DANCE DANCE DANCE by Haruki Murakami,...

DANCE DANCE DANCE by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum (Vintage: $13; 393 pp.). The latest novel by the popular author of “A Wild Sheep Chase” recalls Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49,” but in place of the sinister W.A.S.T.E. system, Murakami offers the Sheepman, a mysterious, benevolent figure from a parallel dimension. A free-lance writer who compares his work to “shoveling snow,” Murakami’s narrator embodies contemporary alienation. Unloved and unloving, he muses: “Gazing at the rain, I consider what it means to belong, to become part of something. To have someone cry for me. . . . Why would anyone want to cry for me? “ But as he tries to follow the Sheepman’s admonition, “you gotta dance,” he finds himself drawn into a sordid murder mystery, a difficult romance and the eccentric menage of a major literary figure.