In First Person Singular, Murakami gives you a first person’s perspective as he takes you on a trip down memory lane.
Location: Japan (Kobe, Tokyo)
First Person Singular synopsis
The eight masterful stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator: a lonely man. Some of them (like With the Beatles, Cream and On a Stone Pillow ) are nostalgic looks back at youth. Others are set in adulthood–Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova, Carnaval, Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey and the stunning title story. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Haruki himself is present, as in The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. The stories all touch beautifully on love and loss, childhood and death . . . all with a signature Murakami twist.
Book review
Haruki Murakami’s new short story collection First Person Singular is part story, part autofiction. In some stories it is clear that he is the one experiencing it, as he explicitly says, and in others it is less obvious. The latter are older memories and could be attributed to anyone. I almost said “could happen,” but maybe not, it is after all a book by Murakami.
The stories show chance encounters of people who start a conversation and sometimes discover that they have something in common, for example an interest in music, sports or literature. Through these brief encounters, the author shares wisdom about life as the characters are about to go their separate ways again. People come into your life and can leave just as suddenly. There doesn’t need to be a meaning behind the encounter, just the comfort of temporary companionship, even if there is nothing connecting your lives.
Who or what is at the center?
The first story, Cream, goes a step further by not even letting the supposed encounter happen. Instead, we are treated to a meditation on circles: what does it mean when a circle has many centers but no circumference? I don’t know what Murakami (or the rest of the world) means by this, but to me it seems like all people are at the center of their own borderless lives and as such there are many centers, just as Murakami himself is at the center of this book. You don’t have to agree with me, but that’s the meaning it has for me.
This story ends with the life lesson that you don’t always need to know what is happening or what something is about. You don’t have to worry about unexplained, illogical events; it’s not about the principle or the intention. I graciously applied this wisdom as I wondered why I had to read the story The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection.
In On a Stone Pillow you read how an object has the power to bring back memories and in Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova a fantasy becomes a dreamlike reality. With the Beatles is a story about fleeting memories and a critical message disappearing. In Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey, the monkey contemplates love as he gives the author a body scrub and tells him over a beer that he values the memory of having loved. That doesn’t keep him from stealing the name of his love interests though.
Let’s discuss
Unsurprisingly, in the next story, Carnival, you wonder what the name of the ugly woman with the powerful personality is that draws people in. Central to this story is the question of what external characteristics such as beauty and ugliness tell about a person. When you include the last story, First Person Singular, in the consideration, it raises the question of whether these two stories are meant to start a discussion or whether they are expressing an opinion about outer beauty and people who dress up to appear different. The man in First Person Singular who “secretly” dresses in a suit and tie – a misrepresentation of him as a person – is compared to someone who crossdresses. In a bar, a woman confronts him about his behavior. He is a first person singular who would not be there if he had chosen a different direction in life. So how is he supposed to present himself?
Final thoughts
As always, Murakami has a pleasant writing style (and so does the translator). You’ll finish this short story collection before you realize it. While there are interesting aspects to many of the stories, most of them are not memorable. They are, however, mundane and easy to read. Murakami gives you a first person’s perspective as he takes you down memory lane.
Interested?
Get your copy of First Person Singular from Amazon.
Book details
Title: First Person Singular
Author: Haruki Murakami
Translator: Philip Gabriel
Language: English
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pages: 256
ISBN (13): 9780593318072
Publication date: 6 April 2021
About the author
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.
