Book Review #2: Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami

This review contains spoilers.

The goal of pinball is self-transformation, not self-expression.

Background

Pinball, 1973 is the second novel from the famous Trilogy of the Rat series by Haruki Murakami. 1973 is part of the novel’s title, not the year of its publication. This is because the novel is set 3 years after the events of the precursor novel Hear the Wind Sing, which is set in August 1970.

Synopsis

The story revolves around an unnamed narrator who undergoes a weirdly intense obsession with pinball. He is working as a translator in a small office in Tokyo with his fellow business partner and a young woman who acts as a secretary. This seemingly normal life has an eerie vibe to it — we get introduced to a pair of identical nameless twins who show up one day and start living with the narrator at his apartment and we follow the narrator’s adventure of finding an old lost model of a pinball machine he is overly obsessed with.

Parallelly, the Rat is still in his oceanside hometown, feeling as lost as ever, in a complicated relationship (‘situationship’ we could say nowadays) with an unknown woman and spending evenings drinking and smoking at J’s bar. By the end of the story, the Rat decides to leave his hometown and search for a purpose somewhere else.

How does the novel start?

Contrary to Hear the Wind Sing which finds the narrator struggling to write and express himself with words, in Pinball, 1973 the narrator is actively listening. The first few sentences, display the narrator’s pursuit for listening to other people’s stories, from all kinds of different backgrounds and characters.

However, we shortly learn that what he listened attentively to and what he wants to retell somehow, is Naoko’s story. Naoko is the only named character in this novel but we don’t know the exact type of relationship she had with the narrator. We only know that he loved her and by the time the narrator tells her short story, she is dead.

Who are the twins?

The twins are nameless characters who show up on the narrator’s bed one morning. Unlike a normal person who would be very surprised and probably shocked, the narrator finds their presence as nothing unusual. They wake up and make coffee and breakfast in his apartment as if they have always lived there. They all hang out together in the afternoon and sleep together in the same bed every night. They leave by the end of the novel just as unexpectedly as they arrive in the first place.

So, who are they? Are they just a weird fantasy of the author or is there something underlying their presence?

If you happen to know just a little bit about Murakami’s style of writing, you would understand that these nameless characters should not be taken literally: but rather as a metaphor of the narrator’s fragmented mind in a state of grief and confusion. When the narrator is pondering what to name the twins, they suggest bizarre names such as: ‘right and left’, ‘horizontal and vertical’, ‘up and down’, ‘front and back’… The narrator then adds: ‘entrance and exit’. This is a very important detail because then we have the following excerpt:

Where there is an entrance, there is usually an exit. That’s the way things are made. Mailboxes, vacuum cleaners, zoos, salt shakers. Of course, there are exceptions. Mousetraps, for instance.

The twins are a literary symbol of the narrator’s dual aspects of himself. They are in no way real, but simply the fragmentation of his soul: the reality vs. the fantasy. Something has happened that has made the author dissociate this way and make him feel like there is no exit — he is caught in a mousetrap inside his own mind.

Murakami often plays with similar dichotomies like this in his works, to express metaphorically the unknown or the hidden aspects of a character. Whoever assumes that the twins are actually real badly written characters, is not familiar at all with the way Murakami writes and the similar themes he explores (see Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World).

Okay so the twins are not real but just part of the narrator’s mind, we get it now. Then how do you explain his obsession with pinball?

Just like the twins, Pinball is also a literary device or symbol of the endless thought loop that the narrator has to go through in order to resolve his inner issues, his past, and his grief. Finding pinball is analogous to finding himself, accepting his feelings, and moving on from the past.

The culminating scene near the end of the novel where he finds the old pinball machine in that abandoned warehouse, shows how the narrator comes to terms with his emotions and his inner self by accepting what he is going through. This is confirmed by the fact that soon after that, the twins also depart and disappear from his apartment: his mind is not fragmented anymore, he has become one, with his own self. This is how he opens the closing chapter:

The hum of pinball machines had vanished from my life. Ditto the thoughts with no place to go.

Themes and symbols

The main theme that is pretty evident in this novel is self-transformation. We see this theme take shape by the actions of both the narrator and the Rat, although they are 400 miles apart and living completely different lives from each other. This novel may be the first instance of self-transformation as a theme in Murakami’s works but not the last. (see Kafka on the Shore)

Theories

There are also multiple symbols thrown in this novel that I have not included here but that definitely have a deeper meaning to it. However, my main theory for this book is that the narrator has been affected deeply by Naoko’s death. We don’t know the circumstances of her death but we do know that the narrator loved her very much and after her death, he went to visit her hometown and see the place where she grew up and where the stories she told him took place.

Her passing has left the narrator fragmented, he cannot cope with the grief and her loss. If you are familiar with the five stages of grief, I think that finding pinball at the end is reaching the final stage: finding acceptance. Ultimately, the narrator accepts that the person has died and moves on with his life without them.

Rating

Similarly to Hear the Wind Sing, I would rate Pinball, 1973 three stars out of five. Contrary to the first novel, Pinball, 1973 actually has a plot and a better narrative structure which makes the novel more engaging. However, I found Rat’s story to be a bit lacking — although the stories were running in parallel, alternating between chapters, I don’t think that Rat’s transformation was explored well enough or as much as the narrator’s story. But as the story continues with A Wild Sheep Chase, I suppose that Rat’s adventure to somewhere new will be better told there.

Analysis by Davood Gozli I recommend
Find all pop culture references from the book here