Men Without Women
by Haruki Murakami
Book Club Date:June 2022
📖 Book Summary
Haruki Murakami's short-story collection, published in Japanese in 2014 and in English translation by Knopf in 2017. It contains seven stories in order: "Drive My Car," "Yesterday," "An Independent Organ," "Scheherazade," "Kino," "Samsa in Love," and "Men Without Women." Murakami himself said: "The motive for this book is just like the title *Men Without Women*. From the very first story, that phrase kept lodging itself in my head. I used it as a pillar and tried to write a series of short stories revolving around it." It turns out that one turn is all it takes to become a man without women, and there is no going back. In that singular world you will be called one of the "men without women." Becoming one is remarkably simple: love a woman deeply, and then she goes somewhere and never returns.
✍️ Reading Notes
*Men Without Women* is a collection of independent short stories. The film *Drive My Car* deftly weaves together three of them — "Drive My Car," "Scheherazade," and "Kino" — combining a wife's infidelity and death with the healing journey that follows. The stories in the book mostly end inside the pain of "loss," while the film, by interleaving the three narratives, walks the protagonist out of his depressive trauma. The biggest difference between film and book is that in the stories the protagonist falls into pain without healing, because he is running away — running from the searing emotions inside, from the pain that loss brings, from his longing for a loved one. Yet as the film puts it: "Chekhov's lines are dangerous." During the emotionless table-read process, the actors are forced to face the truest desires within themselves, mirroring their own experiences against their characters' until they merge into one. In the film the protagonist, by observing or participating in the stage play, confronts his own desires and wounds head-on, and through the script and dialogue is unable to keep running from the injury — and begins to try to make peace with himself. The driving scenes in the film are carried largely by a red Saab. The female driver's steady handling takes both the protagonist and the audience through pain and regret, steering life's course forward. If you, too, are stuck inside a wound you cannot leave, consider watching this year's Oscar-winning masterpiece *Drive My Car*, and try to gaze at your own real thoughts and feelings — and heal. Perhaps your wound needs more healing than you think.
💬 Discussion Points
- 1Do you think these men "lost a woman" or "lost their own self-narrative"?
- 2Are these protagonists really loving another person, or loving a version of themselves that feels loved?
- 3Why do so many wounds appear in the form of "not being said directly"? Is it masculine conditioning, generational habit, or a kind of avoidance everyone practises?