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russian literary theorist mikhael bakhtin had a theory of the chronotope. it wasn't one of his more-developed theories and the closest he comes to a definition is: "in the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. the intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope" (quoted in the dialogic imagination: four essays, edited by michael holquist, 1981).

while this may sound like something generated by the postmodern generator, i think it's actually a way of explaining why when we read murakami, we enter a murakami world - one in which we still access this world, but from a parallel place, where it seems like a good idea to hang out for some time down a well, or make elaborate meals involving spaghetti late at night, or in which we lose our cat and comb jazz bars and hotels full of anonymous, locked doors looking for it, possibly in the company of a brilliant, but young and uneducated japanese girl. murakami time becomes real time and our world becomes filled with murakami moments.

i think what i like about entering that murakami space is that it is so much like the world i inhabit in my dreams - waking and dreaming intersect with no apparent cognitive dissonance in ways that are usually convincing only in dreams. yet they take on flesh and feel concrete and whole - they are, in other words, a chronotope. i think it's the mark of truly magical writing. it transports and transforms everything, including space and time.

i wonder what bakhtin would have made of murakami?