Magical, mystical and magnificent? Messy, middling and monotonous? Whatever. It doesn’t matter what you think, because the publication of these two early novels by Haruki Murakami is only going to further enhance his reputation.



Murakami has reached that stage – 40-plus years into a stellar career – where he is unassailable, where the early work and the juvenilia are read in the vast bright burning light of the later work, which lends it all a lovely lambent glow. Hear the Wind Sing (1979) and Pinball, 1973 (1980) – commercially available here in English translation, by Ted Goosen, for the first time – could be absolute drivel and still people would find interesting things to say about them, how they prefigure certain themes, how they indicate the early development of a distinctive style and how they therefore justify themselves as the beginning rather than an end, a false start, or a complete waste of time by a total no-hoper. Fortunately, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are not drivel. Early Murakami isn’t Murakami-in-the-making, it’s already and entirely Murakami.

Take the introduction to the books, a lovely little essay titled “The Birth of My Kitchen-Table Fiction”, which provides him with the opportunity to rehearse the oft-told story of how he became a novelist, after leaving university, getting married, running a jazz bar and doing “hard physical labour”. (Though anyone who actually does hard physical labour might be surprised to read that in Murakami’s case this consisted of making sandwiches and cocktails.)

The Murukami myth of origin goes like this: he was at a baseball game at Jingu Stadium in 1978 when a player named Dave Hilton hit a double and “In that instant, for no reason and based on no grounds whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.” The story is important because it contains within it the essential elements of all of Murakami’s fiction: a young man drifting through life who suddenly experiences some strange encounter or makes some profound decision. This, in short, is the story of Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, Kafka in Kafka on the Shore, and Toru Okada in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, all coming-of-age stories about boy-men and rather vague, disturbingly sexy women, with generous splashes and hints of the surreal: the Murakami story.

According to Murakami, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 “played an important role in what I have accomplished” and are “much like friends from long ago” – they will certainly seem very familiar to his many readers. Both short novels feature episodes in the life of an unnamed protagonist and his friend, the Rat, who hang out at J’s bar – a place that features also in A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), the novel that up until now his English language readers will have regarded as Murakami’s first, and which indeed he regards as the true beginning of his career.

In Hear the Wind Sing the unnamed protagonist reminisces, muses about life, has sex, and reminisces and muses about having sex. The Rat, meanwhile, is depressed and J is gnomic. In Pinball, 1973, the same unnamed protagonist sets up a translation company, has sex with twins and becomes obsessed with playing pinball. The Rat remains depressed and J remains – of course – gnomic. That’s pretty much it.

No one reads Murakami for the plot, though – one is reminded of Johnson’s famous remark about Richardson, “Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself.” What keeps the reader engaged are the Murakamian swerves, the long shots, the non sequiturs and the odd adjacencies. The books all read as if Raymond Chandler were writing scripts for David Lynch to direct with Yasujirō Ozu: super-elliptical pop-noir for the twentysomething well-to-do.

Both novellas are good of their kind – the Murakami kind – and Pinball, 1973, in which the protagonist sets out on a quest to find his favourite pinball machine, contains a magnificent set-piece scene, at night, in a deserted warehouse in the middle of nowhere, filled with pinball machines, which is worth the price alone. All of Murakami reads like a compilation of Murakami – like an endless LP of improvised jazz. Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are like listening to a young musician working out his set list, which consists largely of “By Myself”, “My Foolish Heart” and “Autumn Leaves”, played over and over again.

• Ian Sansom’s latest book, Death in Devon, is published by 4th Estate. To order Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball, 1973 for £12.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.

• The standfirst of this article had stated that these stories had never been translated into English. This was corrected on 13 August.