Crossing Genre Forms with Ryu Murakami
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One of my favourite Japanese writers is Ryu Murakami. Nowhere near as well-known as his Norwegian Wood namesake, Ryu has still managed over the years to write, direct, act, design and make music – if there is such a thing as an actual renaissance man, then he is surely a prime example of it.
Born in the early 1950s, his first novel – Almost Transparent Blue – was published in the same year I was born (1976). A fairly short work, its tale of drugs, gender-bending and rock and roll was hailed immediately as a new type of novel to take on the buttoned-down, conservative Japanese world, winning numerous literary prizes and spawning a film adaptation – which he directed – in 1979. A novel and a director’s credit before 28 is no mean feat, and he has since continued to write, direct, run a company, edit a magazine, and do a range of other things that make you wonder how many more hours he has in the day than anyone else. Or more likely, he simply uses his time more wisely than the rest of us. Good for him.
In 1997 he wrote Audition. Picture a widower bringing up a teenage son. A far from perfect husband in mourning over the death of his wife seven years before. One day, perhaps tired of seeing his father mooning around the house, his son asks ‘why don’t you find a new wife, pop?’ – you can tell from the use of ‘pop’ that this is a father who no longer requires his son to go through the ceremonies of other Japanese father-son relationships. The widower – a documentary film maker named Aoyama – thinks the idea over. Shy and unsure of how to go about such a search, he ends up being convinced by a friend of his to run a talent search for a girl to star in a fictitious movie. They will run a day of auditions, he’ll have the opportunity to meet a range of beautiful, accomplished young women and maybe find his new ideal spouse.
It was the days before #MeToo. Also, obviously the days before Tinder.
So the auditions go ahead and a parade of aspiring actresses appear before the two men. Different personality types, different backgrounds, different ambitions. Nobody really appeals to the lonely documentary film-maker. Until Asami shows up. There is something about her. Aoyama feels there is something in her past; she has overcome some tragedy, and although now she appears to all intents and purposes largely free of it, she has been sculpted from the experience.
He won’t forget about her. And eventually, to her obvious delight, he contacts her. And the courting – first with a simple coffee, then with dates and a trip away – begins.
Which brings me to the bend in the road. Audition starts with being the awkward little love story with admittedly queasy and sleazy undertones. We all try to put our best foot forward when we start dating someone, perhaps hoping that the other person will like the public persona so much that they’ll let those other little foibles slide. Aoyama is basically Chris Pratt in the movie Passengers but Asami is far from that film’s Jennifer Lawrence. As much as Aoyama was not who he claimed to be, neither was Asami. There are hints as to her real nature of course, but the way the story – and the later Takashi Miike film – turns and twists things takes you past the world of the simple bunny boiler. Any hint of earlier romantic misadventure has been left hanging by a thread. Outside a window. During a hurricane. With snapping crocodiles just below its feet. What’s left is a detective story hurtling towards a vicious, mind-bending denouement.
Aoyama the protagonist has gone from slaying the monster of loneliness and desiring romantic and emotional rebirth to facing an actual monster. The ground has shifted beneath his and the reader’s feet. This was probably never going to be a cosy romantic adventure when the author was the same person that brought us novels like In the Miso Soup and Piercing, but the switch in action, even if we had our suspicions that things were not quite right, is seismic. By the end of the story, we have moved into the realm of out and out horror.
That switch in the tale where your genre expectations are superseded is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently – particularly with respect to horror tropes. It’s something I’ve seen in some of Stephen King’s more recent output – elements of the Bill Hodges trilogy where a story rooted in investigation and procedure seems to fray at the edges of reality; additionally, some of the stories in his Just After Dark collection appear straight up thrillers before turning to horror as they reach the top of the dramatic story arc. It’s one of those ‘almost but not quite’ switches that can give a writer the chance to utilise tools from other genre forms.
I’m a fan of John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series in which Parker’s private eye encounters all manner of horrors which could be – just could be – in the protagonist’s head. Novels like The Unquiet could easily be played with a straight bat, but Connolly’s detective still faces characters that seem beyond the range of reality – reminding me of works like Alan Parker’s 1987 film Angel Heart. Plenty of books and other media traverse more than one genre, but are there certain genres that cannot work together? Is a fear of annoying a reader who expected one thing but ended up with another that stops us from really experimenting with different forms?
For me, returning to the initial theme, Audition is one of those works which moves between different genre forms and takes advantage of these switches almost perfectly. It’s a Ryu Murakami novel, so romantic comedy is unlikely, but it has none of the immediate genre clarity of Piercing – man stands over a cot with an ice-pick, or In the Miso Soup – because nobody can tell me after chapter one that this tour through Tokyo’s red light district will go well. Conventions are followed – skewed admittedly – but then tossed out the window in favour of first a detective story and then a plot twist that completely changes what has come before. This technique might well be something that works better in self-publishing, where more risks are possible and the writer isn’t so pressured by having to follow their expected audience’s expectations. I’m interested in books like that. I’d like to see more.
Self publishing allows for more risks, more opportunities to something out of left field. Major writers have fallen foul in the past of trying to do something different – Ian Fleming was lambasted for The Spy Who Loved Me. Don DeLillo got savaged in some spaces for The Body Artist. In film, I’m not convinced that some of the opprobrium M. Night Shyamalan received over The Village was deserved. People were expecting something specific and were annoyed when the (mistakenly pitched) marketing campaign didn’t follow through. Musicians have to deal with a fan-base furious at a change in direction all the time. But without a publisher to shake her head sagely at us (and sadly often without a public to disappoint) we are freer to take those risks. We can cross genres and try different things. And if we can switch genre from book to book, why can’t we do that within a single book? If there are books out there that play with structure like Murakami manages in Audition, I’d like to know about them.
