A WILD SHEEP CHASE

Author: Haruki Murakami
Year: 2003 (1982)
Publisher: Vintage Books
Language: English (translator Alfred Birnbaum)

In the spring of 2010, the Icelandic volcano at Eyjafjalljökull experienced a peculiar eruption. Seismologically, it was an insignificant event with the first phase barely reaching 1 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.  It gradually intensified and by the end of the event had spewed an, as volcanoes go, moderate amount of 0.3 km³ of tephra into the atmosphere. What made this eruption remarkable was not its force or longevity, but rather the composition of the tephra that it discharged. The matter ejected into the sky was in the form of tiny particles that formed a massive billow of ash which, propelled by the west winds, swept over Scandinavia, the British Isles, and Northern Europe. The microscopic silica-rich debris, threatening to blast aeroplane windscreens and disrupt the function of turbine engines, shut air travel down across most of Europe. The skies went silent, returned for a moment to the birds and the clouds.  

At the time of the eruption, I was on a business trip to Bulgaria. Realising that my flight home had been cancelled and that the chance of my getting airborne again in the near future was slim, I managed to book myself onto one of the northbound long-distance buses that opportunistic entrepreneurs had been quick to offer to stranded travellers. Preparing for the long ride, I purchased one small pillow and two books: Chuck Palahniuk’s “Choke”, and Haruki Murakami’s “A Wild Sheep Chase”. I read Palahniuk on the bus and finished Murakami about a week ago.

The synopsis for this novel is not terribly complicated. The protagonist is a bored Japanese man who runs a dwindling copywriting firm with his alcoholic partner. He is in the midst of a mundane divorce process because he and his wife got tired of each other. No animosity, no drama, just plain ennui. Our man is not an archetypal failure, just an average bloke in his early 30s who has reached the pinnacle of his existence and surrendered to the fact that his accomplishments are distinctly average.

One day he publishes an ad for one of his few clients using a photograph he had received a long time ago from his notoriously wayward and ultimately long-lost friend. It is a perfectly ordinary Japanese photograph showing a mob of sheep grazing on a meadow with a snow-capped mountain peak in the background. The man is understandably surprised when one day he is picked up by a black car and brought to the secluded office of a powerful politician/mafia boss who wishes to have a word about it. At closer inspection under the guidance of the boss, he notices that one of the sheep in the picture seems to have a star-shaped spot on its back. He is unceremoniously instructed to locate that particular sheep or else his company will be put out of business and he and his partner ruined. No further explanations are offered. He feels neither particularly inspired nor particularly intimidated by this, but as he has nothing better to do he sets off on what to the reader will be a highly enjoyable sheep chase.

Haruki Murakami has said that the secret to his success is that he prefers to write in English rather than in his native Japanese precisely because his command of English is limited. This forces him to write down his thoughts and images using simple words and short sentences. His greatness lies in that the resulting text is incredibly accessible without sacrificing any of its richness in colour, flavour, or scent. Murakami has an extraordinary talent for creating worlds that effortlessly envelop his reader. I have never travelled to Hokkaido but after reading “A Wild Sheep Chase” I feel like I have nevertheless been there.

There is however more to this read than masterful prose. On a deeper level, the way I read it, the novel is about detachment and loneliness. All of the characters are in one way or another lonely; aloof from the rest of the world. They function in it and affect each other but without ever really touching, similar to ships on a lake whose wakes rock nearby vessels without their ever rubbing against each other. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that none of the characters has a name. They are “the girlfriend”, “the man”, “the partner”, etc. It is as if everyone is expendable and replaceable to the point of not meriting a proper name. This way, “the cat” can be substituted for any other cat. The protagonist, his friend, his ex-wife, his new girlfriend, the boss, and the sheep with the star on its back somehow exist in the story without connecting, thrust to and forth through life like the ball in a pinball machine. They all construct different ways to deal with this reality, but none of them defeats the futility of being. In essence, “A Wild Sheep Chase” is about the vain hunt for mutuality and the utter disappointment that awaits those who believe that they have gained it. Not even those that go to extremes in order to liaise with another being are, in the end, successful.

The ending is actually the only section with which I struggled a bit. It both is and is not predictable and although the magic realism, for which Murakami is famous, is usually non-invasive and adds an interesting dimension to the universe, to me it partially clouded the final few chapters. Somewhat like the salt that, if used moderately, binds together and brings out the flavours of the other ingredients in the recipe but when over-applied ruins the meal.

I would be thrilled to hear what you have to say about it as I think it can be interpreted in any number of different ways. Come to think of it, while I do not know if this was Murakami’s intention, this seems like a valid statement about your and mine and everybody else’s time on Earth.