I've read 5 novels by Haruki Murakami and 2 of his short-story collections and I still can't tell if I like him or not. I'm just never sure if what I'm reading is going to go anywhere before it runs out of puff. And his books can feel a bit samey. Characters and motifs do seem to recur more in Japanese literature; I'm thinking, for example, of Natsume Sōseki and Kenzaburō Ōe. But Murakami has a particularly bad habit of going on auto-pilot and re-writing the same passages about lonely men drinking beer while listening to Jazz music.
His shorter works have a lot less bloat. They convey his charm without drowning you in irrelevance. I think Murakami could probably write a great novel, if he hasn't done so already (I've only read his early stuff). Of the ones I've read, my favourite was Hear the Wind Sing, which is almost like a fast-forwarded dream conflating all the elements that occur in his books: the suicide of an old girlfriend; loneliness; music; a friend that disappears; drinking in bars. And it has a great cover:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/Hear_the_wind_sing.JPG
While a few stories in First Person Singular fall flat, there are also some gems. In With the Beatles, the narrator recounts a relationship he had with a girl back when he was younger. After a miscommunication, he ends up going to her house on the wrong day, and winds up hanging out with her disheveled brother, who is something of a shut-in. As it turns out, the brother has a condition in which he suddenly loses slices of his memories. The narrator reads out Spinning Gears by Akutagawa before leaving.
Years later, the two meet again. They both remember each other. The brother explains that he has overcome his condition, likely because of that evening when the narrator read Akutagawa to him. He also reveals that his sister (the ex-girlfriend) committed suicide, a revelation which shocks the narrator, who still thinks about her as she was back then. He then thinks about another girl he knew, even further back, when he was in school, and the inage of her that is permanently burned into his mind: she is walking down the hallway while clutching a record by The Beatles.
In Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey, the narrator meets a talking monkey in an onsen while on holiday. The two share some beers and snacks, and the monkey regretfully confesses that he has been stealing the names of women he finds beautiful. He makes a promise never to do it again. Next morning, when there is no sign of the monkey, the narrator begins to doubt what happened, and tells nobody about it. Only years later does the memory re-emerge, when the narrator makes the acquaintance of a beautiful young editor who keeps forgetting her name.
In Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova, the narrator recalls a piece of writing he published in a magazine back in his university days, a review of a made-up albim. Many years later, browsing a record shop in New York, he finds the record, but opts not to buy it because of the cost. He regrets his decision the next morning when he goes back to the shop but cannot find the record. That night, Charlie Parker comes to him in a dream and gives him a personal performance of the album.
The best stories all share the same set-up: an aging man recalls a memory, and is shocked to discover that some element of the world is not like how it was back then. It's simple and effective, with a satisfying pay-off that makes Murakami's dreamscapes worth inhabiting. (I think this shows what he could we capable of if his novels were a bit tidier in structure).
Because of the instability of these memories, the people telling these stories feel as though their lives are unreal - like a dream, as in Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova, or as though they are sitting at the confluence of another reality, one in which monkeys can talk. Nothing is permanent or certain. What is life about, then? What certainties can it offer if its basic experience is cloudy, vague, permeable?
Each protagonist chooses to cling to their memories and finds some kind of happiness within them. Or is it protagonist, singular? That could well be the case: one story, The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection, by explicitly naming Haruki Murakami as the narrator, suggests that the collection may be a veiled work of autofiction. Is that the case, then? Or are we being invited into a tangled confluence of fiction and fact, dream and reality, the lines between them blurred, their recurring elements looping back in and out like a jazz motif?
