The first-person singular version Chinese is a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami after 6 years after Men Without Women. These 8 first-person narrative novels are all written in the first person by Murakami, and the author returns to the narrative perspective of "Norwegian Forest", "Listen to the Wind" and "Adventure of Finding Sheep" after many years, recreating the Murakami-style fantasy youth story. "This time, I want to stand at the starting point of creation and meet a new challenge," Murakami said.
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First Person Singular
Author: (Japanese) Haruki Murakami
Translator: Ye Yi
Edition: Motie Wenzhi Books| Flower City Press, November 2021
About the Author:
Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, Japan. With his debut film "And Listen to the Wind", he won the Group Portrait Newcomer Literature Award, and made his debut. His subsequent works continue to cover many genres such as novels, short stories, documentary literature, and essays. Among them, there is the world-famous "Norwegian Forest", the deep documentary "Underground", "1Q84", which is known as "a milestone in Japanese literature in the new millennium", "Assassination of the Knight Commander" and "Abandoned Cat", which talk about war reflections.
He has won many awards around the world, including the Tanizaki Junichiro Prize, the Daily Publishing Culture Award, the Kafka Prize, and the Jerusalem Literature Prize. His short stories are exquisitely conceived and have a long afterglow, leaving readers with a wealth of room for interpretation.
Translator's Bio:
Ye Yi graduated from the Japanese Department of Beijing Language and Culture University. He studied in Japan and taught Chinese courses at the local Confucius Institute. With a little obsession, I walked a not too short road, and the obsession that did not admit it slowly became a belief. His translations include "Abandoned Cat When I Talk About My Father", "Human Disqualification", "Tidal Disturbance", "The Wind Rises" and so on.
Assessor 001
Yu Hanyu
A ballad written for the reviewer
When I first saw the title, I thought, "first-person singular" is another way of saying the word "I." But after getting the book, I found that the slogan on the waist cover and the back cover created an atmosphere of "this is not me, but countless you in the world", which made me vaguely expect that the book would reflect the contemplation of life from different perspectives, and the reader could substitute himself into the "me" in any story in the process of reading.
After reading this book, I think it is still a collection of works about finding yourself and finding the past. The title "First Person Singular" fits the theme of the book in its original sense. In the process of reading, the reader is not substituted for the role, but is led to look at the world in the story and trace his own history. It is not known whether this was the author's original intention, but there is a reason for the "lack of substitution": the book devotes a lot of space to music (jazz, classical, pop) and baseball-related content, which makes the reader (especially those who are not familiar with these two fields) always mobilize their imagination, as well as the experience gained from other literary or even film and television works, to understand these elements of the story (sometimes, these elements are even the center of gravity or soul of the story). Fortunately, this book contains explanatory text in the form of a separate volume that would have been used as a footnote or endnote in many books, without creating a deeper sense of separation from the reading process that would otherwise require frequent pauses to imagine or think.
In fact, it doesn't matter, the book that does not have a strong sense of substitution has its own way of reading. Although most of the time we read short stories to find resonance, sometimes the resonance does not come from a sense of substitution, but from remembering our own experiences during the reading process. We don't necessarily know music, we don't necessarily know baseball, we encounter incredible wonders, but we must have had moments when people we never saw each other again in a long time, who desperately wanted to figure out what problems to solve, who taught ourselves to grow but fruitless first love, who had not yet taken shape / abandoned halfway / were forgotten by us after completion. Although we and the protagonists in the story grew up in different eras, their preferences may not be the same, and the backgrounds of study and work are very different, people's joys and sorrows, and the reasons that cause them, are always similar. First Person Singular may not give you the feeling of "this is me," but it will bring you back to "I used to be like this."
It is worth mentioning that compared with the author's previous works, there are indeed differences in the writing style of this book. This difference is reflected in the story of this book, which eliminates the calmness of "it doesn't matter if you can't find an answer", but is eager to give an answer. The old man who inspired "me" to think hard about the "cream of life" in "Cream", and Charlie Parker who entered the dream of "me" and played "Corcovado Mountain" for "me" alone, all looked back and summarized life in a sense. It can be seen that the author has gradually faded the fragments of color in his desperate efforts to capture past experiences, ending the unfinished poems and recording the deceased. Combined with the author's writing time, this is not surprising, and the reader need not be disappointed by the slightest discrepancy with expectations. Understand, because this kind of extraction is also a process that we will inevitably go through. Perhaps "First Person Singular" is not written for young people who laugh or sing high, and it cannot make them stop; it is a ballad for the looking back to lean against the wall by the window and sing low in the winter twilight.
Pick up the verses we have lost, before we turn to dust. Engrave in our minds the people we once cherished, and even the verse will eventually turn to dust.
Reading Score: 7.5 out of 10
Assessor 002
Shaohua
It's like playing as a lonely self in a game
Not just one Haruki Murakami, but several.
When Murakami wrote "And Listen to the Wind", I felt that there was a distance, because there were some mysterious things that I couldn't read. Murakami was the most familiar to murakami when I wrote Norwegian Forest, and murakami had several key words at this time: private, lonely, love, and realism. After the publication of "Kafka by the Sea", it has more fantasy colors, but it is still Murakami who wrote "Norwegian Forest". By 1Q84 (and even earlier, I hadn't read Underground), I could feel that he wanted to explore big questions. Then to this "first-person singular", it seems to be back to Murakami when "Norwegian Forest", but the life experience is richer, and the dissection of life is more in place, as can be seen from the last article of this novel collection, "First-Person Singular".
Murakami's novel collection has a great feature: it makes the reader feel very substitutionary. I summarize the reasons for this:
1, the protagonist has no clear appearance description, the personality is not clear, there seems to be no motive, roughly a mediocre person, but it is such a role without characteristics, so that the reader is easy to substitute himself into it, just like playing a role-playing game; 2, the protagonist will always have sexual encounters, young girls, mature girls, beautiful or ugly are readily available, male readers are naturally easy to substitute; 3, the author's narrative is very much like talking to himself in the mirror. Taking "First Person Singular" as an example, at the beginning of the novel, the protagonist says that he has a hobby of going shopping alone in a suit, and feels that the mood at that time is similar to that of men and women, which is how personal it is, and only he will say this to himself.
The first-person singular novel gave me a lot of empathy. Because as a boy, I sometimes try on girls' clothes in my own home, but I can't wear them out, it feels like I have 100%, the world knows me only 70%, I show people with this 70% every day, but the other 30% will always pop up, through other means. In the novel, the protagonist looks back on his life, doubts himself, and asks in the mirror, Is this me? Until I met a strange woman in the café who accused me, my sense of self was shaken even more, was I doing something wrong? I may have lived the way I am. I have to say that I am very impressed with Murakami who wrote this article, and express such a subtle emotion so accurately, very absolutely.
The subject matter of this collection of novels is very uniform, and most of them are stories that happen between "me" and the women I interacted with when I was younger. Most of the narration begins with sentences like "When I was young...", which makes me feel as if Murakami is tired of exploring the structure of the novel, and simply returns to the simplest way of telling stories. This collection of novels is not long, and it is not clear from it that the author has any kind of information
The ambition of writing, but makes people feel that the next pen is sincere, the text is natural, like a general who has completed a lifelong conquest, sits down and decides to unload the burden of a body, and easily writes something that he finds interesting.
Assessor 003
Peng· Pinoko
It is impossible to reproduce the crystal clarity it once was
A person only has that once in his life
When I read this book, I was not used to it, and I thought about it for a while, mainly because of two aspects: one is that the content of Murakami's writing seems to be back to "Norwegian Forest"; the other is the language style of the translator, who is accustomed to Lin Shaohua and Shi Xiaowei, and Ye Yi's translation is the first time to read and is not adaptable.
Murakami's short story collection is not strong, or even incomplete, such as "On the Stone Pillow", "Cream", "Carnival", which is a relatively casual writing. Reading these stories felt like walking into a coffee shop, seeing a very special old man, sitting next to him and chatting with him.
"Oh, I've been through something before..."
And so the story begins. The story seems to stop at a point. Storytelling has no purpose, does not seek to achieve any effect, does not want to attract the other party to listen, is to tell a story. I have to admit that I didn't read many of Murakami's novels, and so did this short story. What I like more than short stories is his novels "Norwegian Forest", "Strange Bird Line", "1Q84". In "First Person Singular", I prefer the "Confession of the Shinagawa Monkey", the ultimate loneliness and the ultimate love, like a person and then quietly steal her name.
I felt that Murakami's novel collection was a bit regressive, even fried cold rice. In terms of writing content, he seems to have returned to the concerns of the period of "Norwegian Forest", but time has changed, and the mentality of the 72-year-old Murakami has not been able to return to that year. The clarity of "Norwegian Forest" in sexual clarity is impossible to repeat, and a person can only have that once in his life. I think I was disappointed with Murakami's short story collection, and it would be more appropriate to read it as a sketch in a newspaper or magazine.
Reading Score: 6 out of 10
Synthesis of opinions
Based on the opinions of the reviewers, "First Person Singular" received a 7 out of 10 rating. Haruki Murakami returned to the narrative perspective of Norwegian Forest after many years, telling different stories in the first person. Was this attempt successful? Will the first-person perspective bring more empathy to the reader? Several judges had different views on this. Another reviewer also mentioned that Murakami's style is unique, and different translations will also affect the reading experience.
What do you think of this book? What do you think of the jury's opinion? Welcome to leave your encouragement and criticism in the message area!
Author | Dear judges
Edit | Li Yongbo
Proofreading | Liu Baoqing