Week Four: Visiting Murakami Land

Image above is a remix using a background from Haruki Murakami Bingo an illustration orginally published in the New Yorker by Grant Snider.
  See his regularly posted cartoons at his blog linked here. .

Reading Assignment: This week I am asking you to read Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. This is the most recent novel by one of the world's leading literary figures. 

We will discuss the novel in class, much like last week, and I want to apply some the same questions for a portion of the discussion, examining the novel through the lens of world building. These are the questions we will revisit:

What are the primary features of this world--spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? 
What is the world’s ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? 
What are the precise strategies that are used by its creator to convey the world to us and us to the world? 
How are our characters connected to the world? 
And how are we the viewer or reader or player connected to the world?”

Link to Paris Review Interview with Haruki Murakami.