spaceponies

I'm embar­rassed to admit that I picked this book up on a whim. At the time, rec­om­men­da­tions from friends felt too famil­iar, so I asked the staff at Brook­line Book­smith to find me a good read, with the hopes of dis­cov­er­ing some­thing I wouldn't oth­er­wise find. At the time, Murakami hadn't hit big yet — for Lit­er­ary val­ues of big, that is, not Stephanie Meyer big. I owe that book­seller a great debt.

So I'll just get this out of the way early: Haruki Murakami¹ is an incred­i­ble writer. He is as good as any­one writ­ing today. His tone, his choices of words and details, his char­ac­ters, his sub­ject mat­ter all knock me flat.

His abil­ity to mix the mun­dane and the sur­real is unearthly.

On See­ing the 100% Per­fect Girl One Beau­ti­ful April Morn­ing is one of my all-time favorite sto­ries. I can't think of a bet­ter use of six pages.

Maybe you have your own par­tic­u­lar favorite type of girl — one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or grace­ful fin­gers, or you're drawn for no good rea­son to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own pref­er­ences, of course. Some­times in a restau­rant I'll catch myself star­ing at the table next to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

Murakami can per­fectly cap­ture the weird, bizarre, alien nature that is other peo­ple, inter­nal­ize it, and then present it in a way that's endear­ing. I rarely feel the inher­ent nar­ra­tion in such descrip­tions, but more that I'm actu­ally read­ing another person's thoughts. His writ­ing is com­pas­sion­ate and cold. Embar­rass­ing and reveal­ing. Every time I read him, I have to men­tally pre­pare for it, because it's a full meal.

From "The Ele­phant Vanishes":

For exam­ple, the [news­pa­per] arti­cle used such expres­sions as "the ele­phant escaped," but if you look at the entire piece it became obvi­ous that the ele­phant had in no way "escaped." It had van­ished into thin air. The reporter revealed his own con­flicted state of mind by say­ing that a few "details" remained "unclear," but this was not a phe­nom­e­non that could be dis­posed of by using such ordi­nary ter­mi­nol­ogy as "details" or "unclear," I felt.

I've read a good num­ber of his books, and have pur­pose­fully left the remain­der of them queued. They're a ready anti­dote to that dis­ap­pointed feel­ing that lingers after read­ing a cou­ple of books I didn't enjoy. When I need to read some­thing great — not good, great — Murakami is my choice.

I give The Ele­phant Van­ishes to any­one who I want to know bet­ter with regard to their read­ing taste. If the per­son likes it, it's a green flag. If not, it's a yel­low flag. Some things in life, I sim­ply can­not imag­ine any­one dis­lik­ing. Like the sen­sa­tion of show­er­ing after a long day. Read­ing this book is that for me; I have a hard time under­stand­ing how some­one could not like it.

Ama­zon link: The Ele­phant Van­ishes: Stories