Murakami has a new collection of stories told in the first person by an unnamed older man obsessed with baseball, music, and the porous borders between
Alexis Burling April 14, 2021
It’s a simple sentiment, but true. The great writer George Saunders once said, “When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you.”
While short fiction doesn’t give you that same all-encompassing immersion into a time, mood or imaginary world that a novel does, the best stories still have the power to ignite the way we observe, feel and think.
In that spirit, here are four solid collections coming out this month.
‘First Person Singular’
(Knopf; 256 pages; $28)
“First Person Singular” by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel. Photo: Knopf
“First Person Singular,” by Haruki Murakami (Alfred A. Knopf)
Haruki Murakami has a new collection of stories told in the first person by an unnamed older man obsessed with baseball, music, and the porous borders between memory, reality and dreams.
He may describe himself as a “bland, run-of-the-mill guy,” as in the story “Cream” about a young man’s encounter with an aging mystic but Murakami Man is more like a walking encyclopedia who has a problem with women mainly, that he can’t seem to get past their physical appearance.
Thus, in “On a Stone Pillow,” we have his memories of a melancholy poet and her “shapely round breasts”; in “With the Beatles,” a first girlfriend with “small yet full lips” and a wire bra. (Both, by the way, are suicidal.) In “Carnaval,” the one story where a woman has agency, we are told over and over how ugly she is.