The Elephant Vanishes is Murakami's introductory volume to his short fiction. As with other authors of short fiction, this first volume is somewhat rougher than some of his later stuff.
Reading Murakami is akin to comfort food to me—not because of his weirdness or magical realism, but because I find his prose atypically easy for me to consume. It's not beautiful, nor is it workmanlike. It fits somewhere between the two, almost inconsequential. But, puzzlingly, the way the it seems to flow just 'works' for me. I lack the ability to describe it in much better terms. I suspect it's just a 'me-thing'.
That said, I do have a recurring complaint regarding Murakami. I find that he sometimes seems to struggle with populating his work with enough substance to make his more stylistic, imaginative departures worthwhile. There's the formulaic nature of his novels that rears its ugly head once you've read a couple of his books already and know what's about to be coming: the ear fetish, the lost cats, the psychic teenage girls—everyone knows his tropes and has discussed them ad nauseam. But there's also a distinct lack of substance in so much of his work that I find is rarely mentioned. Murakami badly wants to be this abstract, postmodern writer, and I can't help but feeling that so much of his "magical realism" is frequently just complete and utter bullshit. I suspect that he doesn't actually have much to say in many cases, so he's ambiguous by default to try and cover up his lack of substance and affect a more surreal narrative than is actually warranted.
This is not always the case, of course—but even some of his best work is rendered uneven by seemingly arbitrary turns of weirdness that have no justification and add no value to the narrative or the ideas Murakami is trying to explore. An early story in this collection titled The Kangaroo Communique is a good example of this. The perspective, the narrator's voice, and the premise work together to create an intriguing narrative, but it doesn't really seem to have much to say, so it ends up going nowhere and feels more like space wasted in a style-over-substance exercise.
The best writers of short fiction—the Raymond Carvers and the Shirley Jacksons—say a whole lot with relatively few words. In stories such as The Kangaroo Communique, however, Murakami seems frequently to say relatively little, and the unique voice with which he relays the story to us does not do enough to carry it.
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| The Second Bakery Attack by Haruki Murakami |
My experience with Murakami is akin to a couple entering their third decade in marriage. I've already read quite a bit of Murakami's work, so I'm intensely familiar with both his strengths and weaknesses. And I don't believe this collection is entirely weak. On the contrary, there are quite a few stories present here which I find quite worthwhile.
Barn Burning is an incredible piece of short fiction. It's one of my very favorite short stories I've ever read. It's so strong that I'd consider this entire collection worth a purchase just for this one. The popularity of Barn Burning subsequent to the Korean film adaptation in 2018 led me to review it separately—see the full review here. Short summary: It's an excellent, ambiguous piece of fiction that accomplishes everything it sets out to do. It's choice Murakami.
Another solid story was On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning, in which Murakami takes the notion of I-should-have-said and uses the framework to construct an affecting short story focused on hindsight and missed opportunities. There's a nice parable here on losing the ability to communicate that continues to ring true among the less socially apt of us—of which I include myself. So I found it to be entertaining and meaningful, and Murakami has returned to this particular motif in future work as well.
Note: This is an in-process review. I'll continue to update it as I read more of this collection.
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