he mumbled, lay on his side, his feet trembling. His vomit-covered belly heaved up and down.
There is a lack of humanity running through this novel. The main characters are horrible to everyone including each other. Ryu, the main character and also the stand in for the author, does show some real tenderness towards his friends, but not without some sensual benefit to himself. There is a lack of soul, not in the religious sense because that is all silly nonsense (as if my life force can be bartered with), but in the lack of substance in these characters.
I read a book several years ago, part of a trilogy of which only two parts have been published, by a guy named James A. Mangum. In one of the two books, memory escapes me, he talks about these "soulless" creatures walking the Earth, the offspring of "Angels" and human females. They lack a soul because they are not exactly human, but they are able to assimilate with their soul carrying brethren. They lack that important part of humanity that allows us to really care about each other. I think we've all met people that resemble that description. The really scary part about accepting any of this as potentially true is that as these soulless creatures mate with other humans their offspring is also soulless. With each generation more humanity is lost.
I read Less than Zero for a second time a couple of years ago before I read Imperial Bedroomsand I thought about the Mangum concept then as well. There is something missing in these characters and of course the drug use, the promiscuous sex, random violence, alcohol induced vomiting is all an attempt to feel something, anything.
The crew goes to party with some American black men from the military base that is near where they live. Ryu is sharing a description of the scene.
I was completely stoned. I felt as if my insides were oozing out through every pore, and other people's sweat and breath were flowing in. Especially the lower half of my body felt heavy and sore, as if sunk into thick mud, and my mouth itched to hold somebody's prick and drain it. While we ate the fruit piled on plates and drank wine, the whole room was raped with heat. I wanted my skin peeled off. I wanted to take in the greased, shiny bodies of the black men and rock them inside me. Cherry cheesecake, grapes in black hands, steaming boiled crab legs breaking with a snap, clear sweet pale purple American wine, pickles like dead men's wart-covered fingers, bacon sandwiches like the mouths of women, salad dripping pink mayonnaise.
There are cockroaches that spew different colors when crushed. There is a pet rabbitcide. There is a doctor that explains to Yoshiyama, being treated for a suicide attempt, the absolute best way to kill himself next time. They ingest mescaline, acid, heroin, Hyminol, Nibrole, glue, marijuana, and something called a Crystal Ship. They don't want you looking at them, but they do everything they can to insure that you are watching.
Even moments of beauty are seen with jaded eyes.
At the edge of the wide grounds was a pool, and around it flowers were planted. Like the eruptions on a rotting corpse, like a serum with multiplying cancer cells, the flowers were blooming. Against the background of a wall that rippled like white cloth, they scattered on the ground or suddenly danced up in the wind. I'm cold, as if I were dead.
The Other Murakami
I was uncertain of this book for the first fifty pages. If I were one of those reviewers that reviews books that they don't finish I would have given it two stars, but as the book moves forward I started to begrudgingly change my mind about the book. It is hard to adjust first impressions, but the accumulation of stark images started to impress me. You may toss this book across the room a few times (hopefully not the first edition hardcover as it is becoming rather rare), but let it set for a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days and then pick it back up again. This book broke ground and the imitators that came later don't measure up.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
June 27, 2022
I know the Japanese like to do certain things differently than the west. Now that includes orgies too. OK, so honey and grapes I can get my head around. Fine. But bacon, boiled crab legs and cheesecake? Let's just say, had there been a cleaning lady in the morning, she would deserve at least triple pay. What a mess!
This read like an x-rated Haruki Murakami, full of drugs, drugs, and more drugs, and lots of casual sex and holes forcibly being violated. (Never mind about choking on a grape!). And like the other Murakami there are vinyl records of western artists, rebellious lost youth, suicidal thoughts, and cigarettes being ultra cool. Oh, and I'm pretty sure - it wouldn't be Japanese lit without one, a cat. A quite shocking and disturbing little novel that had the effect of a fever dream, chronic delirium, and a few panic attacks thrown in for good measure.
Difficult to empathize with anyone really; with the narrator, Ryū, probably being the only one. Writing wasn't anything to shout about, but overall this was quite a powerful shot in the arm.
November 3, 2016
There is a shrill noise often lost in the background of the more important noises in the world. This piercing cry found abundantly around no matter where you go like pigeons flocking empty streets at the break of dawn, for whatever reason, seems to be relegated as insignificant and unworthy of the spotlight and stages of the world’s short attention span. Many names have been given to this jarring sound, but for the purposes of this cajolery or whatever this is, let us call it the reckless abandon of youth. The accumulation of mistakes, the period to be reckless and stupid, to burn out, be wild, to explore the often dissonant and sometimes psychedelic essence of youngness, free from responsibilities and pretensions. Perhaps it is the most beautiful moment in life, or perhaps it might be a dark nightmare to be a spurned and forgotten?
When I was a bit younger I had my fair share of teenage angst that led me to a path of abandon, partly because of hubris, I wanted to have experienced life and all it had to offer me if I wanted to write something that would matter, because somewhere I’d read that a writer is only the sum of his experiences, and partly because I craved the thrill. Those days are over, but there are days when I still feel the call of youth. Days when I would look at the sky and think ‘Is this it?’ Days when I’d want to forget everything. They don’t come often, but when they come, I feel like I’m being gripped by the past, gripped by a part of myself slowly fading away and I get this bitter taste in my mouth.
Almost Transparent Blue is a novella about this ragtag, exhilarating time of life filled with anger, confusion, and fear. Ryu Murakami takes the shrill noise and puts it into a record and plays it, only he amplifies it and puts it in the highest volume possible that your eardrums could burst. The vibration of the speakers working on their threshold imitating an earthquake keeps you on the edge and awake. As you might have suspected, it is very raunchy and somewhat episodic. Moments of drug induced euphoria, drunken revelries, to descriptive orgies and dark reflections fill the pages of this colorful book. And from the all of the colors of a psychedelic rainbow, to all the shades of intense darkness at the heart of an empty soul, surprisingly, a feeling of peace stems out. And this feeling of peace has the hue of an almost transparent blue.
This is a rewarding book, but at times it was painful to read. Not because the scenes were too much for me, but rather it reminded me too much of a part of myself I am no longer in touch with, a past that I do not regret, but a past that sometimes I want forgotten.
When I was a bit younger I had my fair share of teenage angst that led me to a path of abandon, partly because of hubris, I wanted to have experienced life and all it had to offer me if I wanted to write something that would matter, because somewhere I’d read that a writer is only the sum of his experiences, and partly because I craved the thrill. Those days are over, but there are days when I still feel the call of youth. Days when I would look at the sky and think ‘Is this it?’ Days when I’d want to forget everything. They don’t come often, but when they come, I feel like I’m being gripped by the past, gripped by a part of myself slowly fading away and I get this bitter taste in my mouth.
Almost Transparent Blue is a novella about this ragtag, exhilarating time of life filled with anger, confusion, and fear. Ryu Murakami takes the shrill noise and puts it into a record and plays it, only he amplifies it and puts it in the highest volume possible that your eardrums could burst. The vibration of the speakers working on their threshold imitating an earthquake keeps you on the edge and awake. As you might have suspected, it is very raunchy and somewhat episodic. Moments of drug induced euphoria, drunken revelries, to descriptive orgies and dark reflections fill the pages of this colorful book. And from the all of the colors of a psychedelic rainbow, to all the shades of intense darkness at the heart of an empty soul, surprisingly, a feeling of peace stems out. And this feeling of peace has the hue of an almost transparent blue.
This is a rewarding book, but at times it was painful to read. Not because the scenes were too much for me, but rather it reminded me too much of a part of myself I am no longer in touch with, a past that I do not regret, but a past that sometimes I want forgotten.
April 24, 2024
It took me YEARS to finally get my hands on Murakami's debut, and now I can't believe a book that transgressive won the Akutagawa in 1976 - while frequently called the Japanese Trainspotting, I think this is darker and (with the greatest respect to the wonderful Irvine Welsh) less pop. In fact, it's more like a Japanese Naked Lunch, Junky, Closer or even Querelle de Brest. Strongly influenced by French existentialism, Georges Bataille and heroin culture (if you want to call it that), "Almost Transparent Blue" tells the story of a guy named Ryu and his clique, a bunch of young drifters living in a harbor city with an American air base. While the pastime of these friends could be described as sex & drugs & rock'n'roll, what renders the whole thing so disturbing is not the explicitness of it all, but the joylessness.
This almost plotless novel is not only abysmally sad, it also explains nothing and excuses nothing: We learn that the characters try to fill an emptiness inside them, they are trying to feel something by chasing extreme experiences, but there is no easy trauma-subplot, no explanatory "and this is why" that lets us as readers sleep well at night: These characters seem unsettled by the pointlessness of existence, and they know no boundaries against society, against each other, and against themselves.
We get detailed descriptions of public disturbance, drug intake, casual sex, violence, self-harm, suicide attempts, and, the Marquis de Sade be damned, the most brutal and repulsive orgy scene ever put to paper (prove me wrong, I dare you): The friends visit Black American soldiers, and two worlds affected by racism and othering spiral into an explosion of sex and violence. Is this objectification, rape or self-harm? Are parts of it the result of a drug haze, a hallucination? All I know is that I will never get these images out of my head, because they are so effectively written, and that's bad news.
To add to the disturbance, the novel is full of strong images and metaphors, it oscillates between scenic description and drug-induced halluciation, and it's easy to see why it would be awarded the most important literary prize in Japan: It's prose that lets readers feel this milieu, that offers glimpses into another consciousness, and it's a dark, intense place, often distorted by strong drugs.
The only reason why this is not mentioned more often in lists of high concept transgressive fiction is that the circulation of the text is not high enough, which is a shame. For casual readers of In the Miso Soup or Audition, or, God forbid, people who pick this up thinking it's Haruki Murakami (no shade, I like him as well), this will be extremely hard to stomach though, as reflected by the Goodreads rating.
This almost plotless novel is not only abysmally sad, it also explains nothing and excuses nothing: We learn that the characters try to fill an emptiness inside them, they are trying to feel something by chasing extreme experiences, but there is no easy trauma-subplot, no explanatory "and this is why" that lets us as readers sleep well at night: These characters seem unsettled by the pointlessness of existence, and they know no boundaries against society, against each other, and against themselves.
We get detailed descriptions of public disturbance, drug intake, casual sex, violence, self-harm, suicide attempts, and, the Marquis de Sade be damned, the most brutal and repulsive orgy scene ever put to paper (prove me wrong, I dare you): The friends visit Black American soldiers, and two worlds affected by racism and othering spiral into an explosion of sex and violence. Is this objectification, rape or self-harm? Are parts of it the result of a drug haze, a hallucination? All I know is that I will never get these images out of my head, because they are so effectively written, and that's bad news.
To add to the disturbance, the novel is full of strong images and metaphors, it oscillates between scenic description and drug-induced halluciation, and it's easy to see why it would be awarded the most important literary prize in Japan: It's prose that lets readers feel this milieu, that offers glimpses into another consciousness, and it's a dark, intense place, often distorted by strong drugs.
The only reason why this is not mentioned more often in lists of high concept transgressive fiction is that the circulation of the text is not high enough, which is a shame. For casual readers of In the Miso Soup or Audition, or, God forbid, people who pick this up thinking it's Haruki Murakami (no shade, I like him as well), this will be extremely hard to stomach though, as reflected by the Goodreads rating.
February 7, 2018
Aw, the silly depravity of youth. How do I count the ways?
What is it to read this book? To imagine a decadence I never experienced...to be young and frivolous, to exchange idealism with nihilism so that I can make my depravity a pool of vomit to swim in.
As I reach out to grab the syringe I've never used to shoot up once more words that aren't heroin, I think about my 17-year-old self. He's reading "Trainspotting" in a place that doesn't feel like home, wondering if he can ever go home. He images a 16-year-old self. He's reading "A Clockwork Orange", his eyes peeled open by mechanical claws.
I bring out those mechanical claws so that I can see once again the literary uses of bodily juices -- semen, vomit, blood, and bile of different colors, purple, brown, green...and Almost Transparent Blue? I'm not sure bile comes in that color.
In order to get to great moments of beauty, we have to be presented with the bile of Mr. Murakami Ryu's life....a real life? This wasn't fiction? Was "Trainspotting" fiction? Is this book review fiction?
Ryu Murakami writes:
"I took a fragment of glass about the size of my thumbnail out of my pocket and wiped the blood off it. The little fragment with its smooth hollow reflected the brightening sky. Under the sky stretched the hospital and far away the tree-lined street and the town. The horizon of the shadowy reflected town made a delicate curving line. Its curves were the same, the same as the time I'd almost killed Lilly on the runway in the rain, that white curved line that burned for an instant with the thunder. Like the wave-filled foggy horizon of the sea, like a woman's white arm, a gentle curve. All the time, since I didn't know when I'd been surrounded by this whitish curving. The fragment of glass with the blood on its edge, as it soaked up the dawn air, was almost transparent. It was a boundless blue, almost transparent."
I shouldn't have typed out those lines. You didn't work to get there. You didn't have to read about semen and bile on the way to work. You didn't have to look on as a security guard was beat half to death and girl was almost beat half to death, and the sex and the orgies, not really erotica -- there was nothing sexy about those orgies, just the absurd, awful, depraved depravity of...aw, decadent youth. You reach for a syringe and it's Ryu Murakami's youthful literary exploits, or it's "Trainspotting", or it's "A Clockwork Orange".
Someone said that this was a stream of consciousness...I doubt that this was a stream of consciousness. It seemed more to me like a book. It felt like a book. It could be a stream of consciousness. But I think it was a book. It could have been a diary, it could have been the sound of an airplane or a fly buzzing behind my ear. It could have been a Sunday in May with me staring at a coffee shop worker. She's wondering what I'm doing...I'm a fly buzzing behind your ear, ma'am. I'm a fly trying to remember what it's like to be a 17-year-old contemplating the Almost Transparent Blue of love...I just hope that I can get through the other shades of bile to get there.
I reach for a syringe with the latest drug of choice and find this book. I try to turn its pages and it turns me blue.
What is it to read this book? To imagine a decadence I never experienced...to be young and frivolous, to exchange idealism with nihilism so that I can make my depravity a pool of vomit to swim in.
As I reach out to grab the syringe I've never used to shoot up once more words that aren't heroin, I think about my 17-year-old self. He's reading "Trainspotting" in a place that doesn't feel like home, wondering if he can ever go home. He images a 16-year-old self. He's reading "A Clockwork Orange", his eyes peeled open by mechanical claws.
I bring out those mechanical claws so that I can see once again the literary uses of bodily juices -- semen, vomit, blood, and bile of different colors, purple, brown, green...and Almost Transparent Blue? I'm not sure bile comes in that color.
In order to get to great moments of beauty, we have to be presented with the bile of Mr. Murakami Ryu's life....a real life? This wasn't fiction? Was "Trainspotting" fiction? Is this book review fiction?
Ryu Murakami writes:
"I took a fragment of glass about the size of my thumbnail out of my pocket and wiped the blood off it. The little fragment with its smooth hollow reflected the brightening sky. Under the sky stretched the hospital and far away the tree-lined street and the town. The horizon of the shadowy reflected town made a delicate curving line. Its curves were the same, the same as the time I'd almost killed Lilly on the runway in the rain, that white curved line that burned for an instant with the thunder. Like the wave-filled foggy horizon of the sea, like a woman's white arm, a gentle curve. All the time, since I didn't know when I'd been surrounded by this whitish curving. The fragment of glass with the blood on its edge, as it soaked up the dawn air, was almost transparent. It was a boundless blue, almost transparent."
I shouldn't have typed out those lines. You didn't work to get there. You didn't have to read about semen and bile on the way to work. You didn't have to look on as a security guard was beat half to death and girl was almost beat half to death, and the sex and the orgies, not really erotica -- there was nothing sexy about those orgies, just the absurd, awful, depraved depravity of...aw, decadent youth. You reach for a syringe and it's Ryu Murakami's youthful literary exploits, or it's "Trainspotting", or it's "A Clockwork Orange".
Someone said that this was a stream of consciousness...I doubt that this was a stream of consciousness. It seemed more to me like a book. It felt like a book. It could be a stream of consciousness. But I think it was a book. It could have been a diary, it could have been the sound of an airplane or a fly buzzing behind my ear. It could have been a Sunday in May with me staring at a coffee shop worker. She's wondering what I'm doing...I'm a fly buzzing behind your ear, ma'am. I'm a fly trying to remember what it's like to be a 17-year-old contemplating the Almost Transparent Blue of love...I just hope that I can get through the other shades of bile to get there.
I reach for a syringe with the latest drug of choice and find this book. I try to turn its pages and it turns me blue.
December 1, 2020
Crudísimo libro que trata sobre una pandilla de jóvenes drogadictos japoneses a principios de los años 70. Cuando lo empecé a leer me recordó mucho a “Trainspotting”, pero enseguida me di cuenta de que “Azul casi transparente” está mucho mejor escrito para mi gusto, a pesar de la horrible traducción, que se nota mucho que no viene del japonés original, sino del inglés, por la cantidad de expresiones que se traducen de forma literal. Una pena, porque la prosa de Ryū Murakami es muy enérgica, descriptiva y llena, a pesar del tema de la novela, de momentos preciosistas. Este libro necesita una revisión de la traducción YA.
Entiendo que no es un libro fácil ni apto para todos los públicos, porque ya digo que es muy crudo y descriptivo y puede parecer que es una sucesión de drogas, vómitos, violencia y orgías, pero mientras lees te das cuenta de que todo va más allá, y que la soledad que se relata en esta novela no tiene límites. Tiene momentos que te dejan pensando mucho, que son muy tristes, que te llevan a ver a una juventud perdida que lo tenía todo por delante y lo ha echado por la borda por caer en un círculo vicioso de autodestrucción, algo que se sucede generación tras generación.
Narrado en primera persona por su protagonista, Ryū, asistimos a los momentos más álgidos y más oscuros de la politoxicomanía, con situaciones realmente apabullantes y otras llenas de una belleza difícil de describir y que parece mentira que se plasmen en un libro tan violento como este. Las reflexiones del personaje son desconcertantes, melancólicas y rudas; el lenguaje obsceno.
Y con todo ello, con su lenguaje explícito, su autodestrucción y su vorágine, me vi envuelta, a las pocas páginas de lectura, en un libro que me había atrapado sin remedio. Me absorbió y me tuve que dejar llevar, así de fácil. Me ha encantado este libro, no hay más. Incluso ya me apetece releerlo.
Entiendo que no es un libro fácil ni apto para todos los públicos, porque ya digo que es muy crudo y descriptivo y puede parecer que es una sucesión de drogas, vómitos, violencia y orgías, pero mientras lees te das cuenta de que todo va más allá, y que la soledad que se relata en esta novela no tiene límites. Tiene momentos que te dejan pensando mucho, que son muy tristes, que te llevan a ver a una juventud perdida que lo tenía todo por delante y lo ha echado por la borda por caer en un círculo vicioso de autodestrucción, algo que se sucede generación tras generación.
Narrado en primera persona por su protagonista, Ryū, asistimos a los momentos más álgidos y más oscuros de la politoxicomanía, con situaciones realmente apabullantes y otras llenas de una belleza difícil de describir y que parece mentira que se plasmen en un libro tan violento como este. Las reflexiones del personaje son desconcertantes, melancólicas y rudas; el lenguaje obsceno.
Y con todo ello, con su lenguaje explícito, su autodestrucción y su vorágine, me vi envuelta, a las pocas páginas de lectura, en un libro que me había atrapado sin remedio. Me absorbió y me tuve que dejar llevar, así de fácil. Me ha encantado este libro, no hay más. Incluso ya me apetece releerlo.
August 21, 2010
(Soundtrack for this review)
Do you want to know what I don't give a shit about? This book.
I made it a little more than a quarter through it (35 pages to be exact). I found the writing to be blah (to be fair, I think it is the translation), the type to be a bit too small and the font to be faintly illegible. I dreaded having to go on break and read more of this book, and did internal backflips when I noticed the a new Harpers just went on sale before I went on break and saw there was a new DFW story in it. I broke my irrational ban on reading newly published DFW work in order to not read this book.
It's about drugs. Which is kind of a boring subject. Especially when it's about drugs and rock n' roll in the late 1960's / early 1970's. Yawn-ville. People from the hippie generation acting like drugged out assholes. Oh, so fucking counter-culture. Even if the book is in Japan, some assholes different country. There isn't even any kind of cultural difference because it's all part of the universal culture of idiocy.
This book did make me a little sad that because of some misguided decisions that I don't know nearly enough to really comment on, a country with it's own culture went into a war, lost, were occupied by a vacuous country that exported the worst they had to offer and undermine future generations.
I could have plowed through this book.
Instead my disgust with the book made me remember this quote from one of the members of Born Against:
"FUCK ROCK. Fuck cigarettes and slicked back hair that ends in a pony tail and a high door price. Maturity and progression do not mean status quo music and ideals. Under the false pretense of reaching new audiences, former punk bands bring us closer to square one, throwing out the window the foundation of independance which took years to build. This band is an attempt to reinforce those quickly eroding foundations. Maybe these "rock" types don't see it this way, but speaking as someone who has never been lured by the slippery slope of psuedo concerned UPC code post hardcore bullshit, common sense tells me that no matter how many reggae songs you write about human rights, your audience will still "rock out" and drink wine coolers. Then they'll go home and fuck like dogs to your politically concerned kick ass tunes. THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE!
Do you want to know what I don't give a shit about? This book.
I made it a little more than a quarter through it (35 pages to be exact). I found the writing to be blah (to be fair, I think it is the translation), the type to be a bit too small and the font to be faintly illegible. I dreaded having to go on break and read more of this book, and did internal backflips when I noticed the a new Harpers just went on sale before I went on break and saw there was a new DFW story in it. I broke my irrational ban on reading newly published DFW work in order to not read this book.
It's about drugs. Which is kind of a boring subject. Especially when it's about drugs and rock n' roll in the late 1960's / early 1970's. Yawn-ville. People from the hippie generation acting like drugged out assholes. Oh, so fucking counter-culture. Even if the book is in Japan, some assholes different country. There isn't even any kind of cultural difference because it's all part of the universal culture of idiocy.
This book did make me a little sad that because of some misguided decisions that I don't know nearly enough to really comment on, a country with it's own culture went into a war, lost, were occupied by a vacuous country that exported the worst they had to offer and undermine future generations.
I could have plowed through this book.
Instead my disgust with the book made me remember this quote from one of the members of Born Against:
"FUCK ROCK. Fuck cigarettes and slicked back hair that ends in a pony tail and a high door price. Maturity and progression do not mean status quo music and ideals. Under the false pretense of reaching new audiences, former punk bands bring us closer to square one, throwing out the window the foundation of independance which took years to build. This band is an attempt to reinforce those quickly eroding foundations. Maybe these "rock" types don't see it this way, but speaking as someone who has never been lured by the slippery slope of psuedo concerned UPC code post hardcore bullshit, common sense tells me that no matter how many reggae songs you write about human rights, your audience will still "rock out" and drink wine coolers. Then they'll go home and fuck like dogs to your politically concerned kick ass tunes. THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE!
June 15, 2016
I'm sure we all go through these moments in life, where we end up in a dark pit of frustration and fear, wondering where we should be or go, what we should do, why we are here. We, whether religious or atheist, have our moments where we feel as if life is without meaning, that we are simply an overly self conscious mammal that walks, talks, breathes and finally dies without feeling like we have accomplished much in our short lives. These moments are brief, yet during these precise moments, they feel unbearably long and rip into your soul with almost malicious intent with a goal of searching for something -- anything, which will help you breathe just that little bit more...
A group of young students are locked in a whirlwind of sex and drugs to the psychedelic music of the counterculture era in the early seventies like The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones. All lead a nihilistic existence and Ryū Murakami writes with such intensive prose, beautiful in its darkness, dark in its beauty, where our narrator (a fictional Ryū Murakami as the character, also named Ryū) and his friends are stuck in a constant crop rotation of despair, hallucinations, paranoia, surrealism and misery.
Ryū Murakami questions our existence through these characters, crushing their hopes of a meaningful life with violence, emotionless sex, heroin, cocaine, hallucinogens and every other mind or mood altering drug you can think of. It's the final ten pages or so that puts all of this near-plotless story into a tightly structured end, with some hope and reassuring importance. Despite what a lot of people say, regarding a few chapters detailing graphic sex and orgies, Almost Transparent Blue is a literary tour de force, written incredibly well with the finest details on everything in life, rain, cockroaches, lights, the sea, ashtrays, death, toilets, trains are all described with visually strong prose and insight.
On top of all of this, Almost Transparent Blue is, most importantly, a truly beautiful postmodern novel, a novel of originality, intelligence and existential emotion.
A group of young students are locked in a whirlwind of sex and drugs to the psychedelic music of the counterculture era in the early seventies like The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones. All lead a nihilistic existence and Ryū Murakami writes with such intensive prose, beautiful in its darkness, dark in its beauty, where our narrator (a fictional Ryū Murakami as the character, also named Ryū) and his friends are stuck in a constant crop rotation of despair, hallucinations, paranoia, surrealism and misery.
Ryū Murakami questions our existence through these characters, crushing their hopes of a meaningful life with violence, emotionless sex, heroin, cocaine, hallucinogens and every other mind or mood altering drug you can think of. It's the final ten pages or so that puts all of this near-plotless story into a tightly structured end, with some hope and reassuring importance. Despite what a lot of people say, regarding a few chapters detailing graphic sex and orgies, Almost Transparent Blue is a literary tour de force, written incredibly well with the finest details on everything in life, rain, cockroaches, lights, the sea, ashtrays, death, toilets, trains are all described with visually strong prose and insight.
On top of all of this, Almost Transparent Blue is, most importantly, a truly beautiful postmodern novel, a novel of originality, intelligence and existential emotion.
November 2, 2017
I just have to face it· there is no Murakami whom I'll like. Let me say how I was rooting for this book but it ended up yet again another disappointment. I acknowledge why it should be considered important for the Japanese literature but this alone is not adaquate.
Short version: Drugs, sex, more drugs, more sex, promiscuous, dirty and disgusting.
Long version: First of all, this novel was plotless. There were just a bunch on people in desperate need of drugs and sex. Half of the book was random sex scenes of any kind, even group sex, which is completely fine but it was vain. The characters weren't interesting at all and lacked depth. The prose was gruesome due to the disgusting scenes and other times beautiful. I think the writer tried too hard to shock the reader which was something that I disliked.
Overall it was shallow and I'm still struggling to find the reason for this novel's existence. After finishing this book one thought waltzes in my mind· so freaking what?
Short version: Drugs, sex, more drugs, more sex, promiscuous, dirty and disgusting.
Long version: First of all, this novel was plotless. There were just a bunch on people in desperate need of drugs and sex. Half of the book was random sex scenes of any kind, even group sex, which is completely fine but it was vain. The characters weren't interesting at all and lacked depth. The prose was gruesome due to the disgusting scenes and other times beautiful. I think the writer tried too hard to shock the reader which was something that I disliked.
Overall it was shallow and I'm still struggling to find the reason for this novel's existence. After finishing this book one thought waltzes in my mind· so freaking what?
July 20, 2016
I loved and will always love every bit of this book even when the only sratch from it on my memory will be left by images, flashing lights and stomach-churning acts of pluckiness (but purposeful). I am actually dreadfully sad that this had to end, I could go on and on with these youngsters' intrepid, grisly life. It had a 'hard not to notice' scent of Bret Easton Ellis and Burroughs in it, constantly chasing the reader. The only difference is that this is more soaked with meanings than many think (by only being the onlookers of a junkie's session) and mesmerizing pieces of what means to be drugged, depressed, not loved but looking for all of them at once without knowing how to approach any. This book is kind of a merged scream of helplessness like some sort of urge by a bunch of youngsters who just actually want to have fun and liberate themselves from their own problems with the use of ignorance or unconsciousness. After reading what would this be all about I just thought that this is some kind of a border between sexual complexes and irksome group... that would be it, without nothing more or less than an endless adventure that will leave no trace in my mind. That's why I want to count here some of the facts that prevented me from thinking the same after finishing it. To start with, the shakes that this book give to your mind and soul are indelible: how they are all together but still alone, how they can always count on each other even if the sense of death throughout the book will creep every single bone of yours. With the highly manipulation of one's ability for imaginary visualisation Ryu Murakami manages to bring the reader into the reel of the damned, meaning that wherever you are you are with them, wherever they are you feel how the walls just compress you into their comradely hug, while the drugs just bump into your skin without you even notice: the struggle, the joy, the importance of friendship where everything seems like melting away. You can just feel the flicker of the neon in your eyes, percolating your body with the infection that's so treacly when it doesn't remind you how small you are there... together but all alone. Imagine this power of yours touching every character one by one like a joint, but with another density and with another sort of pain at its means. Because this book has it all: callous true love, brutal sex, jealousy, chase of spirituality (e.g: Okinawa's covet of hearing Ryu again with his flute, with the aim of replacing the addiction by finding his lost self), desire, fights, friendship in the name of drugs and a guy that wants to see the life with another eyes (the writer). To continue with, next to the sense of death lays the incapacity of all of them to draw to a close their miserable condition... once the methamphetamine is over, when the bordeom finds its throne. No matter how much they want to find succour in one another they will never be able to change their character which is seriously lacking stability. That's why another layer that convinces the reader that they are not ordinary characters is their bipolarity, expressed poles apart but in the same place. By means of that they manage to give a slowly collapsing unity to the whole book... which is a masterpiece from my point of view. Like Ryu said: just like a doll, moving her body, her mouth... but maybe I am just a doll. You can call this a dark humour book, not because it has jokes in it but because the puzzle in which we are in that appears to be dislocated from the first thrust is funny from nature. I do not want to be what Umberto Eco called: 'blur' (you know... the one that always has something good to say and for whom all the books are the best books that he/she had ever read), but this book is something, a short unputdownable that has so much to say in few pages. A book that thrives in you with all the energy it has, boosting the reader to cogitate at low speed but with acuteness, trust, love all his/her values. I do recommend this book with all my heart and I will always remember it myself. Up to now this is the only book I will want to re-read just for the hell of fulfilling myself with all that this can give over and over again.
May 22, 2023
Se puede definir el nihilismo como la negación de toda creencia o principio. Es esa filosofía en la que el creyente acaba aceptando que nada tiene sentido. El tiempo pasa, la vida ocurre, pero sin ningún tipo de propósito u objetivo final. Azul casi transparente bebe mucho de esta corriente aunque, como toda la novela, también transgrede este concepto y se revelan pequeños gritos de ayuda para salir de esta espiral de autodestrucción.
Ryu Murakami construye un relato en el que unos jóvenes japoneses, que se encuentran cerca de una base militar americana, dedican su tiempo al consumo extremo de drogas y a todo tipo de prácticas sexuales. Todo ello mientras hablan del futuro y rememoran un pasado que los ha llevado a la situación en la que se encuentran.
A pesar de lo que pueda parecer, ésta es una novela tremendamente lírica. Si algo extraigo en positivo es esa asombrosa capacidad de contraponer la enorme poesía en sus palabras con la crudeza y perturbación de la narración. Dentro de la oscuridad que impregna la historia, se puede extraer cierta belleza, aunque para ello se deba descender a las profundidades de la naturaleza humana.
Aunque sorprende esta armonía de contradicciones, la novela no consigue el mismo resultado en su propósito. No le encuentro un recorrido específico que conduzca hacia una finalidad. Azul casi transparente es una sucesión constante de actitudes decadentes y desesperanzadoras en un espacio muy limitado de tiempo. Desde sus primeras páginas ya se intuye la intención y el resultado, por lo que todo lo siguiente no es más que una reiteración provocadora. Además, Murakami generaliza a sus personajes, no les otorga rasgos individuales, sino que representan un momento histórico y social, una idea común de una sociedad perdida.
Es curioso como esta novela fue tremendamente popular entre la juventud nipona de la época. Acostumbrados a historias desde el punto de vista americano, quizás para la sociedad occidental pueda chocar esta perspectiva de aquéllos que perdieron la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Tras la rendición y la consiguiente ocupación estadounidense, nació toda una generación de japoneses que crecieron en un país caótico, tanto a nivel político como a nivel cultural. Esta confusión queda perfectamente plasmada en la novela, con una sociedad de jóvenes con serias dificultades para encontrar su propia identidad nacional.
Azul casi transparente se podría catalogar como una novela interesante desde un punto de vista experimental, pero sus excesos en la narración lacran una premisa con un excelente punto de partida. Se agradecen ciertos destellos de luz, de redención, pero que acaban convirtiéndose en rasgos melancólicos que miran hacia el pasado, hacia lo que ya no se puede cambiar. Murakami creó un fenómeno en el que la sociedad pudiese reconfortarse o sentirse reflejada pero, para aquéllos que lo leemos desde la distancia, es inevitable pensar que hay un enorme muro entre el libro y el lector.
Ryu Murakami construye un relato en el que unos jóvenes japoneses, que se encuentran cerca de una base militar americana, dedican su tiempo al consumo extremo de drogas y a todo tipo de prácticas sexuales. Todo ello mientras hablan del futuro y rememoran un pasado que los ha llevado a la situación en la que se encuentran.
A pesar de lo que pueda parecer, ésta es una novela tremendamente lírica. Si algo extraigo en positivo es esa asombrosa capacidad de contraponer la enorme poesía en sus palabras con la crudeza y perturbación de la narración. Dentro de la oscuridad que impregna la historia, se puede extraer cierta belleza, aunque para ello se deba descender a las profundidades de la naturaleza humana.
Aunque sorprende esta armonía de contradicciones, la novela no consigue el mismo resultado en su propósito. No le encuentro un recorrido específico que conduzca hacia una finalidad. Azul casi transparente es una sucesión constante de actitudes decadentes y desesperanzadoras en un espacio muy limitado de tiempo. Desde sus primeras páginas ya se intuye la intención y el resultado, por lo que todo lo siguiente no es más que una reiteración provocadora. Además, Murakami generaliza a sus personajes, no les otorga rasgos individuales, sino que representan un momento histórico y social, una idea común de una sociedad perdida.
Es curioso como esta novela fue tremendamente popular entre la juventud nipona de la época. Acostumbrados a historias desde el punto de vista americano, quizás para la sociedad occidental pueda chocar esta perspectiva de aquéllos que perdieron la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Tras la rendición y la consiguiente ocupación estadounidense, nació toda una generación de japoneses que crecieron en un país caótico, tanto a nivel político como a nivel cultural. Esta confusión queda perfectamente plasmada en la novela, con una sociedad de jóvenes con serias dificultades para encontrar su propia identidad nacional.
Azul casi transparente se podría catalogar como una novela interesante desde un punto de vista experimental, pero sus excesos en la narración lacran una premisa con un excelente punto de partida. Se agradecen ciertos destellos de luz, de redención, pero que acaban convirtiéndose en rasgos melancólicos que miran hacia el pasado, hacia lo que ya no se puede cambiar. Murakami creó un fenómeno en el que la sociedad pudiese reconfortarse o sentirse reflejada pero, para aquéllos que lo leemos desde la distancia, es inevitable pensar que hay un enorme muro entre el libro y el lector.
May 11, 2023
Màu xanh trong suốt là tác phẩm đưa người đọc đến với một cảm giác u ám, khó chịu. Nơi những con người trẻ tuổi tiệc tùng, sử dụng thuốc kích thích, tình dục bừa bãi...,v.v Trong sâu thẳm những lần nổi loạn đó là một nỗi buồn màu xanh trong suốt...
Okay, thật ra mình đã nghe về quyển này lâu rồi và mình cũng muốn đọc để biết về văn của Ryu Murakami. Như đã nói ở trên, Màu xanh trong suốt mang cho mình một cảm giác u ám và xen lẫn khó chịu, một chút buồn cho những nhân vật trong câu chuyện này.
Nhưng đều mình thất vọng có lẽ nằm ở việc diễn biến của nó không như mình kỳ vọng. Mình đọc một vài review về Màu xanh trong suốt , họ đánh giá nó khiến mình nghĩ nội dung sẽ nặng đô lắm cơ, nhưng thật ra là không quá nặng nề hay ám ảnh gì cả, cách kể chuyện cũng y như đang "say thuốc". Điều khiến mình ngạc nhiên nhất là ở cái kết, có phải đây là câu chuyện của chính tác giả không? RYU?!!
January 17, 2020
Esta novela es una paradoja.
Es súper aburrida, sigue un patrón, orgía-chute-vómito, repetitivo y cansino. Pero entonces, así consigue el autor que te sientas como los protagonistas. No está mal, para un imberbe.
La supuesta liricidad que asoma por momentos... a ver, me da que son artilugios muy de escritor novel que no sabe muy bien hacia dónde tirar. Aunque, por otro lado, quizás esté ahí el verdadero Murakami.
Lo dicho: paradoja.
Es súper aburrida, sigue un patrón, orgía-chute-vómito, repetitivo y cansino. Pero entonces, así consigue el autor que te sientas como los protagonistas. No está mal, para un imberbe.
La supuesta liricidad que asoma por momentos... a ver, me da que son artilugios muy de escritor novel que no sabe muy bien hacia dónde tirar. Aunque, por otro lado, quizás esté ahí el verdadero Murakami.
Lo dicho: paradoja.
March 12, 2016
Those who know me are well aware that I have an almost visceral love of twisted literature. Books that are the literary equivalent of a car crash; hedonistic revels that fade into subterranean nightmares. In other words, such extreme excess that you can't help but approach them with a mixture of sick curiosity and nearly overwhelming trepidation. For the longest time that has meant the blasted imaginations of my trifecta of favorite authors (Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis) and occasional one-offs by up-and-coming writers such as Jeremy Robert Johnson's Angel Dust Apocalypse. Very rarely do I stumble across an author with a well-established body of work of the sort that I like to mainline like a junkie fresh from rehab.
Which is why I'm more than a little excited to have been exposed to Ryu Murakami. Within the first three pages of his Akutagama-winning debut novel, Murakami's disaffected Japanese youth growing up in the shadow of an American military base huff glue, shoot up some heroin and have sex in a flophouse that Burroughs would feel at home in. The next 100-odd pages are packed to the brim with more of the same- violent orgies with American servicemen, madcap mescaline adventures that end with them crashing a car onto a runway, more heroin, flashmobs beating security guards senseless and other signs of impending armageddon.
Murakami's plotless (pointless?) novella pinballs between the restless ennui of Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero and the senseless violence of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. At times extremely disturbing (I could have gone my whole life without reading the scene with the foot), Murakami still manages to paste together an interesting tale of cultureless youth emulating what they see as a stronger people, the servicemen who blow a mean sax, have the best drugs, and that suave intoxicating confidence of knowing you can do no wrong. A phenomenally quick read, not for the faint of heart, that has me excited to finally get to his more well-known books such as In The Miso Soup and Coin Locker Babies.
Which is why I'm more than a little excited to have been exposed to Ryu Murakami. Within the first three pages of his Akutagama-winning debut novel, Murakami's disaffected Japanese youth growing up in the shadow of an American military base huff glue, shoot up some heroin and have sex in a flophouse that Burroughs would feel at home in. The next 100-odd pages are packed to the brim with more of the same- violent orgies with American servicemen, madcap mescaline adventures that end with them crashing a car onto a runway, more heroin, flashmobs beating security guards senseless and other signs of impending armageddon.
Murakami's plotless (pointless?) novella pinballs between the restless ennui of Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero and the senseless violence of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. At times extremely disturbing (I could have gone my whole life without reading the scene with the foot), Murakami still manages to paste together an interesting tale of cultureless youth emulating what they see as a stronger people, the servicemen who blow a mean sax, have the best drugs, and that suave intoxicating confidence of knowing you can do no wrong. A phenomenally quick read, not for the faint of heart, that has me excited to finally get to his more well-known books such as In The Miso Soup and Coin Locker Babies.
August 20, 2012
Time to get stoned! This novel can put you in a catatonic torpor, a drug-induced haze near the point where you are about to overdose and die.
First person narrative, here is someone named Ryu, not yet twenty, with his equally-young male and female buddies. Ryu is telling a story. You hear him, but do not really understand the story being told. The images will distract you and catch your full attention.
First there's this cockroach on some unwashed dishes. Then it is squashed. See the jelly-like substance that spurts from its violated body. And then the old, cut pineapple, its rancid odor; the blood on needles, heroin, hashish, mescaline, Nibrole pills dissolved in gin, Philopon, shooting up, vomit, spittle, saliva, unwashed smelly bodies, rock music, The Doors, Rolling Stones, Mal Waldron, James Brown, Billy Holiday, mouldy soup, rotten bean curd, dirty rooms, leftover roast chicken gone completely bad, old radio, black American studs with huge dicks, Japanese girls with small pussies, sex orgies--
"Pressing her chin on the table, breathin hard, Moko attacked a crab like a starving child. Then one of the blacks stuck his shaft in front of her, and she took that in her mouth too. Stroking it with her tongue, she pushed it aside and turned again to the crab. The red shell crunched between her teeth, she pulled out the white meat with her hands. Piling it with pink mayonnaise from a plate, she put it on her tongue, the mayonnaise dribbling onto her chest. The odor of crab flowed through the room. On the bed, Reiko was still howling. Durham pushed up into Moko from behind. Her butt jiggled, she held onto the crab, her face twisted, she tried to drink some wine but with the rocking of her body it went into her nose and she choked, tears in her eyes. Seeing that, Kei laughed loudly. James Brown began to sing...."
On to the glorious ending, a dead moth, a crazed Ryu ingesting insects, contemplates on a dead moth, sees a huge black bird, hallucinates, stabs his arm with a broken glass, bleeds and bleeds until he becomes "a boundless blue, almost transparent."
He survives, but only to write this novel.
First person narrative, here is someone named Ryu, not yet twenty, with his equally-young male and female buddies. Ryu is telling a story. You hear him, but do not really understand the story being told. The images will distract you and catch your full attention.
First there's this cockroach on some unwashed dishes. Then it is squashed. See the jelly-like substance that spurts from its violated body. And then the old, cut pineapple, its rancid odor; the blood on needles, heroin, hashish, mescaline, Nibrole pills dissolved in gin, Philopon, shooting up, vomit, spittle, saliva, unwashed smelly bodies, rock music, The Doors, Rolling Stones, Mal Waldron, James Brown, Billy Holiday, mouldy soup, rotten bean curd, dirty rooms, leftover roast chicken gone completely bad, old radio, black American studs with huge dicks, Japanese girls with small pussies, sex orgies--
"Pressing her chin on the table, breathin hard, Moko attacked a crab like a starving child. Then one of the blacks stuck his shaft in front of her, and she took that in her mouth too. Stroking it with her tongue, she pushed it aside and turned again to the crab. The red shell crunched between her teeth, she pulled out the white meat with her hands. Piling it with pink mayonnaise from a plate, she put it on her tongue, the mayonnaise dribbling onto her chest. The odor of crab flowed through the room. On the bed, Reiko was still howling. Durham pushed up into Moko from behind. Her butt jiggled, she held onto the crab, her face twisted, she tried to drink some wine but with the rocking of her body it went into her nose and she choked, tears in her eyes. Seeing that, Kei laughed loudly. James Brown began to sing...."
On to the glorious ending, a dead moth, a crazed Ryu ingesting insects, contemplates on a dead moth, sees a huge black bird, hallucinates, stabs his arm with a broken glass, bleeds and bleeds until he becomes "a boundless blue, almost transparent."
He survives, but only to write this novel.
April 9, 2018
La verdad es que no sé por dónde empezar, trate de leer este libro anteriormente y no logre engancharme, me animaba mucho el autor y que un amigo me hablo bien de él, le di otra oportunidad (tardé mucho por situaciones ajenas al libro). La historia no es de las que suelen gustarme, no entendí la trama al inicio y me pareció grotesco el ambiente en el que se desarrollaba, si mi reseña terminara aquí les diría que esperaba más de esta historia, pero no termina aquí, poco a poco fui entendiendo que va más allá de unos chicos que se drogan y tienen mucho sexo, para mí, se trata de un libro que deja ver relaciones y pensamientos completamente destructivos y es evidente que no hay finales felices, es de esas historias que pocos cuentan y que pocos se animarán a leer y por esa razón tiene ese toque. Lo que en verdad ame de este libro y del autor en sí, es la forma de la escritura, esa delicadeza y detalle con la que describe cosas tan simples como beber de una copa, el cómo logra que cosas que podrían ser “incomodas” tengan algo sutil con un toque de belleza. Seguramente volveré a leerlo, no pronto, pero si lo haré de nuevo.
July 16, 2018
My rating doesn't have anything to do with all the dirty stuff this book had, and I'm not even looking for a plot or point. Some of my favourites are dirty, plotless books. While reading this book, all I could picture was horny Murakami. For one thing,Ryu Murakami is brave enough to write a dirty book with the main character called Ryu. In the miso soup still remains his best book for me.
Perhaps it's just lost in translation and it isn't 1970s anymore.
Perhaps it's just lost in translation and it isn't 1970s anymore.
December 15, 2009
i liked Piercing and i loved In the Miso Soup, but i found this book (his first) just mind-numbingly boring. there's one point where the guy (it took me about 80 pages to decide that the narrator was a guy; even the talk of his penis never really convinced me) talks about the movie he'd like to make, which is simply a huge mirror that reflects back the audience... that was about the only moment in the book that seemed to show a little imagination (though let's be honest, not that much). i'm all for pornography and psychopathic violence and whatnot, but i really do need there to be a story. or at least characters. or desires. or direction. or poetry, great writing, or something. whatever... this book was not for me.
think bataille's Story of the Eye, only 50 years later, in japan, humorless, muddled, and dull.
think bataille's Story of the Eye, only 50 years later, in japan, humorless, muddled, and dull.
December 21, 2018
Good for students of Japanese wanting to expand their vocabulary around drug-taking, drunken vomiting and rough sex. I rarely participate in two out of these three activities, so for me the book was of limited utility.
This book was a controversial shocker when it first came out but I don’t see why it was ever quite so popular. I think it reflected a lifestyle which Japanese people of that age secretly envied, when they weren't too busy with their math homework. Seriously, who takes drugs listening to the Rolling Stones these days? The book is redeemed at the end by as good a description of drug induced alienation and confusion as anywhere, so there is that.
At least I now have the vocabulary for a great night out in Roppongi: dribble (noun) – yodare/涎; nausea – hakike/吐き気; vomit (verb) –haku/吐く; vomit (noun) – outomono/嘔吐物; groan – umeku/呻く.
This book was a controversial shocker when it first came out but I don’t see why it was ever quite so popular. I think it reflected a lifestyle which Japanese people of that age secretly envied, when they weren't too busy with their math homework. Seriously, who takes drugs listening to the Rolling Stones these days? The book is redeemed at the end by as good a description of drug induced alienation and confusion as anywhere, so there is that.
At least I now have the vocabulary for a great night out in Roppongi: dribble (noun) – yodare/涎; nausea – hakike/吐き気; vomit (verb) –haku/吐く; vomit (noun) – outomono/嘔吐物; groan – umeku/呻く.
January 7, 2022
In generale direi che questo libro merita tre stelle perché non ha una vera e propria trama e perché lo stile è ancora molto acerbo, si nota proprio che è il romanzo d'esordio di Murakami. In sua difesa devo dire però che non sono d'accordo con chi dice che questo libro abbia perso molta della sua forza: è vero che negli ultimi decenni TV, cinema e romanzi ci hanno mostrato di peggio in termini di tossicodipendenza, ma trovo che le descrizioni di Murakami conservino ancora la loro capacità di infondere una persistente sensazione di disagio al lettore.
November 29, 2017
Baskısı bulunmayan bu kitabı benimle paylaşan ArturoBelano'ya çok teşekkür ederim.
Kitapla ilgili fikirlerimi, bir türlü anlaşılır bir şekilde aktaramadım şuan. Uzun yorumumu daha sonra gireceğim.
Herkese iyi okumalar!
7,5/10
Kitapla ilgili fikirlerimi, bir türlü anlaşılır bir şekilde aktaramadım şuan. Uzun yorumumu daha sonra gireceğim.
Herkese iyi okumalar!
7,5/10
December 22, 2018
reflection 211218: i have come to recognize how perhaps differently i read any literature. on the one, i like historic or culture or language-different popular culture, crime, sff pulps, denigrated genres, forgotten works, rarely academically-approved 'classics' (i remember u...). on the other, i like structurally, conceptually, avante-garde, experimental, obscure work that often have little expression of usual things like character, plot, logic... then there is all the philosophy that i as amateur read, then all the art that i as once-artist look at... so this is all by way of defending rating against review i happened to read of this book. this is popular (japanese) culture primarily in the sense of selling a lot possibly in reflecting or describing certain social, generational, sexual dissonance of those times... this is avante-garde perhaps only incidentally (i do not 'know' japan) but for me this poetic intensity continues to show how novels may work without being traditional novels...
review 2, 3: i just read this again, read this again, surprised at how it stands up despite all the lit read since first. this is for me the original japan decadence work. i do not know how such brutal scenes can be almost something like beautiful. imagistic, intense, sensual, portrait without plot. maybe not a life i wanted first or decades later want now to lead, maybe not a life anyone should lead... but it is a life that will change you. i can remember some images very clearly, i can see how this worked for me after reading so much robbe-grillet, for as r-g says, a true author has nothing to say but it is how he says it...
first review (as read in...90s?): the oil paint colours mixing in a cockroach's stomach, the shiny sweaty, purplish bruised flesh of her and him, and the rotting pineapple, the rotting pineapple, the rotting pineapple...
review 2, 3: i just read this again, read this again, surprised at how it stands up despite all the lit read since first. this is for me the original japan decadence work. i do not know how such brutal scenes can be almost something like beautiful. imagistic, intense, sensual, portrait without plot. maybe not a life i wanted first or decades later want now to lead, maybe not a life anyone should lead... but it is a life that will change you. i can remember some images very clearly, i can see how this worked for me after reading so much robbe-grillet, for as r-g says, a true author has nothing to say but it is how he says it...
first review (as read in...90s?): the oil paint colours mixing in a cockroach's stomach, the shiny sweaty, purplish bruised flesh of her and him, and the rotting pineapple, the rotting pineapple, the rotting pineapple...
December 16, 2017
I DNF. I got quickly tired of the racist and homophobic characters. I just wanted to slap them around.
The writing is awful, though I have no way of knowing if it's better in Japanese.
The vulgarity is over the top, and I'm really not into books where raping girls is a casual activity for a bunch of losers and a**holes!
This is the worst book by Murakami.
The writing is awful, though I have no way of knowing if it's better in Japanese.
The vulgarity is over the top, and I'm really not into books where raping girls is a casual activity for a bunch of losers and a**holes!
This is the worst book by Murakami.
November 11, 2012
As soon as I had read the first page, I knew that I had read “Almost Transparent Blue” at least once many years ago. Even though the weighty & lengthy TBR shelf chides me, I read it through on a long train ride. And I am glad I did. I know like and appreciate this more more than I did before.
This is Murakami-san’s first novel written in his youth about even younger youths. Is it autobiographical? I don’t know and don’t recall anyone ever saying so definitively. The main character shares his personal name “Ryu” and certain places and situations reflect locations that the author was exposed to in these and earlier years.
You could call the novel “decadent”. You could also call it “self-indulgent” (“Ryu” and his friends are very much so). And despite it not having a traditional plot, I think that the layout of the novel and its progression was worked out either during the writing of the novel or during his editing (if any). Because with this second (third possibly?) reading I was able to see more of a pattern to it. But it feels like a stream-of-consciousness account of several days in the life of “Ryu”. How consecutive these days are or are not is difficult to discern.
Was it written as a form or rebellion against the status quo? Probably. In the 70s in Japan, as well as the US, the counter-culture that took root at the end of the 60s was still in full swing. The author himself participated in similar things as what goes on in the book. No matter how much we in the US think that society and family conspire to control how we behave and interact (I am taking the hard view here), it is nothing compared to those pressures in Japan and many other Asian countries.
The phrase, “the nail that sticks up will be hammered down” is a true insight into how conformity has been the overwhelming force in Japanese society for hundreds of years. A small island with a large population and few natural resources, they exist in population concentrations that we seldom encounter. Thus, cooperation and conformity are almost a necessity (again I exaggerate). Under such “rules” there is always a backlash. And in Japan that backlash has and I think always will be spectacular.
Many of my friends in Japan are non-traditional. Some more so than others, of course and none as wild as those in the novel. But, they have a spark in them that connects back to the rebellion that is in these characters. Asian cultures are often much more tolerant of the misdeeds of their children up until their twenties. But when they reach a certain age, then they are expected to transition into the role of good workers, citizens, and members of society. I’ve seen people who have done exactly that and others who reversed course and took themselves further out of play.
At the end of this novel, we are left to wonder what will happen to most of the players. But one, and perhaps the most surprising one, peels away and is not heard from again. Have they made their leap into conformity? We are never sure. But it is implied.
(Note there is another character who tells “Ryu” that this is almost exactly her own plan. Once she is bored with all of this (i.e. the drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll) she will settle down and get married.)
This is a stupendous first book by an author who went on to pen other works that have also been critically (and popularly) acclaimed. It can easily turn many people off, but it is different, strong, and entertaining. Four (4) star minimum – maybe “4.5”.
This is Murakami-san’s first novel written in his youth about even younger youths. Is it autobiographical? I don’t know and don’t recall anyone ever saying so definitively. The main character shares his personal name “Ryu” and certain places and situations reflect locations that the author was exposed to in these and earlier years.
You could call the novel “decadent”. You could also call it “self-indulgent” (“Ryu” and his friends are very much so). And despite it not having a traditional plot, I think that the layout of the novel and its progression was worked out either during the writing of the novel or during his editing (if any). Because with this second (third possibly?) reading I was able to see more of a pattern to it. But it feels like a stream-of-consciousness account of several days in the life of “Ryu”. How consecutive these days are or are not is difficult to discern.
Was it written as a form or rebellion against the status quo? Probably. In the 70s in Japan, as well as the US, the counter-culture that took root at the end of the 60s was still in full swing. The author himself participated in similar things as what goes on in the book. No matter how much we in the US think that society and family conspire to control how we behave and interact (I am taking the hard view here), it is nothing compared to those pressures in Japan and many other Asian countries.
The phrase, “the nail that sticks up will be hammered down” is a true insight into how conformity has been the overwhelming force in Japanese society for hundreds of years. A small island with a large population and few natural resources, they exist in population concentrations that we seldom encounter. Thus, cooperation and conformity are almost a necessity (again I exaggerate). Under such “rules” there is always a backlash. And in Japan that backlash has and I think always will be spectacular.
Many of my friends in Japan are non-traditional. Some more so than others, of course and none as wild as those in the novel. But, they have a spark in them that connects back to the rebellion that is in these characters. Asian cultures are often much more tolerant of the misdeeds of their children up until their twenties. But when they reach a certain age, then they are expected to transition into the role of good workers, citizens, and members of society. I’ve seen people who have done exactly that and others who reversed course and took themselves further out of play.
At the end of this novel, we are left to wonder what will happen to most of the players. But one, and perhaps the most surprising one, peels away and is not heard from again. Have they made their leap into conformity? We are never sure. But it is implied.
(Note there is another character who tells “Ryu” that this is almost exactly her own plan. Once she is bored with all of this (i.e. the drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll) she will settle down and get married.)
This is a stupendous first book by an author who went on to pen other works that have also been critically (and popularly) acclaimed. It can easily turn many people off, but it is different, strong, and entertaining. Four (4) star minimum – maybe “4.5”.
April 5, 2017
Blud i nemoral na sve strane! Teško mi je da ocenim ovakav tip knjige, jer svesna sam da je stil odličan (a Skrobonja mi je jedan od najboljih prevodilaca), tema i vremenska postavka takođe, Rju mi je zanimljiviji Murakami od ''pravog'' Murakami Harukija, ali tokom dvosatnog čitanja, mučnina je bila nepodnošljiva.
Narator je biseksualni Rju koji opisuje kroz dijaloge i kratka poglavlja život mladih Japanaca (prostituke, alkoholičara i zavisnika) u blizini američke vojne baze sedamdesetih godina. Ovo je počelo kao ''Paranoja u Las Vegasu'', podsetilo na Decu sa stanice ZOO, a na kraju ličilo na transkript filma 120 dana Sodome. Definitivno nije za čitaoce slabog stomaka (primeri: sve boje zgnječenih bubašvaba, skrama na supi, sve telesne tečnosti na svim telesnim mestima, mirisi od kojih učesnici orgija povraćaju, droga u svakom obliku od koje silovanje postaje lakše...)
S druge strane, ima divnih delova, kontrateže u toj masi ogavnih noći koje glavni junak, Rju, provodi sa svojim prijateljima. I lepih i simboličnih: ''Kiša nošena vetrom oborila je insekta sa tvrdim lubom; dok je ležao naopako u tekućoj vodi, pokušavao je da zapliva. Upitao sam se ima li takva buba gnezdo u koje bi mogla da se vrati.''
Insekti definitivno imaju veći značaj koji je meni promakao, prožimaju ceo roman.
Koga zanimaju Japanci i njihova književnost, ovo je lektira.
Narator je biseksualni Rju koji opisuje kroz dijaloge i kratka poglavlja život mladih Japanaca (prostituke, alkoholičara i zavisnika) u blizini američke vojne baze sedamdesetih godina. Ovo je počelo kao ''Paranoja u Las Vegasu'', podsetilo na Decu sa stanice ZOO, a na kraju ličilo na transkript filma 120 dana Sodome. Definitivno nije za čitaoce slabog stomaka (primeri: sve boje zgnječenih bubašvaba, skrama na supi, sve telesne tečnosti na svim telesnim mestima, mirisi od kojih učesnici orgija povraćaju, droga u svakom obliku od koje silovanje postaje lakše...)
S druge strane, ima divnih delova, kontrateže u toj masi ogavnih noći koje glavni junak, Rju, provodi sa svojim prijateljima. I lepih i simboličnih: ''Kiša nošena vetrom oborila je insekta sa tvrdim lubom; dok je ležao naopako u tekućoj vodi, pokušavao je da zapliva. Upitao sam se ima li takva buba gnezdo u koje bi mogla da se vrati.''
Insekti definitivno imaju veći značaj koji je meni promakao, prožimaju ceo roman.
Koga zanimaju Japanci i njihova književnost, ovo je lektira.
December 21, 2018
So, a tale of Japanese junkies shooting up, having sex, slitting wrists, crushing insects and vomiting a lot. I guess there is some symbolic stuff going on, that if I was smarter or could be bothered, I could piece together. But to my addled eyes, it reads as what it is, a first novel by a 20-something literary talent out to shock stretching his wings for a maiden flight. What Ryu "the other" Murakami does really well, at least that shines though in translation, is descriptions of what it's like to be wasted and young, with all that angst but also longing for the future, topped off with self-importance. And body fluids. But he could do with bit more of a plot and it would be nifty if he could write something that wasn't thinly veiled embellished autobiography. But, for a first effort, pretty good, if gross and un-engrossing for the middle-aged reader like me.
Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly newsletter with an original painting, and book recommendations galore for the Japanophile, crime-fiction-lover in all of us.
Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly newsletter with an original painting, and book recommendations galore for the Japanophile, crime-fiction-lover in all of us.
October 15, 2021
Sadly I didn't really get into this as much as I normally would with this kind of thing. It's very much the kind of druggy literature that I usually enjoy but for whatever reason (maybe the translation) I just wasn't able to find anything of import in it. It all just felt a bit like random hallucinatory descriptions like you'd get with Burroughs, but mixed in with a kind of Brett Easton Ellis apathy. Like I said I'm not sure if this is what the author intended, as could have definitely lost something in translation, so I might be being a little unfair on it. It's a pretty slim volume so I could always revisit it at some point in the future.
March 15, 2022
Cuando empecé a la leer la historia me sentí muy tentada a abandonar el libro, porque la narración es sucia, los personajes son sucios, la ambientación es sucia, todo es sucio.... pero luego fui comprendiendo, que hay que tocar fondo para poder limpiar un poco la vida, los pensamientos... es un buen libro, no el mejor que he leído, pero pude aceptarlo
May 8, 2018
3,5/5
Una historia muy decadente. Pornográfica, violenta. escatológica e incluso delirante, puede parecer que no va a ningún lugar en concreto, pero a mí me ha gustado, creo que hay un toque bastante artístico y auténtico en todo esto.
Una historia muy decadente. Pornográfica, violenta. escatológica e incluso delirante, puede parecer que no va a ningún lugar en concreto, pero a mí me ha gustado, creo que hay un toque bastante artístico y auténtico en todo esto.
January 1, 2017
Novela sórdida y desapasionada, enmarcada en la corriente del realismo sucio, que deja muy claras sus intenciones desde la primera página. En ella, los personajes, adolescentes japoneses que viven cerca de una base militar estadounidense, se dejan arrastrar por un frenesí violento y brutal repleto de excesos, drogas, orgías y tentativas de suicidio del que ni siquiera logran extraer un modicum de placer. Valoro la propuesta de Murakami, pero no tanto su ejecución. Me ha parecido que, en un afán de exhibicionismo, se olvida de profundizar en la problemática que plantea y desarrollar la atmósfera decadente que se respira. Contiene, eso sí, algunas imágenes de arrebatadora lucidez y belleza que resplandecen en medio de tanta palabrería narcotizante, pero en líneas generales no parece que haya aquí mucho donde rascar.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,068 reviews