Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage

The title of Murakami’s latest Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage clearly refers to Liszt’s three suites. Tsukuru often plays his favourite record, left  by a lost friend, as it reminds him of a lost time. Not exactly homesickness, but plenty of Temps du Mal.. and much more less obvious references.

Apparently when the book got released Universal Music sold out of hardcopies (CD’s that is). Japan and the rest of the world then had to queue up online for a digital alternative. Maybe the whole Booktunes project (building an online source of book related music and musical novel knowledge) was not such a bad idea at all.

The power of the music made it all possible, Everytime he listend to the music, […] a vivid recollection of them appeared.

With the original Booktunes site is still on the back burner in the kitchen of the lab, I decided to upload Side B of Tsukuru’s treasured vinyl on the Booktunes YouTube channel. You can check Monk & Elvis by clicking their names. Enjoy!

‘First Year: Switzerland’. He sat down on the sofa, closed his eyes and concentrated on the music. […]

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Dutch translation of the new Murakami novel now available at Atlas/Contact, UK/US release is set for mid-august (Amazon UK/US).

Haruki Murakami text on tune

As I wanted to hear Curtis Fuller’s Blues-ette but, in the midst of moving from Brighton to Amsterdam, did not have my turntable set up, I decided to use Youtube’s video database as an audio resource. It was Haruki Murakami who got me hooked on when I was reading After Dark… now I was curious to find out what would happen if I’d include his name in Youtube’s search field together with Fuller’s.

Isn’t this just great?! Smasherkean has more of this stuff online. Nice one!