Dance Dance Dance (1988) (The Rat, #4) by Haruki Murakami

Work hard. Live modestly. Look at the big picture.

Dance Dance Dance is surprisingly excellent.

Not that I expected it to be bad. Rather, I didn't really expect anything because Dance hardly gets talked about at all within discussions of Murakami's work. I've heard almost exclusively that Kafka on the Shore or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle are his best novels, with small but adamant groups also touting Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, or sometimes 1Q84. But there is almost no mention of Dance Dance Dance in these discussions.

Perhaps this is because so few people have read Murakami extensively. He has a reputation for having a short shelf-life, mostly due to the fact that he reuses many of the same tropes over his novels. The fact that Dance is the fourth episode in Murakami's only multi-novel series leads me to believe that people either shy away from picking this up without first reading the prior novels—rightly so, in my opinion—or, they're reading it independently without the proper lead-in of the prior episodes— Hear the Wind Sing , Pinball, 1973 , and A Wild Sheep Chase —which is a mistake, in my opinion, since many of the events in Dance are a callback to prior novels that require your experience with them to have the proper impact.

No matter the reason, my point is that this book doesn't have the glowing reputation it deserves.

This is the sixth Murakami novel I've read as of my typing this, and I've read all three of the prior books of the Rat series, so perhaps I'm uniquely equipped to receive the quality of this book in ways which not many other folks reviewing this on Goodreads are.

I resolved to read Murakami's works in order of publishing after completing Norwegian Wood (1987) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995) earlier this year. Having finished the first three entries in the Rat series (1979-1982), I picked up Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985) and Dance Dance Dance (1988) in audiobook form to consume while traveling in Southeast Asia. I began both nearly at the same time and intended to "read" them concurrently since I had just finished A Wild Sheep Chase and wanted the events of that book fresh in my mind when reading Dance—which is a direct sequel to it—but I found Dance to be so compelling right out of the gate that I set down Hard-Boiled almost immediately.

Witnessing Murakami's personal progress as a writer throughout The Rat series is a treat. Each book makes huge leaps in quality. The first two are almost not worth reading. A Wild Sheep Chase is a good book, but very uneven, as its first half meanders along before closing out strongly. And then comes Dance, by far the best book in the series and its conclusion. You can chart Murakami's growth as a writer through each entry in the series even without considering his two "experiments" of his early career (Norwegian Wood, a comparably reserved coming-of-age sexual awakening tale which I loved, and the aforementioned Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a mind-bending trip down the rabbit-hole blending cyberpunk and fantasy which I'm currently in the middle of). And that growth is astounding. He went from a writer who, though already skilled at putting his thoughts into words, was not quite skilled at expressing exactly what he wanted to say, or how he wanted to say it—and perhaps aping other writers he enjoyed a bit too much along the way—to a fully fledged postmodern writer in his own right. It's a bit tough to get through some of his early stuff, but I greatly enjoyed witnessing the growth firsthand and I'm glad I did it.

I've left too many loose ends hanging. So now I'm trying to tie up as many of those loose ends as I can.

In the most concise manner in which I could judge it, I'd describe Dance Dance Dance as the culmination of early Murakami and the best work of his early career.

I find it most easy to compare this book primarily to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, one which nearly everyone who has read Murakami has picked up since it's one of his top two or three most famous works. I find them to be quite similar to one another. They share similar themes of existential worry, the monotony of having your spirit pulverized by ennui, and thirtysomething protagonists who feel lost and unaccomplished. They also feature the same common Murakami tropes that he's famous for: The lost girlfriend/wife, the platonic teenage companion, psychic characters, otherworldly locations. The difference is that Dance executes its ideas in such a more polished, concise, cohesive manner than Wind-Up Bird does. Dance resolves nearly all of the questions remaining from its prior entries along with those within its own pages. Wind-Up Bird doesn't have the added baggage of previous entries and still it does not even answer its own compelling questions; something that bothered me about it and damaged its value in my judgment. Dance also feels far more smoothly paced. Probably it lacks the highest highs of Wind-Up Bird—Kamiya's backstory, or the cause of Cinnamon's dumbness—but it comes nowhere near the lows Wind-Up Bird dips into with its needless ambiguity and contrived weirdness. Dance is also incredibly readable, with Murakami's signature smooth, fluid prose that turns a 10-minute reading session into a ninety minute block in which you realize too late that you're now only going to get 6 hours of sleep before waking for work tomorrow.Murakami's character writing shows a huge improvement over past books, and even trumps some of his characters in later books such The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Gotanda, the narcissistic actor with perhaps more than a bit of a serial killer streak, was a favorite of mine. He reminded me a bit of the Trader in Murakami's short story Barn Burning. I also really liked the character of Yuki, whom I found sounded like a genuine teenager—the teenage "voice" being something that seems par-for-the-course for middle-aged writers to bungle in frequently hilarious ways. The minor characters are also colorful and memorable; the one-armed poet Dick, the subpar and uninspired yet still successful writer named Hiraku Makimura—clearly a self-deprecating reference to the author himself after Murakami's own success following the more mainstream Norwegian Wood, which he published only a year prior to Dance Dance Dance. These characters occupy little pagecount but are memorable diversions nonetheless and serve to break up what could have been a bit of a dry narrative without them.

Like other Murakami lovers, I often find it difficult to articulate why he's so appealing to me. I don't care much for his themes because, as a relatively happy person who is satisfied with my life and facing no existential crisis, I don't much relate to them. And I'm not a huge fan of fantasy or magical realism in the first place. But when I read Murakami he has a way of communicating to me that seems more efficient than other authors are able to. I read him more quickly, I'm more easily able to grasp the ideas he's exploring than other authors, and I feel like I know his characters more intimately with much less exposure. It's as if he has a direct link to my brain. I love reading his work.

Murakami's prose is often akin to comfort food to me—easily and pleasurably consumed, though rarely as soulfully nourishing and impactful as a lot of classic literature I've read. I tear through his work at speed but rarely double back to reread certain passages, or pause to let their beauty wash over me as I've done with English written by Nabokov or a Brontë. Dance Dance Dance, however, is the first time I've felt that notion challenged, and for it to shine even through translation is remarkable.

This book features more profound and poetic passages than any other work of his I've read thus far:

“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”

“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”

“Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory.”

“People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile.”

“I was reduced to pure concept. My flesh had dissolved; my form had dissipated. I floated in space. Liberated of my corporeal being, but without dispensation to go anywhere else.I was adrift in the void. Somewhere across the fine line separating nightmare from reality.”

“She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all.”

If you like Murakami, Dance Dance Dance is a must-read. It's gorgeous, fluid, profound, and pacey. It's the high point of his work so far, but the barrier to entry is somewhat high, because if you want to get the most out of Dance Dance Dance, I highly recommend that you read The Rat series in order:

1) Hear the Wind Sing (1979)
2) Pinball, 1973 (1980)
3) A Wild Sheep Chase (1982)
4) Dance Dance Dance (1988)

⭐⭐⭐⭐