Book review: Murakami blurs borders of reality, dreams fredericksburg.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from fredericksburg.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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
“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.
Haruki Murakami delivers an enthralling First Person Singular csmonitor.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from csmonitor.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.