After the Quake

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Reading these stories as a group puts me in mind of the atmosphere after the 9/11 attack here in NYC.

The two then talk about Miyake's family and a recent painting Miyake finished, Landscape with Flatiron, and its cryptic meaning. All six stories are told in the third person, as opposed to Murakami's much more familiar first person narrative established in his previous work. Murakami’s most famous novels deploy an enormous range of American and global pop culture references. Murakami deceives with what initially appears to be a simple story, and then we venture with Yoshiya deeper into the underbelly of his life until he finds his "God.

His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife. L'attaccamento alla vita precedente è l'anticamera della morte interiore; la morte del passato la scelta più dolorosa e necessaria per rinascere in un'altra esistenza e accettare che, alle volte, le cose cambiano assieme a noi; e forse a prescindere da noi. While the devastating 1995 Kobe earthquake is not directly addressed in Haruki Murakami's after the quake , this disaster is a unifying presence that connects the collection's six short stories.

This short collection of six stories - few of them taking more than 15 minutes to read - take their origin from the devastating earthquake that hit Kobe in Japan not long ago. They are memorable dodges of plot, leaning into the hyperbanal: cooking, answering the home phone, traveling for work, and always with music as the backdrop. That April, Hideo Murai, a member of the cult responsible for running the sarin gas production for the attack, was stabbed in the gut with a long chef’s knife on live TV; my homestay family and I looked on in horror. They talk instead; he tells her that his wife left him because he was like a "chunk of air" and then asks her what was in the package. Tonkichi was caught in a trap and that is the reason he is in the zoo rather than living in the wild.

I also really enjoyed this book because they were all stories that took place in Japan and were about the Japanese culture. On her flight, the PA asks if anyone is a doctor; she thinks about reasons not to volunteer but ultimately does.

An unreliable narrator is not quite the right label because he believes what he experiences is real, but we are left questioning his reality. Her husband, Komura, locates an analogy for his wife’s disappearance in the story of a UFO sighting that causes a woman to leave home. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman. This is new territory for Murakami, and Yoshiya is a challenging character—arrogant, delusional, lost. Bellissima l'immagine profondamente carveriana dell'immobilismo di fronte al televisore - i drammi esterni diventano palpabili quando la vita privata cessa negli stimoli, verità amarissima - e tutto sommato buoni gli intenti, ma il mordente si perde con una storia che sta in piedi con le stampelle e spegne la poca tensione narrativa con alcuni picchi di kitsch non indifferente.

Piccolo inciso: condivido pienamente la malinconia di Murakami nel veder così bistrattata la forma del racconto nel mercato editoriale. The stories often have no ending, they simply reflect the thoughts and actions of various people in a narrow span of time.

You hang on every word as if the next sentence is going to tell you what you’ve been waiting to find out.Best of all is the story of Mr Katagiri, who comes home one evening to find a giant frog in his apartment, intent upon having the poor chap help him save all Tokyo from disaster by burrowing down into the earth and confronting an immense and angry worm. The stories in after the quake repeat motifs, themes, and elements common in much of Murakami's earlier short stories and novels, but also present some notable stylistic changes.