For some reason the Norwegian Wood story reminded me of Nietzsche's Zarathustra.  By the brother going into solitude and being the over-man he reached that ecstasy moment or nirvana and was freed.  The four stories seemed like plays within plays and were all choices on different paths where Nicholas could have went down.  With all the deception going on Nicholas missed that he ultimately had choices.  Perhaps I'm reading into all of this too much.
I'm trying to get into poetry a little bit and started reading a little Wallace Stevens.  I randomly went to Dutch Graves In Bucks County and a poem I think about war, death, time, and archaic truth.  The whole piece is worth reading and maybe relevant or not.
An end must come in a merciless triumph,
An end of evil in a profounder logic,
In a peace that is more than a refuge,
In the will of what is common to all men,
Spelled from spent living and spent dying.
And you, my semblables, in gaffer-green,
Know that the past is not part of the present. (?????)
Who are the mossy cronies muttering,
Monsters antique and haggard with past thought?
What is the crackling of voices in the mind,
The pitter-pater of archaic freedom, 
Of the thousands of freedoms except our own?
And you, my semblables, whose ecstasy
Was the glory of heaven in the wilderness-

Time was not wasted in your subtle temples.
No: nor divergence made too steep to follow down.

I don't write or underline in books very often because it's distracting to me and feels like a chore.  In Ch. 24, Conchis is telling the story of when Lily said she wanted to marry him.  I actually underlined most of the paragraph, "But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion.  It is only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling.  And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did."

As much as I enjoy being a deconstructionist about America and having actually read Hobbes and Locke seeing what social contract was all about (keeping rich white people rich).  I do forget about sacrifices my grandparents and parents have made for me to have life.  Some question and answers are perhaps better off not being answered since the answer equates death.