The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

published	1994 by Vintage
first published	2007
binding	Paperback
isbn	0679750533 (isbn13: 9780679750536)
pages	336
description	With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World...more [close] With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities -- and to come back bearing treasure.
date added	12-13-06 edit book

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Platoeatssouls rated it:

(review of isbn 0099448750)

06/20/07

bookshelves: magical_realism, theboxmarkeddone

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: literary hipsters

What can I say about Haruki Murakami? He is famous, both in Japan and abroad, although in the States those who know him tend to be Literary Hipsters who are interested in Asia. He writes novels and short stories, although his novels tend to be a bit disjointed and episodic, hinged like a Jacob's ladder. His short stories will always employ a simile at the top of the second page which may seem at times deep and yet simple.

When I sta...more What can I say about Haruki Murakami? He is famous, both in Japan and abroad, although in the States those who know him tend to be Literary Hipsters who are interested in Asia. He writes novels and short stories, although his novels tend to be a bit disjointed and episodic, hinged like a Jacob's ladder. His short stories will always employ a simile at the top of the second page which may seem at times deep and yet simple.

When I started reading The Elephant Vanishes, I wasn't really sure what I was getting into. The first story, "The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women", is a good litmus test for the book as a whole: a man gets a strange phone call from a woman, fails to find his cat, and makes dinner. If this holds your attention, the book will be totally your thing. If the thought of listening to this narrator rattle on and on about the alleyway behind his house makes you cringe, you're better off going back for something else.

I'd divide the stories into two categories, the real and the magically real, and most of the ones that fall into the latter category ("Sleep", "Barn Burning", "A Slow Boat to China", "The Dancing Dwarf", and "The Elephant Vanishes") are among the best in the collection. Which is not to diminish the others - "The Silence", a story about a boyhood fight, is one of my favorites of the group, and definitely contains none of the surreal elements the others exhibit.

Murakami's narrators tend to be men and women in their early thirties, married or in a place where they feel they should be married but aren't, with families which seem largely inconsequential to the action. Over the course of any given story, they will generally make a similie, listen to music (classical and classic rock, generally), eat spaghetti, and have awkward conversations with people which may or may not be typically Japanese.

The thing is, despite the reviews on the back which claim that Murakami is showing "Japan as it's experienced from the inside", I don't see a lot of Asia here, at least not the Asia that I know and live in. The Japan portrayed here will be familiar to Westerners, because the strange emptiness the characters experience, the search for meaning, is the same in both worlds. This has some interest in itself, especially if you happen to be interested in the congruencies that have grown between cultures as a result of globalization (why do all his characters listen to Western music and read Western novels?).

In summary, read it for the spaghetti, read it for the magical realism. If you're looking for classical Japanese culture, go somewhere else....less

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The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

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