I was gifted this collection for Christmas and I’m glad I was. I’ve been aware of Murakami for a long time (and I’ve owned some of his novels for a long time), but just never got around to giving him a serious go. This collection was a great way in to his work, I think.
As usual when I look at a collection of short stories, I’ve taken the #onetweetreviews approach; I’ll post my raw notes, lightly edited, below the break, and then will develop my thoughts a bit after that.
Drive my Car
This story made me think about pacifism, about what it means to be capable of doing someone a great harm, and wanting to, and not doing it.
Yesterday
For anyone who has ever found themselves playing a role in someone else’s relationship: this one’s for you.
An Independent Organ
Men will go to any lengths to justify their behaviour.
Scheherazade
This is some hyperfixation.
Kind
The repressed always returns.
Samsa in Love
A fun twist on a classic – it is weird having a body, isn’t it?
Men Without Women
The strangest story in the collection, with the most savage hurt at the centre of it.
I realised while I was reading these stories that, recently, I’ve not read many conventional stories where men and women worry about their careers, love each other, hurt each other. In fact the context I can most easily recall that does include that stuff is the occasional murder mystery I read. My habits are my habits, I’m trying not to worry about them. It might have reached the surface of my mind because I read about half of this collection on a train moving away from someone I love (but towards someone else I love).
Love and pain are felt in so many exquisite degrees, right? This collection is about the many big and small ways that we disappoint people, are disappointed, how those feelings linger. I’d point particularly to Yesterday in this collection. Kids playing at adult games are liable to get hurt in ways that are deeper than they notice at first, and this story captures that feeling exactly.
Again, I haven’t “properly” read Murakami yet, but I knew I’d probably like him. His main concerns, as I understand them (apart from love), are The Beatles, Cats, and Jazz, and that means I’m likely to get on with him. They’re all present here.
And Kafka, I guess. An Independent Organ is a devastatingly sad riff on A Hunger Artist, and Samsa in Love is a playful look at The Metamorphosis that supposes, just what if?… Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself turned in to a man. Terrifying, I know.
Shecherazade is another standout, elevating pillow talk to high art and again riffing on a classic, The One Thousand and One Nights. Most of these stories revolve around male desire, so one that tries to centre a woman’s experience is welcome. It’s also totally unhinged, but all these stories are, in their own way, and maybe that’s Murakami, but maybe that’s also just how love makes you.
The translation duties are shared between Philip Gabriel and Ted Goosen; they do an admirable job of keeping the voice consistent in these stories. The narrators all come from different backgrounds, but they are also clearly of a piece, and this helps strengthen the theme, I think. It’s quite a spare voice, matter-of-fact. This book taking its name from a collection of stories by Ernest Hemingway shouldn’t be lost on you.
I think I’ll have to move up reading one of his novels. I have copies of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, and Kafka on the Shore, I think, somewhere. Would you start with one of those, or would you try something else?
James Farson 