October 14, 2025 • 17 mins
Introduces a narrator with a peculiar fondness for hearing stories from strangers about their hometowns, collecting them like a "bear getting ready for hibernation." The narrative also follows the Rat, a character grappling with loneliness and the passage of time. Both individuals encounter various unusual situations and characters, including twin girls who mysteriously appear in the narrator's apartment and a Spanish lecturer with an obsessive knowledge of obscure pinball machines. The story explores themes of memory, loss, and the search for meaning through vivid descriptions of mundane yet significant objects and events, such as the disappearance of a cherished pinball machine and the funeral of a telephone switch-panel. Ultimately, both the narrator and the Rat experience a sense of profound solitude and change as their respective journeys lead them to confront the impermanence of things and relationships.
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You can listen and download our episodes for free on more than 10 different platforms:
https://linktr.ee/book_shelter
Get the Book now from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Pinball-1973-Haruki-Murakami/dp/4061860127?&linkCode=ll1&tag=cvthunderx-20&linkId=09e53a2705c42f10710c54454a265c01&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the deep dive. We're here to turn that
pile of sources into well a shortcut to getting informed. Today,
we're diving into Haruki Murakami's Pinball nineteen seventy three. It's
quite a journey. We're following these two young guys in
early seventies Japan, kind of searching for meaning, for connection.
It's fragmented but beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Absolutely, And what's really interesting here is how Markami tells
the story. It's not straightforward. It's built from these memories,
these little observations. You're not just reading, you're sort of
stepping into their heads. You get this mix of the
every day and the well, the slightly surreal. And our
job today really is to follow these threads, understand what
they're looking for. Why things like, you know, a pinball
(00:41):
machine or an old phone panel matter so much.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, let's start near the beginning late sixties. Our main guy,
the narrator. He doesn't have a name, but he calls
himself an earnest listener and apparently he loves stories about
far away places. I really loved them. He'd listened to anyone,
even guys claiming to be from Saturn. He was good
at it too, the listening I mean our source's joke
he could have won a contest.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, that ernest listening thing sets a really important tone,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
It shows this deep, maybe even.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Desperate, need to connect with something beyond his everyday life.
Like that guy from Saturn, a student revolutionary. Apparently, he
describes Saturn as cold, high gravity, totally unlike the paradise
of Building nine during a police raid where Vivaldi was playing.
So these stories, even the wild ones, they're not just stories.
They kind of reflect the characters inner worlds, right, or
(01:30):
maybe their desire to escape.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And then there's this memory from nineteen sixty nine, a
friend Naioko. She describes her town terribly boring. She calls
it a pitiful little station, and this image of a
dog just pacing the platform. That image really sticks with
the narrator. He remembers everything, even her smile.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, the straight, a coded smile, lingering like the grin
of the cheshire cat.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That detail says a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
It does. It suggests there's more under the surface, maybe
something a bit melancholic about these memories exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Naioko's town isn't just youography, it's a feeling.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's nostalgia.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, and the fact he remembers it so vividly four
years later, it shows how much these little moments, these
connections meant to him. He's kind of holding on to them.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Okay, So jump forward May nineteen seventy three, four years later,
our narrator actually goes to Naoko Stand, specifically to see
that dog. He gets dressed up, shaves, wears a tie,
trying to make it an event, I guess, But as
soon as he gets there, he feels this endless deja vu,
like he's pieced together from two different puzzles. It's unsettling,
and the dog nowhere. He waits for an hour, smokes
(02:35):
ten cigarettes. Nothing.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That feeling of being pieced together from two different puzzles,
that's interesting. Why do you think he feels so disjointed?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, maybe it's the gap between the memory and the reality.
He's trying to reconnect with something specific, something tangible from
the past.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Right, But the past isn't tangible like that. It changes,
or maybe our memory of it does. His whole trip
is this search for a solid link to what he lost,
but the dog not being there. It kind of proves
you can't just step back into a memory perfectly.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
It's gone or changed, and.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
The town itself has changed too, right. The sources talk
about that used to be a peaceful green valley back
when Ricky Nelson was singing Hello Mary Lou. Then it
became suburban sprawl. The old cultured eccentrics like a painter
and Nioko's scholar dad, they got replaced by commuters. Oh
and there's this weird mention of Trotsky escaping Siberia on
a reindeer sleigh vowing revolution, just thrown in there.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
That historical layering is classic Morrikami, isn't it. It shows time
just marching on, changing everything. The pop song is the
changing landscape. It all emphasizes how temporary things are. And
the Trotsky detail it's almost comical, his statue in Red
Square being wiped down by kids. It kind of grounds
these big historical ideals in mundane reality, showing how even
revolutions fade into well, just another part of the scenery.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
So the narrator doesn't find the dog, but he finds
a dog, a big white one, near a pond. He
lures it over with gum, gets some satisfaction from that,
like he's managed to recreate something even if it's not
quite the original, But on the train home it hits him.
He still hadn't closed the book on anything, not in
n Ioko, her death, that feeling the town gave him.
He tried to tell himself it was over, but Nope,
(04:13):
couldn't shake it.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Finding a dog.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah it shows that need foreclosure, doesn't it, even if
it's symbolic. But yeah, that realization on the train is key.
Still hadn't closed the book. It tells you how powerful
these past attachments are. They don't just disappear somethings just linger.
No neat endings.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Okay, now for something completely different but also central. Back
at his apartment, the narrator lives with these twin girls.
They're known only is two A weight and two a nine.
He can only tell them apart by their sweatshirts, and
they apparently love swapping them just to mess with them.
They know almost nothing about the world, like geography forget it, Burma, Australia,
the same difference. But they're incredibly perceptive about him. They
(04:51):
can tell when he's sad.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
That's such a fascinating set up. The twins.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
They're almost like these blank slates, right, so simple compared
to his own internal messiness, and there's simple questions cut
right through, like when they ask so hardly anybody's friends
with anybody forces him to face his own isolation. He
even quotes Dostoevsky saying he'd prophesied it and the narrator
was living it.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Dostoievsky's prophecy. Can you elaborate on that a bit? What's
the connection?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, yeah, it's Dostoyevsky's ideas about modern alienation, how people
in modern society become more isolated, even disconnected, despite being
you know, physically close. The narrator feels that deeply his
life is so detached that the twins just kind of
show up and decide to stay like his life is
just open and porous almost.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We also see his work life around spring nineteen seventy two.
He runs a translation business with a friend, pretty successful.
They translate all sorts of stuff, scientific American articles about
ball bearings, cocktail recipe books, you name it. He drinks whiskey,
feels like his internal clock is off, and thinks about
the silence of his life. He compares the work to
just moving a coin between hands, no real thought needed.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, but is he actually happy? With that tranquil left.
That's the question. He says, the.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Work needs no extra thinking. But then he dives into
CON's critique of pure reason when he's bored. That suggests
the mind that's restless, right, he feels like he's in
the depths of a fathomless pool. That doesn't sound like contentment.
It sounds like drifting.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Then there's this funny scene with a phone repairman one
Sunday morning. The twins just casually tell the guy exactly
where the old hidden switch panel is in the back
of the closet under the floorboards. They use this analogy
like a mother dog and puppies to explain the wiring,
and the narrator listens to this and thinks his own
internal mother dog switch panel feels pretty run down.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Ah, the switch panel. That's such a great bit of symbolism.
It's not just old phone tech, is it?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
No, seems like more.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's totally a metaphor for his own inner workings, his connections,
maybe his whole system. So if it's run down, what
does that mean just getting old or something deeper? Societal decay,
psychological burnout, could be all.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Of the above. I think it's definitely physical the repairman
notes how old it is, but the way the twins
talk about it on its last legs sucked up something awful.
It sounds like they're diagnosing him in a way.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, it makes them seem really out of step with things.
Even the repairman thinks his living situation is odd.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Okay, let's shift gears now to the narrator's friend, the Rat,
also a university dropout. It's autumn nineteen seventy three, and
the Rat feels like time isn't flowing right for him. Unevenly.
He's living this kind of lazy life in a nice
penthouse apartment, got money, got views of the city and
the sea, but he's not fulfilled. He says he dropped
out for lots of reasons, but the wiring got all
(07:36):
tangled up. Can't even explain it anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Right, And his privilege is such a stark contrast to
how stuck he feels inside. He talks about feeling these
tiny ripples of emotion, but he just closes his eyes
and waits for them to pass. He's actively avoiding feeling
things deeply. Life feels like endless repetition. He feels powerless, alone,
like his protective blanket of air or just vanished. That's
real existential dread.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And there's in his life. Met her through a classified
ad for a typewriter she was selling. She's described as
slender proper, where his nice dresses smells like morning vineyards.
Always trying to achieve this perfection of sorts. She even
practices smiling in the mirror, and seeing her try so
hard makes the rat sad. They had this routine Saturdays together,
(08:21):
Sunday she plays Mozart.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
That's a really telling detail, isn't it. Why does her
striving for perfection make him sad?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Maybe because it highlights his own lack of effort, his
own drifting.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Her deliberate construction of herself for life, for smile, it
probably throws his own purposelessness into sharp relief. His own
emotions just fade away like old dreams, while she is
actively trying to build something perfect. It must emphasize his
own inner emptiness.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
The rat also spends time at a cemetery up in
the hills. He remembers being lonely there as a kid.
He thinks about death. Put down roots beneath each plot,
a heavy thought contrasts it with the sounds of life,
the sea breeze, the crickets, remembers taking girls there in
high school. Lots of dreams, disappointments, promises, all vanished.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
The cemetery is definitely a key place for him. It's
where he first felt small against the bigness of the world. Maybe,
and even though the modern cemetery has families having picnics
planning their plots, that superficial brightness doesn't cover up the
deep loneliness he felt there and still feels. It's a
place where he confronts how fleeting everything is, so feeling lost.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
The rat ends up at Jay's bar quite a bit.
Jay is the Chinese bartender, their calm guy, insightful. Jay
has this deep connection with his cat, which has a
lame paw. He says they understand each other. He can
talk to the cat.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And Jay's story about the cat'spaw, how it might have
been some senseless and cruel prank that introduces this idea
of groundless ill will. It's not just about the cat's injury.
It's about the random, pointless cruelty that exists in the world.
And Jay just accepts it. He observes it. The world's
full of that kind of groundless ill will. He says,
his calm acceptance is so different from the rat's inner turmoil.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Totally and the rat tells Jay he feels like he
hasn't learned anything in his whole life twenty five years.
Jay gives him this amazing piece of wisdom. He says, basically,
if you make the effort, you can learn something from everything,
even the most ordinary stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
That's such a central moment, isn't it a real aha?
It's about finding meaning through observation, through being open, Completely
opposite to the rat's detachment, his feeling that everything's just
faded and tired out. Jay's philosophy is about effort. It's
a practical way to find meaning when the world feels indifferent.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
But the rat decides he has to leave town anyway,
finds it hard to tell Jay. He feels like any
change is just a stage of decay. He's really torn,
wonders how much water does a guy have to drink? Like,
how much effort does it take? In their last chat,
Jay gives him some simple advice walk slowly and drink
lots of water.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
After that, the rat drives to the shore, feels empty, tired,
seze the woman's apartment and is dark. He just falls
asleep in his car, listening to the waves in the radio.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Walk slowly and drink lots of water. It sounds so simple,
but there's depth there. Right.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
What do you think Jay means by that?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It feels like, be deliberate, be mindful, take care of yourself.
Don't just rush through or ignore things. Actually engage with
the present moment exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's practical advice for navigating that feeling of decay. The
rat is so caught up in his feeling of vacuousness,
his inability to let emotion stick.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
It shows how deep his on we runs.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Deciding to leave isn't a magic fix, but maybe it's
him finally accepting that things need to change, that his
streams of consciousness need to merge again. It's a step
even into uncertainty.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Okay, let's swing back to the narrator one last time.
His mood has shifted. He feels strangely languid and serene.
He's even bought new sweaters for the twins. They're not
numbers anymore. They're all of green crew neck sweater and
beige cardigan, A nice touch. He's still reflecting, noticing how
the places I fit in were always falling behind the times.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
That observation about falling behind the times really captures his
struggle to find where he belongs in a changing world.
And renaming the twins from numbers to descriptions. That shows
him connecting more personalizing his relationships. It's subtle, but it
feels like progress, doesn't it It.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Does, and then pinball takes over that autumn Sunday evening.
It was pinball that claimed my attention. He remembers back
to the winter of nineteen seventy, slipping into the enchanted
kingdom of pinball, specifically this three flipper machine called Spaceship
at Jay's Bar. He calls it his brief honeymoon with
(12:33):
the machine, a time when they understood each other. It
reflected his inner world. He got his highest score ever
on it, one hundred and sixty five thousand, said it
was like a two way mirror to my dreams. His
mind felt set free.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Wow. So the pinball machine isn't just a game. It
starts as an escape maybe, but becomes this tool for
self reflection. There's even this detailed explanation, like a mini
essay called the Bonus Light Exegesis about the philosophy of pinball.
It says the point isn't self expression but self revolt.
Not expanding the ego but compressing it. That's pretty deep
for pinball, h it really is.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's just finding yourself through focus, maybe even losing yourself
in the game, a.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Kind of meditative surrender. Almost yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
But then the spaceship disappears. The game setter becomes a
donut chop tasteless, he calls it. He gives up pinball
for a while, but the poll comes back. He has
to find that machine. He tracks down this Spanish lecturer
who's also a massive pinball nut, learns the spaceship was
an ill fated machine, only fifteen hundred made. His specific
one serial number one six five nine was one of
(13:32):
only three ever brought into Japan.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
See the quest becomes almost mythical, now, doesn't it. The
lectures research tracing it through scrap yards like it's some
rare artifact. It mirrors the narrator's own search for something
lost within himself and the detail about it being marked
for waste treatment like in the Bond movie Goldfinger. Then
finding it through a hunch it elevates this whole search.
It matters deeply to him.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
So he goes on this solo trip to this remote
abandoned chicken farm warehouse. Place smells awful dead chickens, and
inside seventy eight pinball machines, a graveyard of old, old dreams,
he calls it. He finds this huge old switch, throws it,
and suddenly all the machines light up, flashing images of superheroes, monsters, rockets, women,
all their old dream images.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That's an incredible scene, so visual. The warehouse, this place
of death and decay, suddenly full of light, and these
flickering images of past desires, the pinball women heaving an
awesome pair of breasts, the worn out boards. It's all
about faded dreams, the passage of time. But for a
moment there reanimated a little flash of life against the dust.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And he finds it his spaceship. Yeah, he talks to it,
remembers his high score, but then he decides not to
play it. He doesn't want to tarnish the memory. He
just says goodbye, acknowledges this faint glimmer of that warm
memory that he hopes will guide him before he's thrown
back into the abyss of nothingness. Then back home, there's
this weird incident where the twins help Will get a
huge chunk of ear wax out, and suddenly he feels
(14:58):
like a veil had been lift. He can hear everything
incredibly clearly.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
That decision not to play, that's really something. It's about acceptance,
isn't it Accepting the memory for what it was, perfect
in its own way, rather than trying to force it
back into existence and maybe ruining it and the ear wax.
It sounds bizarre, but it works perfectly as a symbol.
This physical blockage is removed, and suddenly he has this
intense sensory clarity. It mirrors his emotional journey, finding some
(15:25):
kind of internal clearing.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And right after this, with this new clarity, the twins leave.
They just say they're going back to where we came from.
I assure him they have somewhere to go. He's alone again,
listening to the Beatles record Rubber Soul that they left him,
but it's different now. He finds a tranquil November Sunday
of rare clarity.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, they're leaving, could seem sad, but it leads to
this rare clarity. It makes you think maybe those connections
serve their purpose. It circles back to that question. In
a world where things get lost or decay, what grounds us.
Murakami seems to suggest it's in these quiet moments, in listening,
in accepting the pas, cherishing the memory rather than chasing
the ghost. That acceptance brings its own kind of piece.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
So, wrapping this up, what's the big takeaway from this
deep dive into Pinball nineteen seventy three. It's clearly more
than just a story about pinball or some old friends.
It feels like a deep look at finding meaning in
everyday things, dealing with loneliness, how connections and desires just fade,
and maybe learning to accept that you can't always get closure,
(16:25):
but the echoes of the past can still be important.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think that's right.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Morikami shows us the value in the search itself, even
if you don't find exactly what you thought you were
looking for. There's wisdom in Jay's simple advice, in the
narrator's quiet observations, in Naioko's lingering smile. It's about finding
a way to navigate life's uncertainty is with a kind
of quiet acceptance, even when things feel incomplete or fragmented.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So for you listening in Maybe, think about your own
internal switch panels. What are the mechanisms running your inner world?
Are there parts of your past you're still trying to
connect with? What ordinary things in your life hold that
kind of extraordinary weight like that pinball machine did for
the narrator, there's that.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Great Tennessee Williams quote. Right, the past and the present
go like this, The future is a maybe. This book,
with its fragmented booty, really speaks to that. It values
acceptance even when the future feels uncertain. So what will
your maybe future look like? And what small, maybe profound
lessons or waiting for you in the every day if
you just well, walk slowly and drink lots of water
Welcome to the deep dive. We're here to turn that
pile of sources into well a shortcut to getting informed. Today,
we're diving into Haruki Murakami's Pinball nineteen seventy three. It's
quite a journey. We're following these two young guys in
early seventies Japan, kind of searching for meaning, for connection.
It's fragmented but beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Absolutely, And what's really interesting here is how Markami tells
the story. It's not straightforward. It's built from these memories,
these little observations. You're not just reading, you're sort of
stepping into their heads. You get this mix of the
every day and the well, the slightly surreal. And our
job today really is to follow these threads, understand what
they're looking for. Why things like, you know, a pinball
(00:41):
machine or an old phone panel matter so much.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, let's start near the beginning late sixties. Our main guy,
the narrator. He doesn't have a name, but he calls
himself an earnest listener and apparently he loves stories about
far away places. I really loved them. He'd listened to anyone,
even guys claiming to be from Saturn. He was good
at it too, the listening I mean our source's joke
he could have won a contest.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, that ernest listening thing sets a really important tone,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
It shows this deep, maybe even.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Desperate, need to connect with something beyond his everyday life.
Like that guy from Saturn, a student revolutionary. Apparently, he
describes Saturn as cold, high gravity, totally unlike the paradise
of Building nine during a police raid where Vivaldi was playing.
So these stories, even the wild ones, they're not just stories.
They kind of reflect the characters inner worlds, right, or
(01:30):
maybe their desire to escape.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And then there's this memory from nineteen sixty nine, a
friend Naioko. She describes her town terribly boring. She calls
it a pitiful little station, and this image of a
dog just pacing the platform. That image really sticks with
the narrator. He remembers everything, even her smile.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, the straight, a coded smile, lingering like the grin
of the cheshire cat.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
That detail says a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
It does. It suggests there's more under the surface, maybe
something a bit melancholic about these memories exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Naioko's town isn't just youography, it's a feeling.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's nostalgia.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, and the fact he remembers it so vividly four
years later, it shows how much these little moments, these
connections meant to him. He's kind of holding on to them.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Okay, So jump forward May nineteen seventy three, four years later,
our narrator actually goes to Naoko Stand, specifically to see
that dog. He gets dressed up, shaves, wears a tie,
trying to make it an event, I guess, But as
soon as he gets there, he feels this endless deja vu,
like he's pieced together from two different puzzles. It's unsettling,
and the dog nowhere. He waits for an hour, smokes
(02:35):
ten cigarettes. Nothing.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That feeling of being pieced together from two different puzzles,
that's interesting. Why do you think he feels so disjointed?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, maybe it's the gap between the memory and the reality.
He's trying to reconnect with something specific, something tangible from
the past.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Right, But the past isn't tangible like that. It changes,
or maybe our memory of it does. His whole trip
is this search for a solid link to what he lost,
but the dog not being there. It kind of proves
you can't just step back into a memory perfectly.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
It's gone or changed, and.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
The town itself has changed too, right. The sources talk
about that used to be a peaceful green valley back
when Ricky Nelson was singing Hello Mary Lou. Then it
became suburban sprawl. The old cultured eccentrics like a painter
and Nioko's scholar dad, they got replaced by commuters. Oh
and there's this weird mention of Trotsky escaping Siberia on
a reindeer sleigh vowing revolution, just thrown in there.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
That historical layering is classic Morrikami, isn't it. It shows time
just marching on, changing everything. The pop song is the
changing landscape. It all emphasizes how temporary things are. And
the Trotsky detail it's almost comical, his statue in Red
Square being wiped down by kids. It kind of grounds
these big historical ideals in mundane reality, showing how even
revolutions fade into well, just another part of the scenery.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
So the narrator doesn't find the dog, but he finds
a dog, a big white one, near a pond. He
lures it over with gum, gets some satisfaction from that,
like he's managed to recreate something even if it's not
quite the original, But on the train home it hits him.
He still hadn't closed the book on anything, not in
n Ioko, her death, that feeling the town gave him.
He tried to tell himself it was over, but Nope,
(04:13):
couldn't shake it.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Finding a dog.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah it shows that need foreclosure, doesn't it, even if
it's symbolic. But yeah, that realization on the train is key.
Still hadn't closed the book. It tells you how powerful
these past attachments are. They don't just disappear somethings just linger.
No neat endings.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Okay, now for something completely different but also central. Back
at his apartment, the narrator lives with these twin girls.
They're known only is two A weight and two a nine.
He can only tell them apart by their sweatshirts, and
they apparently love swapping them just to mess with them.
They know almost nothing about the world, like geography forget it, Burma, Australia,
the same difference. But they're incredibly perceptive about him. They
(04:51):
can tell when he's sad.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
That's such a fascinating set up. The twins.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
They're almost like these blank slates, right, so simple compared
to his own internal messiness, and there's simple questions cut
right through, like when they ask so hardly anybody's friends
with anybody forces him to face his own isolation. He
even quotes Dostoevsky saying he'd prophesied it and the narrator
was living it.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Dostoievsky's prophecy. Can you elaborate on that a bit? What's
the connection?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, yeah, it's Dostoyevsky's ideas about modern alienation, how people
in modern society become more isolated, even disconnected, despite being
you know, physically close. The narrator feels that deeply his
life is so detached that the twins just kind of
show up and decide to stay like his life is
just open and porous almost.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We also see his work life around spring nineteen seventy two.
He runs a translation business with a friend, pretty successful.
They translate all sorts of stuff, scientific American articles about
ball bearings, cocktail recipe books, you name it. He drinks whiskey,
feels like his internal clock is off, and thinks about
the silence of his life. He compares the work to
just moving a coin between hands, no real thought needed.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, but is he actually happy? With that tranquil left.
That's the question. He says, the.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Work needs no extra thinking. But then he dives into
CON's critique of pure reason when he's bored. That suggests
the mind that's restless, right, he feels like he's in
the depths of a fathomless pool. That doesn't sound like contentment.
It sounds like drifting.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Then there's this funny scene with a phone repairman one
Sunday morning. The twins just casually tell the guy exactly
where the old hidden switch panel is in the back
of the closet under the floorboards. They use this analogy
like a mother dog and puppies to explain the wiring,
and the narrator listens to this and thinks his own
internal mother dog switch panel feels pretty run down.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Ah, the switch panel. That's such a great bit of symbolism.
It's not just old phone tech, is it?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
No, seems like more.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's totally a metaphor for his own inner workings, his connections,
maybe his whole system. So if it's run down, what
does that mean just getting old or something deeper? Societal decay,
psychological burnout, could be all.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Of the above. I think it's definitely physical the repairman
notes how old it is, but the way the twins
talk about it on its last legs sucked up something awful.
It sounds like they're diagnosing him in a way.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, it makes them seem really out of step with things.
Even the repairman thinks his living situation is odd.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Okay, let's shift gears now to the narrator's friend, the Rat,
also a university dropout. It's autumn nineteen seventy three, and
the Rat feels like time isn't flowing right for him. Unevenly.
He's living this kind of lazy life in a nice
penthouse apartment, got money, got views of the city and
the sea, but he's not fulfilled. He says he dropped
out for lots of reasons, but the wiring got all
(07:36):
tangled up. Can't even explain it anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Right, And his privilege is such a stark contrast to
how stuck he feels inside. He talks about feeling these
tiny ripples of emotion, but he just closes his eyes
and waits for them to pass. He's actively avoiding feeling
things deeply. Life feels like endless repetition. He feels powerless, alone,
like his protective blanket of air or just vanished. That's
real existential dread.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And there's in his life. Met her through a classified
ad for a typewriter she was selling. She's described as
slender proper, where his nice dresses smells like morning vineyards.
Always trying to achieve this perfection of sorts. She even
practices smiling in the mirror, and seeing her try so
hard makes the rat sad. They had this routine Saturdays together,
(08:21):
Sunday she plays Mozart.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
That's a really telling detail, isn't it. Why does her
striving for perfection make him sad?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Maybe because it highlights his own lack of effort, his
own drifting.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Her deliberate construction of herself for life, for smile, it
probably throws his own purposelessness into sharp relief. His own
emotions just fade away like old dreams, while she is
actively trying to build something perfect. It must emphasize his
own inner emptiness.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
The rat also spends time at a cemetery up in
the hills. He remembers being lonely there as a kid.
He thinks about death. Put down roots beneath each plot,
a heavy thought contrasts it with the sounds of life,
the sea breeze, the crickets, remembers taking girls there in
high school. Lots of dreams, disappointments, promises, all vanished.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
The cemetery is definitely a key place for him. It's
where he first felt small against the bigness of the world. Maybe,
and even though the modern cemetery has families having picnics
planning their plots, that superficial brightness doesn't cover up the
deep loneliness he felt there and still feels. It's a
place where he confronts how fleeting everything is, so feeling lost.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
The rat ends up at Jay's bar quite a bit.
Jay is the Chinese bartender, their calm guy, insightful. Jay
has this deep connection with his cat, which has a
lame paw. He says they understand each other. He can
talk to the cat.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
And Jay's story about the cat'spaw, how it might have
been some senseless and cruel prank that introduces this idea
of groundless ill will. It's not just about the cat's injury.
It's about the random, pointless cruelty that exists in the world.
And Jay just accepts it. He observes it. The world's
full of that kind of groundless ill will. He says,
his calm acceptance is so different from the rat's inner turmoil.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Totally and the rat tells Jay he feels like he
hasn't learned anything in his whole life twenty five years.
Jay gives him this amazing piece of wisdom. He says, basically,
if you make the effort, you can learn something from everything,
even the most ordinary stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
That's such a central moment, isn't it a real aha?
It's about finding meaning through observation, through being open, Completely
opposite to the rat's detachment, his feeling that everything's just
faded and tired out. Jay's philosophy is about effort. It's
a practical way to find meaning when the world feels indifferent.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
But the rat decides he has to leave town anyway,
finds it hard to tell Jay. He feels like any
change is just a stage of decay. He's really torn,
wonders how much water does a guy have to drink? Like,
how much effort does it take? In their last chat,
Jay gives him some simple advice walk slowly and drink
lots of water.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
After that, the rat drives to the shore, feels empty, tired,
seze the woman's apartment and is dark. He just falls
asleep in his car, listening to the waves in the radio.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Walk slowly and drink lots of water. It sounds so simple,
but there's depth there. Right.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
What do you think Jay means by that?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It feels like, be deliberate, be mindful, take care of yourself.
Don't just rush through or ignore things. Actually engage with
the present moment exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's practical advice for navigating that feeling of decay. The
rat is so caught up in his feeling of vacuousness,
his inability to let emotion stick.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
It shows how deep his on we runs.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Deciding to leave isn't a magic fix, but maybe it's
him finally accepting that things need to change, that his
streams of consciousness need to merge again. It's a step
even into uncertainty.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Okay, let's swing back to the narrator one last time.
His mood has shifted. He feels strangely languid and serene.
He's even bought new sweaters for the twins. They're not
numbers anymore. They're all of green crew neck sweater and
beige cardigan, A nice touch. He's still reflecting, noticing how
the places I fit in were always falling behind the times.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
That observation about falling behind the times really captures his
struggle to find where he belongs in a changing world.
And renaming the twins from numbers to descriptions. That shows
him connecting more personalizing his relationships. It's subtle, but it
feels like progress, doesn't it It.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Does, and then pinball takes over that autumn Sunday evening.
It was pinball that claimed my attention. He remembers back
to the winter of nineteen seventy, slipping into the enchanted
kingdom of pinball, specifically this three flipper machine called Spaceship
at Jay's Bar. He calls it his brief honeymoon with
(12:33):
the machine, a time when they understood each other. It
reflected his inner world. He got his highest score ever
on it, one hundred and sixty five thousand, said it
was like a two way mirror to my dreams. His
mind felt set free.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Wow. So the pinball machine isn't just a game. It
starts as an escape maybe, but becomes this tool for
self reflection. There's even this detailed explanation, like a mini
essay called the Bonus Light Exegesis about the philosophy of pinball.
It says the point isn't self expression but self revolt.
Not expanding the ego but compressing it. That's pretty deep
for pinball, h it really is.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's just finding yourself through focus, maybe even losing yourself
in the game, a.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Kind of meditative surrender. Almost yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
But then the spaceship disappears. The game setter becomes a
donut chop tasteless, he calls it. He gives up pinball
for a while, but the poll comes back. He has
to find that machine. He tracks down this Spanish lecturer
who's also a massive pinball nut, learns the spaceship was
an ill fated machine, only fifteen hundred made. His specific
one serial number one six five nine was one of
(13:32):
only three ever brought into Japan.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
See the quest becomes almost mythical, now, doesn't it. The
lectures research tracing it through scrap yards like it's some
rare artifact. It mirrors the narrator's own search for something
lost within himself and the detail about it being marked
for waste treatment like in the Bond movie Goldfinger. Then
finding it through a hunch it elevates this whole search.
It matters deeply to him.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
So he goes on this solo trip to this remote
abandoned chicken farm warehouse. Place smells awful dead chickens, and
inside seventy eight pinball machines, a graveyard of old, old dreams,
he calls it. He finds this huge old switch, throws it,
and suddenly all the machines light up, flashing images of superheroes, monsters, rockets, women,
all their old dream images.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That's an incredible scene, so visual. The warehouse, this place
of death and decay, suddenly full of light, and these
flickering images of past desires, the pinball women heaving an
awesome pair of breasts, the worn out boards. It's all
about faded dreams, the passage of time. But for a
moment there reanimated a little flash of life against the dust.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And he finds it his spaceship. Yeah, he talks to it,
remembers his high score, but then he decides not to
play it. He doesn't want to tarnish the memory. He
just says goodbye, acknowledges this faint glimmer of that warm
memory that he hopes will guide him before he's thrown
back into the abyss of nothingness. Then back home, there's
this weird incident where the twins help Will get a
huge chunk of ear wax out, and suddenly he feels
(14:58):
like a veil had been lift. He can hear everything
incredibly clearly.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
That decision not to play, that's really something. It's about acceptance,
isn't it Accepting the memory for what it was, perfect
in its own way, rather than trying to force it
back into existence and maybe ruining it and the ear wax.
It sounds bizarre, but it works perfectly as a symbol.
This physical blockage is removed, and suddenly he has this
intense sensory clarity. It mirrors his emotional journey, finding some
(15:25):
kind of internal clearing.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And right after this, with this new clarity, the twins leave.
They just say they're going back to where we came from.
I assure him they have somewhere to go. He's alone again,
listening to the Beatles record Rubber Soul that they left him,
but it's different now. He finds a tranquil November Sunday
of rare clarity.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, they're leaving, could seem sad, but it leads to
this rare clarity. It makes you think maybe those connections
serve their purpose. It circles back to that question. In
a world where things get lost or decay, what grounds us.
Murakami seems to suggest it's in these quiet moments, in listening,
in accepting the pas, cherishing the memory rather than chasing
the ghost. That acceptance brings its own kind of piece.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
So, wrapping this up, what's the big takeaway from this
deep dive into Pinball nineteen seventy three. It's clearly more
than just a story about pinball or some old friends.
It feels like a deep look at finding meaning in
everyday things, dealing with loneliness, how connections and desires just fade,
and maybe learning to accept that you can't always get closure,
(16:25):
but the echoes of the past can still be important.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think that's right.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Morikami shows us the value in the search itself, even
if you don't find exactly what you thought you were
looking for. There's wisdom in Jay's simple advice, in the
narrator's quiet observations, in Naioko's lingering smile. It's about finding
a way to navigate life's uncertainty is with a kind
of quiet acceptance, even when things feel incomplete or fragmented.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So for you listening in Maybe, think about your own
internal switch panels. What are the mechanisms running your inner world?
Are there parts of your past you're still trying to
connect with? What ordinary things in your life hold that
kind of extraordinary weight like that pinball machine did for
the narrator, there's that.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Great Tennessee Williams quote. Right, the past and the present
go like this, The future is a maybe. This book,
with its fragmented booty, really speaks to that. It values
acceptance even when the future feels uncertain. So what will
your maybe future look like? And what small, maybe profound
lessons or waiting for you in the every day if
you just well, walk slowly and drink lots of water
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