“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 has a new collection of stories -
First Person Singular -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 ageing mystic – but Murakami Man is more like a walking encyclopaedia 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
A new collection of stories by Haruki Murakami bring back author s dreamy vibe and magical realism
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A new collection of stories by Haruki Murakami bring back author s dreamy vibe and magical realismAP
Last Updated: Apr 06, 2021, 04:26 PM IST
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Synopsis
The best story in the collection, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, is Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova .
Agencies
If you re not a fan of Murakami s dreamy vibe and magical realism, if you think that life is confounding and interesting enough without needing to add fairy dust, then this probably isn t the book for you.
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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.
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.
First Person Singular.
The stories in Haruki Murakami s new collection,
First Person Singular, have a sort of fractal nature you re reading a story by a middle-aged Japanese man in which a middle-aged Japanese man is telling you a story (and sometimes that story involves him telling other stories). You get drawn into the spiral, and soon you re in that strange world where many of his stories exist, a place full of his favorite things (jazz, baseball, the Beatles, though surprisingly few cats this time) and yet unmistakably odd, existing at a slight, unexplained angle to reality. In this book, I wanted to try pursuing a first person singular format, but I don t like relating my experiences just the way they are, Murakami tells me in an email interview. So I reshape them over and over and fictionalize them, to the point where, in some cases, you can t detect what they were modeled after. Through these steps, I gain a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the experience.