New Yorker Fiction Review #218: "Cream" by Haruki Murakami

Review of a short story from the Jan. 28, 2019 issue of The New Yorker...

Haruki Murakami has earned a special place in my heart over the past few years. Despite several unsuccessful attempts to read his novels over the years, I have read at least a half-dozen of his short stories now simply because of reading and reviewing the short stories in The New Yorker.

I don't think it's necessary to get into the plot of this story. With Murakami, it's always mysterious, vague, lonely, slightly super-natural, and impossible -- in the end -- to make sense of or find immediate meaning. The rewards of a Haruki Murakami story are not always immediately available, perhaps because the reward of a Haruki Murakami story is the story itself; it exists because it exists, it does not exist to entertain or blow you away or bring you to your literary knees.

What I think is unique about this story is, however, that Haruki Murakami essentially provides the key to understanding his work right in the text of the story. It lies in the following exchange between the story's only two characters:

"But I get the feeling," I said, "that principle or intention wasn't really the issue." 

My friend looked confused. "Are you telling me there's no need to know what it was all about?"

I nodded. 

And that, my friends, is the first and most important thing you need to know about our old friend Haruki. Now you're free to enjoy his stories just for the sheer pleasure of their eerie mood and for the deep, hidden lessons that you will often uncover from the stories days, months, or even years after you've read them, when some scene or moment from one of the stories comes back to you.