I tried reading one of his novels and I just couldn't finish it. I remember how he described the inner monolog of a female teacher that was fantasizing about how she's having sex and "she feels the semen filling her in". This is such a male fantasy, I've heard so many men being obsessed with this. But as a woman, I literally never feel the man ejacilating at all, ever. I can feel the semen dripping later but that's it (and it's not exciting at all). He has no idea what women actually like sexually.

I really need to ask: why do you keep reading his work? 🤪 Although I keep on reading bloody Stephen King, so I'm totally not judging. Just curious.

So weird because I liked all of his earlier work and then more recently was so turned off- I’m guessing I just didn’t pick up on all the misogyny because it was so internalized in my teen and 20s

i read the wind up bird chronicles on a recommendation and it was legit the worst book i've ever read to date, like trying to push myself to finish it felt like suffering. it made me so upset & uncomfortable i stopped after half i think. there was literally a side story in there of a woman recounting her rape and how she enjoyed it.

Never read any of his books but I read an excerpt once that I think was from one of them, please correct me if I'm wrong. Something about a female slave mourning the breasts of her fellow slaves. Like, 'such a shame they died, they had such great tits.' That alone is enough to turn me off reading anything of his.

I don't know - I really liked 1Q84. I read it during a very difficult time in my life and it comforted me. What authors do you enjoy reading?

He’s one of my favorite authors, I’ll never apologize about it.

I would not say it’s riddled with those things, especially pedophilia.

Does it contain some of those, sometimes? Yes. !=“riddled” Media containing subject matter in relation to this does not automatically and necessarily mean it condones it or is about it.

His stories are so so so so so much more than that. I love his surreal magical fever-dream-lite realism. I love the slow, hazy ambiance.

Is he a perfect author? No. Some scenes, eh. Easily moving on from them.

Comparing some of this to what’s on the screen in Hollywood, even in pg13 movies? Want to talk about misogyny there? No comparison.

This is making me feel better. I recently tried to read one of his books and just couldn't get into it. I don't remember which one it was, but the main character is a man who just left his wife and is a somewhat neo-noir, grizzled, whiskey-soaked detective archetype. His love interest is an ear model. I didn't get very far.

Has anyone read 1Q84? This summary sounds like it COULD be interesting:

This dense read focuses on two vastly different characters who share an experience that ties them together.

On one side, you have Aomame, a woman who finds and kills male perpetrators of domestic abuse. The other character, Tengo, works as both a math teacher and a writer.

At the start of the novel, Aomame begins to realize that the world around her doesn’t seem quite right. She decides that she’s in an alternate reality that she deems 1Q84.

However, I just don't know what to expect.

I feel like I should try again with him, just because he's so well-regarded. However, many times very popular authors won't be as enjoyable to women and maybe he is one of those.

Fucking preach! His books are gross and it's mind-boggling seeing how many people worship him (like on r/books, for instance, or any book-related space tbh). The first book I read of his was Norwegian Wood, which was mediocre at best (and featured the male mc sleeping with every female character 🙄), then I tried reading 1Q84 and couldn't bring myself to finish it because of how sexualized the female characters were and the amount of sexism.

Yes! A socially inept ex once got me to read Norwegian Wood because it was his favourite book. It took me 4 months to finish it - longer than the duration of the relationship. And the whole time, all I could think was: what the hell is the point of this story?? The pointless navel gazing of a ridiculously boring protagonist. I've never read another book of his. He's already gotten more time from me than he deserves.

I read "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir" and it was good, but I'm hesitant to pick up one of his novels because I've read such bad things about how the female characters are written...

I read Underground and loved it, but I've heard that literally everything else he's written is dogshit.

How he gets so many beaming reviews is a mystery for the ages IMO, haha.

I've read a couple of his books and despised the main male character for being such a creepy self-absorbed boring parasitic asshole who treats the women in his life like fleshlights. The women are written so hollowly, they don't feel real or engaging. Cutout satellite characters who obey and suck off the shittiest most unappealing male character ever - even when he treats them like garbage. Also, the bizarre narration, hilariously clinical sex scenes and how the women speak. There may have been the odd aspect I like (sometimes the prose works well - and I have liked how he articulates a character's experience of mental illness / feeling disconnected etc), but his books don't seem to work for me. I still have a couple of his books unread on my shelf and plan to read them, but can't bring myself to read them yet.

To grind an axe and because I hate it when people fetishise any culture, I do get the impression that some people heap lavish praise on him because they're infatuated with the only Asian country worthy of interest and endless leniency when it comes to unflattering events, past and present Japan and want the country's romanticised reputation to rub off on them. So, they latch onto the most prolific authors / figures of interest to show how deep and complex and worldly and intelligent and unique they are to thou. But they pretty much come across as insufferably dull, obsessive, pretentious, ignorant and boring AF. Not helped by also being xenophobic, disinterested and dismissive towards other Asian countries culture, history and language. And cooming to anime. 😂

Who is this person ? give a last name er first name ? show some links ?

Not sure if you've seen this yet, but from the LA Times' review of his latest book:

Murakami’s treatment of women is abhorrent. He disregards women as interchangeable and unremarkable for anything other than their looks: of all the women in these eight stories, only one has a name. Murakami’s last collection, ‘Men Without Women,” at least broadcasts its intent. “First Person Singular” doesn’t even provide itself cover.

In “On a Stone Pillow,” the protagonist explains his brief relationship with a poet; he “can’t even remember her name, or her face,” but does remember “her shapely round breasts, the small hard nipples” and other anatomical details the reader will find less interesting than the narrator does. “With the Beatles” features another now-nameless woman who “looked gorgeous. She wasn’t tall, but she had long black hair, slim legs, and a lovely fragrance.” She kills herself, offscreen. “Carnaval” rolls out yet another, this time referred to as F*; “Of all the women I’ve known until now, she was the ugliest.” He goes on about her looks for several pages, only noting about her personality that she was “friendly and straightforward.” She too meets a cruel end.

Namelessness, especially in a collection that plays with notions of authorial identity, isn’t such a grievous offense on its own. But the collection on the whole is dismissive of women as creatures of intellect and agency, and so bent on spotlighting its own ignorance that it feels less like a stylistic move than a simple refusal to see women in three dimensions. After writing a long string of hypersexualized teen girls, Murakami ought to hope we read all these as fiction and pretend that the “is-it-memoir” question is merely a literary stunt.

Fortunately for the nation Murakami’s oeuvre has too long defined for American readers, many female Japanese authors — Yoko Tawada, Sayaka Murata, Yoko Ogawa — are rising up to take his place, with their more fully realized reflections on how much more bizarre fiction must be if it is to understand real life. In 2017 one of those women, Mieko Kawakami, the author of “Breasts and Eggs” and a named heir by Murakami himself, pressed him about “the large number of female characters who exist solely to fulfil a sexual function” in his fiction. He denied the charge, but “First Person Singular” reaffirms it. And as Kawakami replied, “Women are no longer content to shut up.”

Are you talking about Shinji Murakami?