Men without Women
What is the world of men like, in their solitude? Is it worth living a life for a Man without a Woman? How would the world of Men without Women look like? Japanese writer Haruki Murakami describes that kind of world in an anthology of 7 different short stories including the one titled for the collection, hyperlinked above — “Men without Women”.
Kafuku was in a very happy and successful marriage for 20 years, absolutely nothing to complaint about. His wife was still as passionate as him in bed. Yet, he finds out that she was sleeping around with a bunch of other men too. Few days after her natural demise, one of her partners bump into Kafuku in a bar and try to befriend him. Not knowing his intentions, how did he react to the situation? Drive My Car to know.
Kitaru didn’t make it to the college along with his girlfriend Erika, thus steadily losing chances to be with her anymore. Yet, Kitaru finds his lonely friend Tanimura, who recently broke up with his girlfriend, to be a very suitable person for Erika to date. Did Erika and Tanimura get along? Did Tanimura get rid of his loneliness? How did Kitaru spend the rest of his life? Tanimura eventually feels like all these happened just Yesterday.
Dr. Tokai is a person with intellectual acuity, who thinks he doesn’t need a woman for himself in his life. He is oblivious to his artificial life without a woman. Yet, he finds himself okay to be sleeping around with random women, that too with women who are already married or having a primary boyfriend. What if he becomes ‘lovesick’ one fine day when he is 52-years old already? What does it anyway have to do with “An Independent Organ?”
Habara finds a girl who is obliged to sleep with him every day. She is like the Scheherazade of A Thousand and One Nights, telling him stories every day after sex. In an installment of 2 days, she once tells him a story about her teenage love, how she broke into a boy’s house to steal something in memory of him and leave something in return. End of second day, she leaves a suspense to Habara about her “Love Burglar” quest. Did Scheherazade come back the next day to tell Habara what happened further to the Love Burglar?
Kino finds his wife naked in his bed when he returns early from a business trip. He decides not to endure the situation and pull off things together, but to break the marriage. Opens a bar and meets a lot of interesting customers. Also finds another girl to sleep with. Suddenly, all he sees are bad omen around him. Someone advises him to leave the city for a while. Did he make it back to the city to continue his bar business and to lead a fresh life with his new partner?
Strictly DO NOT READ the next section if you haven’t read ‘The Metamorphosis’ written by Franz Kafka!
Why should Gregor Samsa have such a weird experience of getting metamorphosed into a disgusting insect and being snapped by everyone? Why did he become so? Or rather, how would his afterlife be? How it be if we find Samsa in Love? When the story initially starts, it feels to us like Murakami made a parody or mockery out of The Metamorphosis. But you’ll come to know why Murakami chose to tell this story this way!
Don’t I get a chance to brag about my personal experience reading the book?
Well, I do! Usually how reading works for me is, one book would lead you to the other when an author mentions about another concept or author. You would have ready my previous post on how I happened to read ‘The Metamorphosis’ based on a recommendation from a Tamil author
Na. Muthukumar.
I feel it is truly essential for me personally to record how I happened to read ‘Men Without Women’ after ‘The Metamorphosis’. My actual pick after Metamorphosis was ‘The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor’ by Gabriel García Márquez, even though ‘Men without Women’ was in my list of next reads. When I completed The Metamorphosis, I learned that one of the next authors I planned to read — Haruki Murakami wrote a book titled ‘Kafka on the Shore’. When I read the plot of the story online, I thought Kafka is just a random name that Murakami picked.
The night after I finished Metamorphosis, I suddenly woke up from sleep and couldn’t fall asleep again for a while. So I just thought of reading the Preface of ‘Men without Women’. The title of sixth short story in the collection ‘Samsa in Love’ immediately caught my attention. The first few lines of the story itself revealed that the story is a sequel to The Metamorphosis. It was truly a cosmic connect that I happened to read this story on a weird late night just after reading The Metamorphosis.
For an eligible bachelor in late 20s like me, who many a times blindly believed it is not a big deal for a man to live without a woman, ‘Men without Women’ broke all my misconceptions about the thought. It haunted me like hell when I thought how would it be if I die alone 30–40 years later.
When I read Scheherazade, I gave a serious thought about what remains do I have of my puppy love? Though I never exchanged any physical gifts with my puppy love during school days, I did have a bunch of naive emails that I and she wrote us to each other. She once tricked me to click a link that asked me to list up to 3 names to find if I had crush on them. I eventually found that the link sent an email to her email ID on the list of names I had entered. Damn, her name was the first in the list. Her response was mild, she was surprised in a pleasant way to know I had a crush on her. However, that story ended there for no specific reason.
A spark was lit to go back to my first ever email ID created in early 2000s during my school days. It was unfortunately a bummer to me! Know why? See the screenshot below:
What a priceless treasure I had lost?
This is the kind of impact that stories make on us! Every single incident in the stories make us run through a parallel story in our heads, to associate ourselves in every situation the character in the story finds itself to be in.
I didn’t really hurry through reading the 150-page book quick. I limited up to 1 or maximum 2 stories per day so that it gave me ample time to digest every story, every situation and every character.
I also found that these stories were as much Women-centric as Men-centric. Though almost all stories had Men who found their Wives/Girlfriends to be sleeping around with other men, Murakami’s Men characters wasn’t even a bit judgmental about the Women characters in his stories.
Though almost all the lead Men in his stories had the reading habit, they had even more fine taste on music, especially Jazz. I realized that Murakami could have associated himself into all those stories he wrote, when I read this article online.
I have a sincere wish now!
I found all these 7 stories to be a perfect material for Anthology Web Series. Let us hope some big production company get inspired by these stories and give us a visual feast in the form of a web series like Modern Love in an OTT platform.
Sincere hugs, Murakami kun! ❤️
