Why Haruki Murakami's Men Without Women does not disappoint
Haruki Murakami is a rockstar of global literature. He has been called one of the most influential writers of his generation and his books have been translated in dozens of languages. As an author, he is rather unclassifiable, mixing magic realism, elements of fantasy and science fiction, and strong characterisations.
Often, the tales he tells are mysterious, leaving the reader enchanted and puzzled in equal measure. He is that rare creative person who is both critically acclaimed and highly popular. One cannot rule out the possibility of a Nobel Prize sometime in the future. Men Without Women, Murakami’s first collection of short stories in more than a decade, certainly does not disappoint.
His heroes — if they can be called that — go about life trying to make sense of it. Even though Murakami’s voice is quiet and non-judgemental, he is able to create a sense of quiet sadness through the dialogues of his characters. And there are sudden bursts of sophisticated humour, which never clash with the sadness.
This is life as it is lived. In the first story, "Drive My Car" (Murakami clearly loves the Beatles; another story is titled "Yesterday", and he has also written a novel called Norwegian Wood), theatre actor Kafuku is driven around by a woman chauffeur with “ears like satellite dishes placed in some remote landscape”. He gets talking with her and reveals that he had once struck up a friendship with one of his late wife’s lovers.
He was curious to know what his wife had seen in him and why she had entered an extramarital relationship. The man was clearly deeply in love with her and remains so years after Kafuku’s wife had passed away. Kafuku wants closure and is confessing — in a wondering manner — to his chauffeur. Perhaps he gets that closure at the end of the story when the chauffeur suggests that it is possible that his wife’s affairs had nothing to do with love.
In "An Independent Organ", we meet Dr Tokai, a successful plastic surgeon with his own beauty parlour, and a confirmed bachelor. He has had a string of lovers but always been careful that the relationships were merely sexual and never vested with any emotions. He is also an expert at breaking off relationships at just the correct time.
Then, suddenly, he falls in love. As this tragic story progresses, he is at first confused and then realises that he has been a natural hypocrite all his life. He sinks into a deep existential dilemma: who is he really? He has no answer to the question and becomes more and more dismayed and depressed.
In "Yesterday", a young man called Kitaru believes that he is not worthy of the love of his childhood sweetheart Erika, and convinces a friend — the unnamed narrator of the story — to go out with her. His logic: that if she wishes to go out with another man, it might as well be with his friend, for Kitaru at least knows him.
Both the narrator and Erika are uncomfortable with this arrangement though they find each other pleasant enough company. Nothing happens between them, and they part, only to meet accidentally two decades later at a party. In "Scheherazade", a woman keeps house for, and sleeps with, a man called Habara. Habara, for some unexplained reason, is either unable or not allowed to leave his apartment.
Murakami refers to the woman after the storyteller from The Arabian Nights, because she tells Habara intriguing stories from her life each time they have sex. She tells him about the crush she had on a boy when she was a schoolgirl. The boy possibly did not even know of her existence, but the desperate infatuation led the girl to regularly break into his house, steal unimportant things that belonged to him, and hide small things — a tampon, a few strands of hair — in his bedroom.
Here too, like almost all the stories in this collection, Murakami explores the endless mysteries of intimacy.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)