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Hey everybody. I've been reading and translating a Haruki Murakami short story for my own amusement and I've come across a sentence that I'm not sure how to interpret. It's not really the grammar that's giving me issue, but what he's trying to say that is. The sentence is simply (it's dialogue): 「 小説家の目をとおしてと言って良ければ。」
Obviously by itself it doesn't mean all that much so here's some context. A guy is talking to "Murakami" and he finds out that "Murakami" is a writer. Because of that info, he decides he wants to tell "Murakami" a story about his life. He tells "Murakami" the story and then asks him what he thinks. The guy thinks that there's something funny about it, but can't place his fingers on what it is that's so funny. He then asks "Murakami" what he thinks, and "Murakami" says this:
「分からない」と僕は言った。「でも僕は君の話にはとても面白いところがあると思う。小説家の目をとおしてと言って良ければ。でもいったいこの話のどこが面白いかということは、実際に手を動かして原稿用紙に書いてみなきゃ分からない。そういうものなんだ。。。」
It goes on but I think that's enough to get the gist. So the way I would interpret it is something like, "If its worth my two cents." Basically I feel that he's trying to qualify what he's saying. Because he doesn't know if his opinion is worth anything, just because this guy is impressed or whatever by the fact that he's a writer.
What do y'all think? Am I on the right track? Or am I misconstruing the sentence into something totally wrong? -
I'd say it's something like what you said. In this case I'd probably translate 面白い as 'interesting' rather than 'funny', though I admit it could be 'funny'.
"I don't know," I said. "But I think there's something very interesting about your story. If it's OK to say so, looking at it from a writer's perspective. But I wouldn't know what exactly is interesting without actually trying to put it down on paper. It's that kind of thing."
小説家の目をとおして, is 'looking through a writer's eyes', and I'd say he's comparing looking from a writer's perspective with just the ordinary way we react to most people's stories. I guess he's talking about the fact that he'd have to shape it before writing it down. Typical Murakami short story - it probably ends about here! I like a lot of his novels, but I have to admit I'm not a fan of his short stories which seem to be distinctly lacking in plot half the time, and if they do have plots they just end randomly (I guess that's my two cents).
Incidentally, do you know if this story has been translated - I know many of them haven't. What's the title of the story? -
No, I understand. This is one of the few short stories that haven't been published, and I think its exactly because it's ridiculously boring. It's a character story kind of like "Tony Takitani" only take out anything that's remotely interesting and focus entirely on the fact that the character is getting old and fat. It's that kind of thing. (Nyuck nyuck nyuck)
It's called プールサイド and it's in 回転木馬のデッド＊ヒート。
Incidentally, do you know how to input that center dot that seperates katakana words?
面白い i agree in this context is "interesting"; i said amusing since earlier he describes it using おかしみ （you may have seen my other post asking about that word haha) -
Very nice indeed! I'm gonna be pressing / like there's no tomorrow.
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