| Search | About | Preferences | Interact | Help | |
| 150 million books. 1 search engine. | ||
Jay Rubin
new books, used books, rare books by Jay Rubin
› Find all books by 'Jay Rubin' and compare prices› Find signed collectible books by 'Jay Rubin'
-
After Darkby Haruki Murakami, Jay RubinISBN 0307265838 (0-307-26583-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'After Dark'Book summary:A short, sleek novel of encounters set in the witching hours of Tokyo between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakamis masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.
At its center are two sisters: Yuri, a fashion model sleeping her way into oblivion; and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Dennys into lives radically alien to her own: those of a jazz trombonist who claims theyve met before; a burly female love hotel manager and her maidstaff; and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These night people are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Yuris slumbermysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime will either restore or annihilate her.
After Dark moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical speculation, interweaving time and space as well as memory and perspective into a seamless exploration of human agency the interplay between self-expression and understanding, between the power of observation and the scope of compassion and love. Murakamis trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery.
Eyes mark the shape of the city. Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creatureor more, like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has indeed passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the citys moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.
from After Dark [via]More editions of After Dark:
- After Dark: ISBN 0385663463 (0-385-66346-3)
Hardcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited - After Dark: ISBN 0676979602 (0-676-97960-2)
Hardcover, Random House of Canada, Limited - After Dark: ISBN 0786298596 (0-7862-9859-6)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr - After Dark: ISBN 0307265838 (0-307-26583-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
- After Dark: ISBN 0385663463 (0-385-66346-3)
-
After the Quakeby Haruki Murakami, Jay RubinISBN 0375713271 (0-375-71327-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'After the Quake'Book summary:Haruki Murakami, a writer both mystical and hip, is the West's favorite Japanese novelist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Murakami lived abroad until 1995. That year, two disasters struck Japan: the lethal earthquake in Kobe and the deadly poison gas attacks in the Tokyo subway. Spurred by these tragic events, Murakami returned home. The stories in After the Quake are set in the months that fell between the earthquake and the subway attack, presenting a world marked by despair, hope, and a kind of human instinct for transformation. A teenage girl and a middle-aged man share a hobby of making beach bonfires; a businesswoman travels to Thailand and, quietly, confronts her own death; three friends act out a modern-day Tokyo version of Jules and Jim. There's a surreal element running through the collection in the form of unlikely frogs turning up in unlikely places. News of the earthquake hums throughout. The book opens with the dull buzz of disaster-watching: "Five straight days she spent in front of the television, staring at the crumbled banks and hospitals, whole blocks of stores in flames, severed rail lines and expressways." With language that's never self-consciously lyrical or show-offy, Murakami constructs stories as tight and beautiful as poems. There's no turning back for his people; there's only before and after the quake. --Claire Dederer [via]
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Library Editionby Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin , Philip GabrielISBN 1400096081 (1-4000-9608-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Library Edition'More editions of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Library Edition:
-
The Elephant Vanishes: Storiesby Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin , Philip GabrielISBN 0679420576 (0-679-42057-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elephant Vanishes: Stories'Book summary:With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.
By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities -- and to come back bearing treasure.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of The Elephant Vanishes: Stories:
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Wordsby Jay RubinISBN 1860469523 (1-86046-952-3)
Softcover, Harvill Press
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words'Book summary:[via]As a young man, Haruki Murakami played records and mixed drinks at his Tokyo Jazz club, Peter Cat, then wrote at the kitchen table until the sun came up. He loves music of all kindsjazz, classical, folk, rockand has more than six thousand records at home. And when he writes, his words have a music all their own, much of it learned from jazz. Jay Rubin, a self-confessed fan, has written a book for other fans who want to know more about this reclusive writer. He reveals the autobiographical elements in Murakami's fiction, and explains how he developed a distinctive new style in Japanese writing. In tracing Murakami's career, he uses interviews he conducted with the author between 1993 and 2001, and draws on insights and observations gathered from over ten years of collaborating with Murakami on translations of his works.More editions of Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words:
Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji Stateby Jay RubinISBN 0295960434 (0-295-96043-4)
Hardcover, Univ of Washington Pr
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State'More editions of Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State:
Kokoro and Selected Essaysby Natsume Soseki, Edwin McClellan, Jay RubinISBN 0819182486 (0-8191-8248-6)
Hardcover, Madison Books, Incorporated
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Kokoro and Selected Essays'More editions of Kokoro and Selected Essays:
The Minerby Natsume Soseki, Edwin McClellan, Jay RubinISBN 0804714606 (0-8047-1460-6)
Hardcover, Stanford Univ Pr
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Miner'More editions of The Miner:
-
Modern Japanese Writersby Jay RubinISBN 0684805987 (0-684-80598-7)
Hardcover, Charles Scribners Sons/Reference
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Modern Japanese Writers'More editions of Modern Japanese Writers:
-
Norwegian Woodby Haruki Murakami, Jay RubinISBN 0375704027 (0-375-70402-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Norwegian Wood'Book summary:In 1987, when Norwegian Wood was first published in Japan, it promptly sold more than 4 million copies and transformed Haruki Murakami into a pop-culture icon. The horrified author fled his native land for Europe and the United States, returning only in 1995, by which time the celebrity spotlight had found some fresher targets. And now he's finally authorized a translation for the English-speaking audience, turning to the estimable Jay Rubin, who did a fine job with his big-canvas production The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Readers of Murakami's later work will discover an affecting if atypical novel, and while the author himself has denied the book's autobiographical import--"If I had simply written the literal truth of my own life, the novel would have been no more than fifteen pages long"--it's hard not to read as at least a partial portrait of the artist as a young man.
Norwegian Wood is a simple coming-of-age tale, primarily set in 1969-70, when the author was attending university. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the novel's backdrop. But the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs, and the pain and pleasure and attendant losses of growing up. The collapse of a romance (and this is one among many!) leaves him in a metaphysical shambles:
I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it.
This account of a young man's sentimental education sometimes reads like a cross between Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women. It is less complex and perhaps ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical work. Still, Norwegian Wood captures the huge expectation of youth--and of this particular time in history--for the future and for the place of love in it. It is also a work saturated with sadness, an emotion that can sometimes cripple a novel but which here merely underscores its youthful poignancy. --Mark Thwaite [via]More editions of Norwegian Wood:
-
Rashomon and Seventeen Other Storiesby Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Haruki Murakami, Jay RubinISBN 0140449701 (0-14-044970-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories'Book summary:This collection features a brilliant new translation of the Japanese master's stories with an introduction by Haruki Murakami. Akutagawas disturbing tales of human passion capture the cultural upheaval of early twentieth century Japan, ranging from “In the Grove, the basis of Kurosawas famous film Rashomon, to Akutagawas later, more autobiographical writings.[via]More editions of Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories:
Sanshiroby Jay Rubin , Soseki NatsumeISBN 0295955589 (0-295-95558-9)
Hardcover, University of Washington Press
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Sanshiro'More editions of Sanshiro:
-
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicleby Jay Rubin , Soseki NatsumeISBN 1860465811 (1-86046-581-1)
Softcover, Harvill Pr
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'Book summary:Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.
Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.
If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --Simon Leake [via]
More editions of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:
![[powered by Muze Inc.]](http://i.bookfinder.com/images/site/muze/powered_by_muze.gif){kind=small}