First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami

As Murakami wrote elsewhere: If you can't understand without an explanation, you won't understand with an explanation. well, if that's your literary yardstick, no way are you ever going to appreciate these works and you should move on. As for the review elsewhere likening these stories to toilet activities. I'm still puzzling that one out, with multiple possible solutions. In the mountain wind / a head cut off / without a word / June water / at the roots of / a hydrangea'. There are a few 'tanka' poems included in On A Stone Pillow, my favourite being: 'The present moment / if it is the present moment / can only be taken / as the inescapable present. In the few pages of the story, there is a final surprise twist that adds to the question of 'what is being alive, what is being not-alive?' Like all stories here, it seems to me to be a masterpiece - just like Bird's performances - and up there with After The Quake (not on Audible, sadly - why not?) and some of The Elephant Vanishes.

The words of that review (repeated in the story) enable us to imagine just such a thing, even though on multiple levels it is impossible - Bird is dead, it's not his style, the record does not actually exist, etc - but in this story, it is possible, thanks to the power of words and the effect they have in our minds as we read. Take 'Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova' for example: the narrator recalls writing a spoof review years ago of Charlie 'Bird' Parker coming back from oblivion to make a new recording in a style the opposite of his usual bebop style. In between, the themes include those that Murakami keeps returning to as essential: ambiguity, dreams vs waking life, memory, time, guilt, connection with others, physicality, death, aloneness, and. 'First Person Singular' starts and ends with a story about how each of us can deal with the complexities and ambiguities of life - first story offers a way to overcome, last story paints a picture of the awfulness that comes from being overwhelmed.

Murakami's short stories are his best format, in my view: in twenty or so pages he spins out a whole world with the greatest skill, in terms of 'where is this taking me', complex time-structure of the story, immersive language, many currents of thought lying beneath the calm surface.

although some I don't like so much, while some I love. Confession: I am a Murakami addict, owning all the work in English that I can get hold of by him.

First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami