Where is this quotation from, and how am I misremembering it?

June 2, 2009 5:38 PM

What novel (possibly or probably by Haruki Murakami) contains a speech or inner monologue with the phrase "So maybe I'm not such a good person after all"? And what's the actual text of the quotation?

I hate to use my weekly question on this, but now it's gnawing at me and my Google skills have fallen short. I'm thinking of either a speech or inner monologue type passage that includes the phrase "So maybe I'm not such a good person after all," (or a close analogue of that), along with a sort of explanation of how that person can be low and mean. I know there's a speech with similar content but different wording in South of the Border, West of the Sun.

My intuition was that it's in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, but like I said, my searches so far have been fruitless. I've read a lot of Murakami so it could easily be from any of his other novels or short stories... or something entirely different, though hopefully not.

posted by telegraph to writing & language (9 comments total)

Norwegian Wood, when he totally overlooks the feelings of the girl not in the asylum?

(I'd have to go home to check on this.)
posted by hobbes at 5:46 PM on June 2

Not How To Be Good?
posted by Kirklander at 6:17 PM on June 2

I guessed Kafka on the Shore. I don't have a specific reason, but it's not the only Murakami I've read, and it seems plausible.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:22 PM on June 2

I think Norwegian Wood or Sputnik Sweetheart are strong possibilities. However I'm pretty sure this is from the girl in Wind Up Bird Chronicle.
posted by smoke at 9:06 PM on June 2

In Norwegian Wood, in a letter from Naoko.

In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.

In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt myself just as deeply. I say this not as an excuse or a means of self- justification but because it is true. If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you realize. Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me. Because if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces.

In The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, a letter from Kumiko.

I have always thought of myself as an honest person. True, I have my faults. But where important things were concerned, I had never lied to anyone or deceived myself. I had never hidden anything from you. That had been one small source of pride for me. But then, for months, I went on telling you those fatal lies without a twinge of regret.

That very fact is what started to torment me. It made me feel as if I were an empty, meaningless, worthless person. And in fact, that is probably what I am.
posted by clearlydemon at 9:40 PM on June 2

Thanks for all the ideas so far everyone. Clearlydemon, sadly it's neither of those quotes, but I'm heartened by smoke's assertion that it's a quote from May Kasahara, because that's what I was thinking as well. I'm still looking...
posted by telegraph at 9:42 PM on June 2

Maybe from the story Family Affair in the Elephant Vanishes?

I just go along burning my own calories in accordance with my own ideas about things. What other people do doesn't concern me. I don't smirk at them; I don't even look at them. I may be a good-for-nothing, but at least I don't get in the way of other people.

There are more pieces of self-deprecating dialogue right around that passage I just quoted, too.
posted by otolith at 11:10 PM on June 2

Did you try running some searches at books.google.com?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:53 AM on June 3

Probably not what you're thinking of, but your question reminded me of this video that is totally awesome.
posted by Jawn at 4:44 PM on June 3