Review: Killing Commendatore
Perhaps the defining characteristic of Haruki Murakami's writing is that they resist easy interpretation. At their worst, his books frustrate readers, as often seen in reviews. Here are some for Commendatore:
"He allows his disparate elements to spin out too widely, to the point where they begin to appear only tenuously connected."
"One has the sense of a writer throwing a lot of ideas against a wall in the hope that something will stick."
"Too contrived in its madness, too garish and long, the words spill out over the pages like the clutter of a hoarder in therapy."
At their best, though, I believe Murakami's books attain a certain resonance with real life rarely matched by other authors. One might argue that his surreal mode (his use of absurd events and fantastical characters) by definition detracts from how realistic his books are. But really, think about how we live our lives. Only a small fraction is through active experience; the rest is memory. And what is memory if not a patchwork of vivid images charged with significance and revelatory connections between things that seem unrelated on the surface? Murakami's style, to me, captures memory, and therefore life, perfectly. They are both strange, bright, and convincing.
(spoilers ahead!)
The novel's real 'point' crystallizes in the last ~20 pages, and it is this ideological tension between the unnamed protagonist and Menshiki. These two lived out totally different arcs, but somehow end up in the same place: middle-aged men who've lost their wives (Yuzu to divorce, Mariye's mother to death) and both discovering they might have a child (Moru and Mariye), but neither knows for certain.
Menshiki arguably catalyzes everything in Commendatore—befriending the protagonist, getting Mariye to model, orchestrating these "chance" encounters with Shoko and Mariye. He is entranced by the possibility that Mariye might be his biological daughter, but refuses to find out.
“Menshiki paused before replying. “If I wanted to scientifically determine if Mariye Akikawa is related by blood to me, I could. It might take some effort, but it’s not impossible. The thing is—I don’t want to. ... I plan to live the rest of my life holding on to the possibility that Mariye Akikawa is my real child. Watching, from a distance, as she grows up. That’s enough. Even if I knew for sure she was my child, that wouldn’t make me happy. The sense of loss would be all the more painful. And if I knew she wasn’t my child, that would, in a different sense, also deepen the sense of loss. Or maybe crush me. Either way there’s no happy result. Can you follow what I’m trying to say?”
Then there's the protagonist. When Yuzu confesses she's pregnant but doesn't know who the father is, he agrees to remarry her and raise the child anyway.
I still can’t be sure about the identity of Muro’s father. A DNA test would tell me, but I have no desire to know the result. Perhaps we’ll find out somewhere along the way. The truth may be revealed. But what meaning would that “truth” carry? Muro is my child in the legal sense, and I love her deeply. I treasure the time we spend together. I couldn’t care less who her biological father is or isn’t. The question is inconsequential. It can change nothing.
And the conflict, in the protagonist's own words:
But I will not become like Menshiki. He has built his life by balancing the possibility that Mariye Akikawa is his child with the possibility that she isn’t. It is through the subtle and unending oscillation between those two poles that he seeks to find the meaning of his own existence. I have no need, though, to challenge my life in such a troublesome (or, at the least, unnatural) way. That is because I am endowed with the capacity to believe. I believe in all honesty that something will appear to guide me through the darkest and narrowest tunnel, or across the most desolate plain. That’s what I learned from the strange events I experienced while living in that mountaintop house on the outskirts of Odawara.
In the end, these are two different takes on uncertainty. Menshiki needs the not-knowing because sometimes the possibility of multiple truths is more bearable than any one certainty. The protagonist doesn't care about knowing because knowing a biological truth wouldn't change the things that matter: his love and commitment to Muro.
This novel ultimately validates the protagonist's viewpoint, seen through his return from the metaphysical realm and reunion with Yuzu. In that sense, I wish that Commendatore had a little more nuance. I think back to Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy in Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or Sethe and Paul D. in Morrison's Beloved, where the author is more ambivalent regarding which character is 'right'.
I agree with the critics that Commendatore didn't deliver as much of Murakami's signature as his previous works did. I felt that this was similar to 1Q84, where there are compelling ideas, but given the sheer length (almost 700 pages), they could have been better explored. Murakami arguably explores more ideas in an altogether more masterful way in, say, Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore.
7/10