June 2004: This was my second foray into Murakami. It is long and haphazard and obscure, characters come and go, motifs are established and abandoned -- but somehow it worked. Together, it forms a mysterious, pristinely lonely rendering of a splintered relationship and of Japan's haunted world war two history. After this I devoured all of his fiction and never looked back. 
 September/October 2010: Re-read. Slowly, savoring, extracting details, discussing along with co-reading friends. And while the book is still diffuse and ambiguous, as all truly effective works of surrealism must be, I think, this re-reading has been extraordinarily useful in pulling together the threads a little tighter in my mind. All of these people, all of Japan really, seeking the unknown gooshy centers of their selves, selves fractured in the trauma of World War II and collapse of imperial aspirations or submerged beneath myriad everyday details until they groan under the strain. Seeking in the bottoms of wells, in the collective unconscious, in human contact. I'd previously preferred Murakami's brisker, more streamlined work to this tangled monolith, but now The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle seems to stand apart somewhat as one of his most resonant. Or perhaps this is a sign that I should go on re-reading the others, dredging up new insights all along the way. 
 As usual, I've been useful/memorable/strange collecting quotes and referenced songs in my tumblr.