First Person Singular

I've read a couple of novels by Haruki Murakami, which were enjoyable but never fully understandable. Apart from novels, he's also written a couple of short story collections. Recently, I read his newest; First Person Singular.

Now I generally like short stories. If done well, they have all the fun of a novel, sharp characters, a coherent plot, a punchline ending, condensed in a one hour reading experience. Win-win. However, Murakami's novels are not known for these elements, they are more mystical and meandering and can resolve into absolutely nothing. So I was curious how this would work out.

There are eight stories in total, which are written from the first person singular perspective, as per the title. We never fully find out who these protagonists are, except for one story where he is clearly named 'Haruki Murakami'. Otherwise, we can deduce that the speaker is a middle aged Japanese man, mainly writing about his experiences in the past. These range from his first girlfriend in his teenage years, through his love for baseball and poems he wrote about the sport (poems which translate very poorly into English), to a mystical experience with a talking monkey in a hotel. This is the only story that felt properly 'Murakami-esque' when compared to his novels.

Although there is some structure, none of these stories have a coherent story arch, or theme, or goal. They are the musings of the past, in some cases probably the actual past, as there must be several autobiographical parts in these stories. The language is nice, but as I mentioned before, Japanese simply doesn't translate very well. I had the same issue with Kafka on the Shore, which has several layers of meaning in Japanese due to the characters used, but falls flat in translation.

So in the end, what we're left with is the ramblings of an older man, mainly concerning past relationships or his love for music or sports, without heads or tails. As I read through it, I wondered why this was worth publishing? Because Murakami is a big name, probably. Since he hasn't written any proper novels for a couple of years now, maybe his inspiration has run dry. And there are some philosophical elements in there. But if this was written by a random man of the same age and experience, no publisher would probably ever put this to print.