The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant Vanishes includes two of my favorite stories by any contemporary writer.

Set in the forested vicinity of a factory that makes elephants, “The Dancing Dwarf” follows the adventures of a marvelous dwarf who once danced for the king, alas, now pursued by soldiers of the revolution. The other side of the spectrum, “The Last Lawn of the Afternoon” partakes of the fantastic only by osmosis. The care this teenage boy takes mowing and trimming his assigned lawns feels so real it reminds me of myself.

This range keeps the reader slightly off balance and full of expectation, which… show more.

His short stories have their own strange endings. I love how he brings the reader into a believable make-believe, and a snapshot of life many of us have oftentimes overlooked. Haruki Murakami has indeed become a popular novelist, and has written many beautiful books. But I believe The Elephant Vanishes is a hidden gem less read by many. He has made me see life from a completely different, and refreshing perspective.

Take Faulkner’s story, but move the action from post-Civil War Mississippi to modern-day Japan. Replace all the characters but a sociopathic barn burner. Add a mime. Roughly speaking, that’s the recipe for Murakami’s beautiful, baffling and disturbing meditation on the nature of evil. Each time I read it, I feel the metaphysical mystery is just beyond my ken—but I still love everything about it. 

Burning, the 2018 film adaptation directed by Lee Chang-dong, is just as good. It takes Murakami’s story, transports the action to South Korea, sprinkles in a couple of Faulkner references, adds a nod to Schrödinger’s… show more.