Monday, 2nd December 2002, 8:59pm
An opinion by:
Rascal 
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
I found this excellent author and his excellent book of stories, The Elephant Vanishes, on my brother-in-law's bathroom bookshelves. What a great way to introduce visitors to books you love. I have since installed shelves in my own bathroom.
I was struggling to find a good blip from this book, one that will give a proper sense of Murakami's style and material. It's a problem, because when I pick something out of context, it sounds plain and ordinary. If I pick something from his dream-like sequences it sounds kitschy. This would be messing with the impact of his stories, which aren't even close to being simple or over-cute... Profound is a better description fo Murakami's work, and mystic in an urban, understated kind of way. The Washington Post Book Review says (on the book cover) that Murakami "takes big risks." and one can see why they might say that. My strong impression is that fully half of his stories are drawn from his dreams, and you know how wonky dreams can get. His work often takes a sudden shift, or it stops, without full resolution. But it's okay, dangling bits can add to the richness of a good story. The story titles are quite illustrative:
-The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women
-Sleep
-The Fall of The Roman Empire, The 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and The Realm of Raging Winds
-The Little Green Monster
-TV People
-The Dancing Dwarf
Aside from these dream-like stories he's got more matter-of-fact ones (see more titles below). One of Marukami's strengths is that he can write a story almost as one tells one in conversation, starting with the bit that made you think of it in the first place, mentioning 'real life' asides and in the process including the reader in a subtle and complex experience.
-The Second Bakery Attack
-The Kangaroo Communique
-On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
-Lederhosen
-Barn Burning
-The Silence
-The Elephant Vanishes
Read this book for an enlightening, humorous, mysterious, ominous, vaporous experience.
Readers have left 1 comments
This is where I will stop going and telling you more about the story, or else, I will ruin the story. Anyways, people out there, hurry up and go to the book store to buy the book "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami.