Why Murakami Annoys Me

To date I’ve read two books by Haruki Murakami – ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Kafka On The Shore’, and am two-thirds between ‘1Q84’.  On one hand, Murakami’s books are very readable. On the other hand, his writing annoys the shit out of me. Murakami doesn’t write the world the way it is, but how an introverted teenage boy would like it to be. Everyone is young, and everyone is beautiful (not to mention ‘mysterious’). If a male and a female meet on more than two occasions, it’s highly likely they will end up having casual sex. Murakami celebrates his characters for being anti-social and self-absorbed - the ideal existence of a Murakami character would be spending days alone naked in a cabin reading books (which I think one of them did in ‘Kafka On The Shore’). And Murakami wants so badly to be European or American, you wonder how he could ever have stood living in Japan at some points. Still, as I said, he’s very readable, and the covers to his books are pretty cool, so I guess his writing can’t be all bad can it?