Reception
The original Underground (sans Aum interviews) was seen by some critics as being "one-sided," a view that Murakami himself shared, leading to his publishing The Place That Was Promised. Despite this possible bias, the original Underground sold 270,000 copies within two months of its Japanese release.
Reviews of the English translation were largely positive and enthusiastic, despite a severe cut in the number of commuter interviews included in the workâfrom 62 in the original to 34 in the translation.
Read more about this topic: Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack And The Japanese Psyche
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)