Impressions:
I don’t know why I stopped reading this collection after the third story, but I can think of several likely reasons. They all center around the book being a public library book, and it not being convenient for me to keep or get a hold of. Now, at least a year after I read the first three stories, I’ve finished it.
Let me just say that this is my least favorite of Haruki Murakami’s works after Norwegian Wood. Great way to start a review, I know! Despite that fact, I still recommend it. Most of the short stories were mediocre and some, just plain bad. However, the mediocre and bad ones helped me appreciate the polish and mastery of Murakami’s best short stories and novels. In the preface, the “Introduction to the English Edition”, on page iix he says “[...] when I write novels I try very hard to learn from the successes and failures I experience in writing short stories. In that sense, the short story is a kind of experimental laboratory for me as a novelist.”
Let’s begin with the poor stories, which aren’t bad because they’re not engaging or interesting, but rather for formal reasons like structure. They have potential, in other words. The story the collection is named for, for example, is well structured. It has a feeling of resolution, despite there being no narrative event that ties up loose ends. It’s hard to describe exactly why, but it reads the way a short story should. The majority of the stories in this collection don’t. They seem unfinished, almost draft-like, with abrupt endings or uneven pacing. Often I felt that stories were pulled out of a larger novel, resulting in an unsatisfactory reading experience.
There were a few really outstanding stories in this collection: “A Shinagawa Monkey”, “The Seventh Man”, “Hanalei Bay”, “Birthday Girl”. They were all very compelling. Pure Murakami, their power lies in the fact that they nail his personal style and are self-contained. The reader feels as if it would be a shame if he tried to expand one into a novel and thus ruin the perfection of the story as it stands.
There was a period when narratives I’d written as short stories, after I published them, kept expanding in my mind, developing into novels. A short story I’d written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake, and shout “Hey, this is no time to be sleeping! You can’t forget about me, there’s still more to write!”" [Introduction to the English Edition, x]
I don’t have to learn more about the darkness that consumed Yuko in “A Shinagawa Monkey” or what happened when Sachi returned to Tokyo in “Hanalei Bay”. It would be superfluous. These stories don’t need to be layered with any more meaning.
If you were to analyze what I’ve chosen as my favorites you’d notice that there is an element of the supernatural or fantastic in each. And while I often find such things appealing, I think these stories do not succeed because of it (and in some cases, such as the ghost story contained in “Hanalei Bay”, despite it). The supernatural is an element that permeates most of Murakami’s work, so it’s actually hard to avoid.
The other things that typifies my “best of” list is that the protagonist of each story is decidedly unlike the typical, male protagonist of Murkakami’s best novels. The exception is “The Seventh Man”, which reads like Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in miniature. I found the atypical female protagonists of “A Shinagawa Monkey”, “Hanalei Bay”, and “Birthday Girl” perfectly constructed. These women felt real, like Murakami had some special insight into the psyche of a living person that in no way resembled himself. (Unlike the gay protagonist of “Chance Traveler”, who seems highly contrived.) Such psychological realism in contemporary fiction is, in my opinion, rare. I guess there’s an element of egoism in what I’m about to say, but the rapport I felt with Mizuki from “A Shinagawa Monkey” is one of the strongest I’ve felt for a character in fiction. It’s always an unsettling thing when you unexpectedly identify with a fictional character (or in this case, one aspect of them). It is, in my opinion, one of the pleasures of reading, and, on a larger scale, of Art.
Two of these stories were precursors to his novels. In the quote above, Muakami acknowledges as much. Having skipped over the preface, reading it only after the rest of the book, I was kind of pleased to have picked up on it on my own. A highly-modified version of “Man-Eating Cats” become part of Sputnik Sweetheart and “Firefly” became the core of Norwegian Wood. I’d have to say that both stories are outshone by their novel counterparts, especially “Man-Eating Cats”/Sputnik Sweetheart.
Quotes:
Passages I found compelling , humorous, well-constructed, or that did their best to sum up something I feel is true:
If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. [Introduction to the English Edition, vii]
[...] even the tiniest of screws had that proud, expectant feeling that only brand-new machinery possesses. [Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, 5]
The whole while we’d let that box of chocolates lie out in the hot August sun. Our carelessness, our self-centeredness, had wrecked those chocolates, made one fine mess of them all. We should have sensed what was happening. One of us – it didn’t matter who – should have said something. [Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, 16]
For a few seconds I stood there in a strange, dim place. Where the things I could see didn’t exist. Where the invisible did. [Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, 17]
There was something cold and hard about her: if you set her afloat on the nighttime sea, she would probably sink any boat that happened to ram her. [Birthday Girl, 20]
The wrinkles on his forehead deepened: they might have been the wrinkles of his brain itself as it concentrated on his thoughts. [Birthday Girl, 28]
“It was a strange experience. I can’t explain it, but I felt as if the ground has silently split open and something was crawling up out of it. And then there was this invisible thing on a rampage in the dark. It was like the cold night had coagulated. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it, and the animals felt it too. [...] [New York Mining Disaster, 38]
“In a nice world there is no nice music,” she said, as if revealing some deep secret. “In a nice world the air doesn’t vibrate.” [New York Mining Disaster, 41]
“It’s like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I’ll finish it.” [New York Mining Disaster, 41]
She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, “I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.” [Airplane, 50]
In the kitchen, the afterimage of some great thing was holding its breath. He often felt the presence of this afterimage when he was with her: the afterimage of a thing that had been lost. Something of which he had no memory. [Airplane, 50]
The one thing I did understand was that this other figure loathed me. Inside it was a hatred like an iceberg floating in a dark sea. The kind of hatred that no one could ever diminish. [The Mirror, 59]
“Our way of thinking and goals are very different,” he said [...] [A Folklore for My Generation, 66/7]
A girl’s virginity just isn’t that big a deal. [A Folklore for My Generation, 68]
“I’m scared,” she said. She covered her face with her hands and began to cry. “I’m so very scared. Life is frightening [...] You don’t understand. I’m not like you. I’m a woman. You don’t get it at all.” [A Folklore for My Generation, 73]
“Next you’re gonna ask me to tell you the whole damned thing.” [Dabchick, 104]
“Newspapers are all the same, no matter where you go,” she finally announced. ‘They never tell you what you really want to know.” [Man-Eating Cats, 110]
Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally–the way that driver beat his old horse until it died on the road. But the thrashing we receive is one of frightful gentleness. Few of us even realize we are being beaten. [A "Poor Aunt" Story, 137]
The girl stared at her brother in silence, but you could see that she had a plan. Then, all of a sudden, she got to her feet and slapped him hard on the cheek. In the stunned moment that followed, she grabbed the hat and returned to her seat. The little girl did this with such speed and dispatch, it took the interval of one deep breath before the mother and brother could realize what happened. [A "Poor Aunt" Story, 139]
Yes, I would, I would suck your fingers clean. [A "Poor Aunt" Story, 141]
“But as you know, there are two kinds of crimes the police won’t bother with: crank calls and stolen bicycles. [...] [Nausea 1979, 149]
Ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away. [The Ice Man, 201]
She became known as the Japanese mom whose son was killed by a shark nearby. [Hanalei Bay, 258]
All she could do was produce accurate imitations, not music of her own. [Hanalei Bay, 263]
“Nah, I’m like a chicken: three steps, and my mind’s a blank. [...] [Hanalei Bay, 270]
The woman glanced down at her shoes, perhaps contemplating how – if things got really weird – she might have to use the stiletto heels against me. [Where I'm Likely to Find It, 279]
“I’m looking for something.”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I imagine it’s like a door.”
“A door?” the little girl repeated. “What kind of door? There are all shapes and colors of doors.”
[...]
“Hmm,” the little girl said. “Have you been looking for a long time?”
“For a long time. Since before you were born.”
“Is that right?” the little girl said, staring at her palm for a while. “How ’bout I help you find it?” [Where I'm Likely to Find It, 288]
Junpei’s first thought on seeing her was, Here is a woman with excellent posture. [The Kidney-Shaped Stone, 293]
“No,” she said. “I just tend to be attracted to highly practical topics. That’s all.” [The Kidney-Shaped Stone, 297]
What would I do if I read your work and didn’t like it? What could I say? [The Kidney-Shaped Stone, 297]
“If I had succeeded in stealing her name, I might have taken away some of the darkness that was hidden inside her,” the monkey said. “Take her darkness, along with her name, back to the world underground.” [A Shinagawa Monkey, 331]
Your mother doesn’t love you. She’s never loved you, even once, since you were little. I don’t know why, but it’s true. Your older sister’s the same. She doesn’t like you. Your mother sent you away to school in Yokohama because she wanted to get rid of you. Your mother and sister wanted to drive you as far away as possible. Your father isn’t a bad person, but he isn’t what you’d call a forceful personality, and he couldn’t stand up for you. For these reasons, then, ever since you were small you’ve never gotten enough love. I think you’ve had an inkling of this, but you’ve intentionally turned your eyes away from it, shut this painful reality up in a small dark place deep in your heart and closed the lid, trying not to think about it. Trying to suppress any negative feelings. This defensive stance has become a part of who you are. Because of all this, you’ve never been able to deeply, unconditionally love anybody else.” [A Shinagawa Monkey, 332]
Pages I marked but c0uldn’t remember the passage I liked: 70, 219.
:: Bibliography ::
- Murakami, Haruki, Philip Gabriel, and Jay Rubin. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-Four Stories. New York: Knopf, 2006. ISBN: 1400044618.
