Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami
My Rating: ★★★☆☆
I’ve considered myself a Murakami fan for years. Back in college, I read Murakami when I was supposed to be reading Hemingway or Dostoevsky for class. I read his books well into the night, when I should have been finishing a term paper. I’ve devoured nearly every book of his in one or two sittings. Murakami’s books reminded me why I loved reading in the first place.
I still have no idea why I’m so drawn to his works. I mean, his novels usually have the same elements – there’s usually some lonely, aimless, middle-aged man who likes jazz/classical music, beer, and women, and then weird mysterious things inexplicably start happening to this guy, and he usually has no choice but to go with the weird flow of things to find out how they’re all connected. I didn’t know I could be into that kind of thing. But when it’s Murakami, I’m on board.
Anyway, a few months ago I’d just quit my job, and I had no idea what to do next, and I was walking around a mall, wallowing in a good old existential crisis, when I passed by a bookstore and saw this book on the display. I thought, Hey, maybe reading about lonely, aimless, middle-aged men might make me feel better. Misery loves company and all that. Also, I missed Murakami. I’d read almost all of his works available in paperback, and there’s something about his works – maybe the familiarity – that feels comfortable.
Out of all the stories, “Yesterday” was my favorite, because it hit all the right “Murakami” notes. The loneliness, the nostalgia, the sense of loss, the irreversibility of time. The inexplicable disparity between past and present. The story shifts between past and present, and tells about the brief friendship between the protagonist and Kitaru, who’s eccentric and who rebels against societal norms. The story builds a picture of their friendship, how the friendship shifts subtly when Erika, Kitaru’s girlfriend, comes into the picture, and how they just eventually lose touch over time. Even if the collection is titled Men Without Women, it seems like this particular story is the only one that doesn’t really revolve around the presence or absence of a relationship with a woman. I felt the focal relationship was the friendship, and the past that their friendship symbolized. There are periods in our lives when we spend most of our time with one person or with a few people in particular, so much so that when we recall that time, we inevitably recall it with those people in mind. And the recollection becomes bittersweet when we realize that we can’t reconstruct that relationship we had with them now, in the present time, as it was before. That’s how I felt about this story.
Other than “Yesterday”, though, the other stories in this collection were forgettable, at least for me. I skimmed through the first story, “Drive My Car,” and the last two stories. After I read the entire book, I realized that I was feeling uneasy about the whole theme of “men without women”. The underlying idea is that men are somehow less without women, and women “complete” men – women are cast in the role of being the healers of men’s emotional lives. I don’t think Murakami excels at writing female characters, but I felt the flimsiness and one-dimensionality of his female characters was particularly glaring in this collection.
So, 3 stars. “Yesterday” was exactly what I needed to read at the time, and the ending of “Kino” did make me think. But it’s not Murakami’s best, and not one of his works that I’d reread.
Read from June 30 – July 7, 2018 | Goodreads Account
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