In March, The New Yorker ran a short story by Haruki Murakami. "U.F.O. in Kushiro" had been first published in March, 2001. In the 20 years I have been a subscriber of The New Yorker, this was the first time that the magazine repeated a story.
I have been reading Murakami for two decades. At Miho's urging, I bought A Wild Sheep Chase around 1990, long before he was well known among non-Japanese readers. The background was Hokkaido, where Miho is from, and that was the initial attraction. I didn't think the story was remarkable. In fact, a former colleague who was a Shakespeare scholar said that the writing was like that of Mickey Spillane, but Murakami's short stories regularly appeared in The New Yorker (as many as four within some years) and I began to enjoy them. In my view, Kafka on the Shore, which was translated into English in 2005, is his best work.
The story revolves around Satoru Nakata, a mentally defective sexagenarian with supernatural powers, a 15-year old runaway named Kafka Tamura, a generous truck driver named Hoshino, and an androgynous librarian, Oshima. Colonel Sanders, of KFC fame, appears as a jolly pimp. As John Updike said in his review, "there is violence, comedy, sex—deep, transcendental, anatomically correct sex, oral and otherwise—and a bewildering overflow of possible meanings" in the novel. This was one book I couldn't put down.
In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (2008), another of my favorite writers, Paul Theroux, describes a visit to Japan where he is shown around by Murakami and Pico Iyer, another writer I enjoy. For me, to have these three writers meeting, talking, and walking around was a rare treat.
Murakami's blending of the real and surreal is again seen in "Town of Cats", a short story carried by The New Yorker on September 5. Tengo, a loner who was brought up by his father, is the protagonist. The father, known only as Mr. Kawana, was a poor and hungry peasant in Japan's hardscrabble Tohaku region when he decided to settle in Manchuria, where he thought life would be better. It wasn't. Sometimes, stray dogs were all they had to eat. Mr. Kawana barely manages to escape the advancing Soviet troops. Back in Japan, he makes a good living as a collection agent for NHK. He never lets Tengo forget the hard times he had, and takes him along on his collection rounds on Sundays, much to Tengo's dislike.
Mr. Kawana claims that Tengo's mother died a few months after he was born. Tengo does not believe this. He has a memory of his mother from the time he was one and a half years old. She is in the arms of another man. She takes off her blouse, drops the straps of her slip, and allows the man to suck her breasts.
One Sunday, on an impulse, Tengo decides to visit his father who is now in a sanitarium. On the way, Tengo reads a short story titled "Town of Cats" by a German writer. This is where the surreal enters his story. A young man travelling by train gets off at a station where he finds a deserted town. At night, the cats arrive. If that has aroused your curiosity, read the story at
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/09/05/110905fi_fiction_murakami
Murakami's blending of the real and surreal is again seen in "Town of Cats", a short story carried by The New Yorker on September 5. Tengo, a loner who was brought up by his father, is the protagonist. The father, known only as Mr. Kawana, was a poor and hungry peasant in Japan's hardscrabble Tohaku region when he decided to settle in Manchuria, where he thought life would be better. It wasn't. Sometimes, stray dogs were all they had to eat. Mr. Kawana barely manages to escape the advancing Soviet troops. Back in Japan, he makes a good living as a collection agent for NHK. He never lets Tengo forget the hard times he had, and takes him along on his collection rounds on Sundays, much to Tengo's dislike.
Mr. Kawana claims that Tengo's mother died a few months after he was born. Tengo does not believe this. He has a memory of his mother from the time he was one and a half years old. She is in the arms of another man. She takes off her blouse, drops the straps of her slip, and allows the man to suck her breasts.
One Sunday, on an impulse, Tengo decides to visit his father who is now in a sanitarium. On the way, Tengo reads a short story titled "Town of Cats" by a German writer. This is where the surreal enters his story. A young man travelling by train gets off at a station where he finds a deserted town. At night, the cats arrive. If that has aroused your curiosity, read the story at
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/09/05/110905fi_fiction_murakami
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