Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (“Do you know what Sputnik means in Russian? Traveling companion.”)

 

I remember very well the first time we met and we talked about Sputniks. She was talking about Beatnik writers, and I mistook the word and said ‘Sputnik.’ We laughed about it, and that broke the ice. Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Traveling companion.’ I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the earth. (p. 98) 

This novel has been sitting, unread, on my shelf for years. I was under the impression that it was filled with some “outer space” kind of weirdness that I wasn’t ready to embark upon. Actually, it probably wouldn’t be a novel by Murakami if there wasn’t some other world weirdness. But, Sputnik Sweetheart doesn’t start out that way.

Instead, the term Sputnik Sweetheart is an endearment, from one girl to another; from one who was referring to Jack Kerouac as a “Beatnik”, while her new friend heard “Sputnik”. In the beginning, there’s nothing to do with space. But, there’s a lot to do with love and misunderstanding.

As I read, I find myself feeling as I did when I first read a book by Haruki Murakami: he gets me. I don’t know how an American woman can find herself so “understood” by a Japanese man, unless the very vulnerability with which he writes is accessible to many. Or, maybe it’s the way that he writes of feeling isolated. Alone. Perhaps, even living in an alternate reality. 

I’m not going to give a complete review of this novel, which has struck me more deeply than any of his previous works. Why would I dare to interpret for you what Maruakmi has shown me? You may have an entirely different experience reading this book yourself. I will tell you, however, it is about love. Loneliness. Wondering just where, exactly, we exist in this world (or another).

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it’d lose even its imperfection.” (p. 4)

“A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world in the other side.” (p. 16)

“Imagine ‘The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin’ minus ‘Mack the Knife.’ That’s what my life would be like without you.” (p. 65)

“I was still on this side, here. But another me, maybe half of me, had gone over to the other side…And the half that was left is the person you see here. I’ve felt this way for the longest time - that in a Ferris wheel in a small Swiss town, for a reason I can’t explain, I was split in two forever…It’s not like something was stolen away from me, because it all still exists, on the other side…But I can never cross the boundary of that single pane of glass. Never.” (p. 157)

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?” p. 179

“So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that’s stolen from us - that’s snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way in silence, we draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.” (p. 206-7)

My God, I loved this book.