Murakami's Men Without Women. #reading – Long posts

Murakami's Men Without Women. #reading

Jeremy W. Sherman

7 years ago

I make Macchiato [macchiato.10centuries.org] for 10C's iOS-using community.

Father of two kids. Grew up in St. Louis, schooled in Florida, live and work (mostly from home) in Atlanta.

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@jws on Pnut

Murakami, Haruki. Men Without Women. 2014. 228 pages.

Beautifully produced hardcover. Having the title and page number on opposite pages, and moving it down a spot for each story, makes the book easily navigable. And there’s a colophon! Stateside work, too, New England.

The cover has a beautifully significant image of a puzzle piece cut out of a man’s silhouette where the heart would be, and the back has 女 morphing into that puzzle piece in a few steps.

Anyway! The stories are very interesting. In a way, they never go anywhere, any of them. They open very neatly, but then go on, pulling your interest, till they just stop, leaving you with more questions than answers. The odd coming of age story of Scheherazade; the magical realism of Kino; the quiet commute of Drive My Car. I think these will stay with me.

Written with ChimPnut.

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Discussion

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@jws
Like, 4 months. Oy. Not that I wasn’t reading, but library books had to go back. Oh, and I forgot to ever log The Book of Bad Arguments. Heh.
@jws
Murakami's Men Without Women. #reading - http://chimpnut.nl/u/jws/lp/217890 - #longpost
@jws
Oh yeah, and that cover description will be a lot more meaningful if you know that 女 means “woman”.
@kyle
@jws Me too.
@jws
@kyle I’ll recommend the Murakami short stories I just finished as a fun way to pass an evening or two.
@kyle
@jws trying to avoid buying more books in the short term so I can finish some others...

but it's been added to the queue.
@jws
@kyle Mine was a library book. <3 local libraries. I’ve got a library card everywhere I’ve lived in the US so far.
@kyle
@jws If I got the library book, it'd just sit around unread because it's so far behind in the queue right now...
@jws
@kyle I work off a randomized heap instead of a queue. Keeps things surprising. ;)