"The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami

This is the first collection of stories by Murakami, collected from his publications in different magazines.  The quality is patchy.  Some stories are amazing, but mostly those that he later developed into novels, like the beginning of the Wind-Up Bird chronicle, which is here in almost unchanged form from the first chapter of the novel.  Some honestly make me wonder how could anyone publish that, like the story about the customer service clerk who wrote letters to an unknown woman.

Another observation which was brought to my attention by my dear cousin who's also an MA in Comparative Literature at Yale University (and currently doing her PhD in Comparative literature at UChicago), was that the treatment of sex by Murakami is way too imaginary.  "People, especially women, do not have sex as easily as in Murakami's books" my cousin said.  This is not immediately obvious in the novels, since they are long and complex, but becomes very obvious in the short stories. 

This might stem from the fact that Murakami married his college sweetheart and thus one can assume his sexual experience relies much on "thought experiments" but the speed and smoothness with which some of his female characters jump into bed is just beyond belief (especially obvious if you've spent any amount of time in Japan and have experienced first-hand the extreme conservatism of Japanese culture).

It is an interesting enough book to read casually, but completely pales in comparison to "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", "Kafka on the Shore", "Dance, Dance, Dance" or even "Wild Sheep Chase".