The Elephant Vanishes: Stories
by Haruki Murakami
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Includes the story "Barn Burning" which is now the basis for the major motion picture Burning In the tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes, the imaginative genius that has made Haruki Murakami an international superstar is on full display. In these stories, 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 show more little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, in The Elephant Vanishes Murakami crosses the border between separate realities--and comes back bearing remarkable treasures show lessTags
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CGlanovsky People are strangely accepting of extremely absurd situations.
andomck Surreal short stories.
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Bár ezzel hipsterbölcsészek között nem hivalkodnék, de én szeretem Murakamit. Szeretem a banalitás határán táncoló nyelvét, szeretem, ahogy e nyelv mögül kikandikál egy párhuzamos mágikus világ jelenléte – még akkor is, ha ezt a mágikus világot folyton ugyanazokkal a trükkökkel jelzi. Szeretem továbbá párhuzamos világainak érthetetlen pszeudo-logikáját. Szeretem még azt is, hogy folyton mintha ugyanazt a szereplőt írná meg – ezt a jó harmincas, még európai szemmel is kirívóan ambiciómentes figurát, akinek a puszta léte is istenkáromlásnak tűnhet egy tősgyökeres japán számára. Szeretem, hogy olyan összetéveszthetetlen. Ezzel együtt utolsó könyve után némi elhidegülés állt show more be a kapcsolatunkban, ám most itt van a Köddé vált elefánt, így megint szent a béke*. Imponálóan egységes kötet ez.
Azt hiszem, a Murakami könyvek mind a beváltatlan ígéretekről szólnak**. Hogy létrejöhet kapcsolat emberek között, de nem tarthat örökké. Hogy léteznek titkok, de sosem érthetjük meg a logikájukat. Hogy részt vehetünk a varázslatban, de végső soron ott állunk majd üres kézzel. Ezért árad a könyveiből valami megbékélt szomorúság. Minden eszközzel mintha ezt a szomorúságot építené: találunk regényeiben hamis kulcsokat – jeleneteket vagy szereplőket, amik mintha közelebb vinnének minket a megfejtéshez, de csak olyan ajtókat nyitnak, amik a semmibe vezetnek. És ott vannak a menetrendszerű rejtélyes telefonhívások, mert a telefonhívások kiválóan alkalmasak arra, hogy érzekeltessük vele az emberi kommunikáció kozmikus értelmetlenségét: beszélgetések fizikai kontaktus lehetősége nélkül. És persze ott vannak a macskák – akik időnként szintén hajlamosak úgy viselkedni, mint egy testet öltött beváltatlan ígéret… Ésatöbbi, ésatöbbi. Szép, kerek világ ez.
* Igaz, ez a könyv angol nyelvterületen már szinte a krisztusi korba lépett. A magyar könyvkiadás malmai lassan őrölnek.
** Loptam egy Thomas Bernhard-idézetet, ami a Murakami-életmű mottója is lehetne: „Ha egész életünk során minden kérdésünkre válaszolnának, a végén mégse jutnánk messzebbre, mint anélkül.” show less
Azt hiszem, a Murakami könyvek mind a beváltatlan ígéretekről szólnak**. Hogy létrejöhet kapcsolat emberek között, de nem tarthat örökké. Hogy léteznek titkok, de sosem érthetjük meg a logikájukat. Hogy részt vehetünk a varázslatban, de végső soron ott állunk majd üres kézzel. Ezért árad a könyveiből valami megbékélt szomorúság. Minden eszközzel mintha ezt a szomorúságot építené: találunk regényeiben hamis kulcsokat – jeleneteket vagy szereplőket, amik mintha közelebb vinnének minket a megfejtéshez, de csak olyan ajtókat nyitnak, amik a semmibe vezetnek. És ott vannak a menetrendszerű rejtélyes telefonhívások, mert a telefonhívások kiválóan alkalmasak arra, hogy érzekeltessük vele az emberi kommunikáció kozmikus értelmetlenségét: beszélgetések fizikai kontaktus lehetősége nélkül. És persze ott vannak a macskák – akik időnként szintén hajlamosak úgy viselkedni, mint egy testet öltött beváltatlan ígéret… Ésatöbbi, ésatöbbi. Szép, kerek világ ez.
* Igaz, ez a könyv angol nyelvterületen már szinte a krisztusi korba lépett. A magyar könyvkiadás malmai lassan őrölnek.
** Loptam egy Thomas Bernhard-idézetet, ami a Murakami-életmű mottója is lehetne: „Ha egész életünk során minden kérdésünkre válaszolnának, a végén mégse jutnánk messzebbre, mint anélkül.” show less
The stories collected here may not be individually compelling, at least not initially. Together they generate certain harmonics, overtones that reappear reflected or distorted as they move from one story to the next. Lassitude is, perhaps, the overarching emotional dynamic (if lassitude can be a dynamic). And most often the main character is struggling to reach escape velocity from the doldrums of the middle years (25 to 35) in which, it seems, these individuals are not yet fully formed (like an echo of adolescence).
The title story stands out, with its casual magic realist plot device, but equally telling is “TV People” and “The Dancing Dwarf”, which for some reason had me thinking of Peter Carey’s Tristan Smith. On the other show more hand, “The Second Bakery Attack”, “Lederhosen”, and “Barn Burning” cross the cusp of a life-change without appeal to non-realist technique, and they do this just as effectively.
Characteristic Murakami internationalist brand references abound and only one or two of the stories is tightly fixed to a Japanese locale. Sometimes it feels as though this is writing for the export market. Or maybe that veneer appeals locally. In any case, it does not detract from a set of stories that may continuing sounding long after the book is set aside. show less
The title story stands out, with its casual magic realist plot device, but equally telling is “TV People” and “The Dancing Dwarf”, which for some reason had me thinking of Peter Carey’s Tristan Smith. On the other show more hand, “The Second Bakery Attack”, “Lederhosen”, and “Barn Burning” cross the cusp of a life-change without appeal to non-realist technique, and they do this just as effectively.
Characteristic Murakami internationalist brand references abound and only one or two of the stories is tightly fixed to a Japanese locale. Sometimes it feels as though this is writing for the export market. Or maybe that veneer appeals locally. In any case, it does not detract from a set of stories that may continuing sounding long after the book is set aside. show less
This book is a collection of short stories, starting with The Wind-up Bird & Tuesday's Women & finishing with the title story, The Elephant Vanishes. On turning the page to the first tale, I had that strange yet familiar feeling that a Murakami character must experience, a sense of the unknown mixed with an undercurrent of deja vu. First there was the title, then reading further, the understanding that I had read this before, that it was the opening to probably his best known work, The Windup Bird Chronicles.
His stories deal with dissatisfaction with a heavily mechanised consumer driven society, people are disorientated, out of balance with what they perceive their lives should be, they are haunted by a lack of equilibrium & an aching show more sense of some loss. There's the sense of something dead in the relationship of the couple in the 1st tale, the overwhelming hunger of the pair in the 2nd, which results in them robbing a McDonalds for burgers. In The Sleep, a housewife hasn’t slept for 17 days & doesn’t tell a soul, she spends this time reading books & at some point sees her mother in law in the sleeping face of her husband, realising how far apart they’ve drifted, & in the title story the narrator has an obsession over an elephant & its subsequent vanishing, to the extent he has a scrapbook on the subject & even where there's a possible love interest he cannot leave the subject alone even when there's no interest from this other party.
Murakami creates these worlds that, just below the surface, just outside the corner of your eye lays another version of reality, not an alternate version, more like boxes within boxes. These are modern fairytales, where instead of being lost in some ancient woodland, where your trail of crumbs home have been eaten, the hero/heroine is lost in Tokyo, with a tenuous (if lucky) connection to the life about them, sometimes devoid of a work relationship, sometimes family/tradition. It’s in this world that green monsters swear undying love, dancing dwarves help you to score with a girl, but there’s always some condition. Its a world
where an aura of surrealism looks over your shoulder, where cause & effect change places. A place where what you imagined happening is just as valid as the memory of what happened, as in my favourite tale - On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl, One Beautiful April Morning. This tiny story of just 6 pages, where the narrator on passing his 100% perfect girl (her walking east to west & him west to east), doesn’t stop & talk to her. Later on, describing this to someone, he wished he could have stopped her. He then tells this tale complete with, Once upon a time, about 2 people perfect for each other meeting, & how it’s a sad tale. This is a beautiful, funny, sad story that I adored (In fact I read it twice over) that perfectly describes the human relationships within this book.
The Vanishing Elephant is a collection of stories & modern fairytales, that are darkly comic. They are full of lonely fragmented people, that live a puzzled dislocated existence. Some are shallow with little interior life; others have a deep yearning for meaning & self fulfilment. It’s in these tales, sometimes snuck between the lines, that the Murakami magic happens, where the humorous & puzzling tales highlight the absurdities in modern life & by the use of satire points to the mundanity of the daily merry-go-round that is our lives.
http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/elephant-vanishes.html show less
His stories deal with dissatisfaction with a heavily mechanised consumer driven society, people are disorientated, out of balance with what they perceive their lives should be, they are haunted by a lack of equilibrium & an aching show more sense of some loss. There's the sense of something dead in the relationship of the couple in the 1st tale, the overwhelming hunger of the pair in the 2nd, which results in them robbing a McDonalds for burgers. In The Sleep, a housewife hasn’t slept for 17 days & doesn’t tell a soul, she spends this time reading books & at some point sees her mother in law in the sleeping face of her husband, realising how far apart they’ve drifted, & in the title story the narrator has an obsession over an elephant & its subsequent vanishing, to the extent he has a scrapbook on the subject & even where there's a possible love interest he cannot leave the subject alone even when there's no interest from this other party.
Murakami creates these worlds that, just below the surface, just outside the corner of your eye lays another version of reality, not an alternate version, more like boxes within boxes. These are modern fairytales, where instead of being lost in some ancient woodland, where your trail of crumbs home have been eaten, the hero/heroine is lost in Tokyo, with a tenuous (if lucky) connection to the life about them, sometimes devoid of a work relationship, sometimes family/tradition. It’s in this world that green monsters swear undying love, dancing dwarves help you to score with a girl, but there’s always some condition. Its a world
where an aura of surrealism looks over your shoulder, where cause & effect change places. A place where what you imagined happening is just as valid as the memory of what happened, as in my favourite tale - On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl, One Beautiful April Morning. This tiny story of just 6 pages, where the narrator on passing his 100% perfect girl (her walking east to west & him west to east), doesn’t stop & talk to her. Later on, describing this to someone, he wished he could have stopped her. He then tells this tale complete with, Once upon a time, about 2 people perfect for each other meeting, & how it’s a sad tale. This is a beautiful, funny, sad story that I adored (In fact I read it twice over) that perfectly describes the human relationships within this book.
The Vanishing Elephant is a collection of stories & modern fairytales, that are darkly comic. They are full of lonely fragmented people, that live a puzzled dislocated existence. Some are shallow with little interior life; others have a deep yearning for meaning & self fulfilment. It’s in these tales, sometimes snuck between the lines, that the Murakami magic happens, where the humorous & puzzling tales highlight the absurdities in modern life & by the use of satire points to the mundanity of the daily merry-go-round that is our lives.
http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/elephant-vanishes.html show less
This is a strong collection of stories, with as much of a narrative thread running through them as you get with Murakami. My favourite pieces are Sleep, which gave me a different view of life, Barn Burning, which was deliciously creepy, and The Dancing Dwarf, a horror in the mould of traditional Japanese fairy stories. These three really stuck in my mind, but all of the stories are good, exploring how changes in the world around us upset the fragile balance we're trying to maintain, and how that balance is only ever surface appearance. What goes on beneath is ancient and unchanging and solitary.
No one captures urban isolation and loneliness as good as Murakami. There were some misses in this book, but most of them were a hit. I especially loved the one with the penpal club (called "A Window") where the author writes to unknown recipients with the purpose of improving their English, but they are actually lonely and just wants to talk to someone. The "Lederhosen" story was particularly insightful for depression since something as simple as picking off a set of pants for your husband can set off your feelings if you have been suppressing them. "Barn Burning" was brilliant, and so was "A Family Affair". A Family Affair is the story of a brother getting to know the fiancee of his sister, of whom he doesn't think much of. The story show more is peppered with dry and sarcastic humour, but what really struck me was the attitude of the brother - satisfied with mediocrity, not wanting much from life, and knowing his limitations. "Sleep" was another illuminating story - about a housewife who was suddenly unable to sleep any more, going through her days in a fugue, but having an exceptional clarity of mind during the night and voraciously consuming classical Russian literature by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
One thing that really, really bothered me was the "Little Green Monster" story. It's unforgivably misogynistic. Murakami tries to paint women as capable of intolerable cruelty and being unreasonable. I'm pretty sure he must have been though a bad breakup, or had a bone to pick with someone when he was writing this story.
But overall, if you are a Murakami completionist, you have to absolutely get this. Or you like insightful stories about urban isolation, this is your book too. show less
One thing that really, really bothered me was the "Little Green Monster" story. It's unforgivably misogynistic. Murakami tries to paint women as capable of intolerable cruelty and being unreasonable. I'm pretty sure he must have been though a bad breakup, or had a bone to pick with someone when he was writing this story.
But overall, if you are a Murakami completionist, you have to absolutely get this. Or you like insightful stories about urban isolation, this is your book too. show less
The quote from Henry David Thoreau goes something like, "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I thought of that quote a lot when reading this book. This book is a series of short stories. It seemed to me, the recurring theme in these stories is this: The main character gets a glimpse of something extraordinary (sometimes potentially supernatural, sometimes not, but always extraordinary). But, then the pull of the mundane life takes over and they are drawn back into it. The book is full of missed opportunities to experience the extraordinary.
As with all of Murakami's books, this one is well written, especially the character development. In some of these short stories, there are hints of his longer works. Such as, one is practically show more a prologue to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This book is worth reading, for sure. show less
As with all of Murakami's books, this one is well written, especially the character development. In some of these short stories, there are hints of his longer works. Such as, one is practically show more a prologue to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This book is worth reading, for sure. show less
Haruki Murakami’s strength is the novel. It allows him the chance to truly dig into his strange subjects. Yet, saying his novels are better than his short stories is somewhat like saying that 10 million dollars is better than 9 million dollars. The difference isn’t worth worrying about.
In this collection of short stories, Murakami continues to use strange and slightly disturbing situations to explore what makes his antagonists tick. In doing so, we are lucky to join on the journey. There are few misses in this collection. And the hits are grand and memorable.
I have said it before and I will say it again. I approach every new Murakami book with the fear that I will be disappointed. I am never disappointed, I am always enthralled, and show more I am always thrilled to have discovered Murakami in the first place. Each new reading is like having that first discovery all over again. show less
In this collection of short stories, Murakami continues to use strange and slightly disturbing situations to explore what makes his antagonists tick. In doing so, we are lucky to join on the journey. There are few misses in this collection. And the hits are grand and memorable.
I have said it before and I will say it again. I approach every new Murakami book with the fear that I will be disappointed. I am never disappointed, I am always enthralled, and show more I am always thrilled to have discovered Murakami in the first place. Each new reading is like having that first discovery all over again. show less
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Author Information
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Haruki Murakami was born on January 12, 1949 in Kyoto, Japan and studied at Tokyo's Waseda University. He opened a coffeehouse/jazz bar in the capital called Peter Cat with his wife. He became a full-time author following the publication of his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, in 1979. He writes both fiction and non-fiction works. His fiction show more works include Norwegian Wood, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, The Strange Library, and Men Without Women. Several of his stories have been adapted for the stage and as films. His nonfiction works include What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. He has received numerous literary awards including the Franz Kafka Prize for Kafka on the Shore, the Yomiuri Prize for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and the Jerusalem Prize. He has translated into Japanese literature written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Der Elefant verschwindet
- Original title
- 象の消滅
- Original publication date
- 1985 (original Japanese) (original Japanese); 1993 (Eng) (Eng)
- Important places
- Japan; Tokyo, Japan
- First words*
- Der Aufziehvogel und die Dienstagsfrauen: Als diese Frau eintraf, stand ich gerade in der Küche und kochte Spaghetti.
Der Bäckereiüberfall: Hunger hatten wir, so viel stand fest.
Der zweite Bäckereiüberfall: Ob die Entscheidung, meiner Frau von dem Überfall auf die Bäckerei zu erzählen, richtig war oder nicht, weiss ich immer noch nicht genau.
Schlaf: Es ist der siebzehnte Tag ohne Schlaf.
Der Untergang des Römischen Reiches, der Indianeraufstand von 1881, Hitlers Einfall in Polen und die Sturmwelt: Sonntag.
Scheunenabbrennen: Ich hatte sie auf der Hochzeitsfeier eines Bekannten kennengelernt und mich mit ihr angefreundet. (show all 8)
Frachtschiff nach China: Wann bin ich dem ersten Chinesen begegnet?
Der Elefant verschwindet: Vom Verschwinden des Elefanten aus dem städtischen Elefantenhaus erfuhr ich aus der Zeitung. - Quotations
- Memory is like fiction; or else it’s fiction that’s like memory. This really came
home to me once I started writing fiction, that memory seemed like a kind of fiction,
or vice versa. Either way, no matter how hard... (show all) you try to put everything neatly into
shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn’t even there
anymore. You’re left with this pile of kittens lolling all over one another. Warm with
life, hopelessly unstable. “The Last Lawn of the Afternoon” - Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Der Aufziehvogel und die Dienstagsfrauen: Man kann nicht ewig weiterzählen.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Der Bäckereiüberfall: Klick.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Der zweite Bäckereiüberfall: Ich legte mich der Länge nach ins Boot, schloss die Augen und wartete, dass die Flut mich trüge, wohin ich gehöre.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Schlaf: Sie werden es umstürzen.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Der Untergang des Römischen Reiches, der Indianeraufstand von 1881, Hitlers Einfall in Polen und die Sturmwelt: So lebe ich, ob der Wind nun weht oder nicht.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Scheunenabbrennen: Nachts im Dunkeln denke ich manchmal an die niederbrennenden Scheunen.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Frachtschiff nach China: Ach, meine Freunde, China ist so weit.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Der Elefant verschwindet: Und kommen niemals hierher zurück. - Original language
- Japanese
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- 895.635 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages Literatures of East and Southeast Asia Japanese Japanese fiction 1945–2000
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- PL856 .U673 .E44 — Language and Literature Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania Languages of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania Japanese language and literature Japanese literature Individual authors and works
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