Thoughts on recent readings

 It has been really interesting reading some of the other types of short stories of Murakami after finishing "A Wild Sheep Chase". When I was reading about detective fiction writing and "A Wild Sheep Chase", I thought that Murakami almost exclusively wrote in that way with a first-person narrator and a mystery to solve. However, I was very surprised by “A Perfect Day for Kangaroos”, “Abandoning a Cat”, “Tony Takitani”, and “Drive My Car”. I almost felt like I was reading the work of someone else. It really made sense now that this whole class is dedicated to reading about the writings that Murakami was inspired by as he seems to take from a wide variety of genres and writing styles. “Tony Takitani” and “Drive My Car” especially felt like a big shift as it is not only from a third person point of view but he also starts using a lot of names. On the other hand “Abandoning a Cat” stands out as an autobiographical essay which I loved as it provided a lot of insight into the topics that he writes about. Furthermore, I have slowly started to notice from stories like “Where I’m Likely to Find It" and “Drive My Car”, that Murakami plays around with not only magical elements but also almost supernatural elements that involve the lingering essence or ghosts of people and memories.  Looking at the timeline of his stories, Murakami seems to go through a period of experimentation of different genres and styles. Through all his writing he does maintain the same short sentence writing style along with streams of consciousness but I am looking forward to reading his full-length novels written after these explorations with his short stories. 

Celine