Spaghetti and Loneliness

One of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami,has finally gone on record -- to the Harvard Book Review -- about what I think is one of my favorite short stories in quite some time. As you might imagine, most of the world thinks it "plotless."


(To which I say: does your life have a plot? Or even a given day, really?)

Anyway, enjoy. (Hopefully)

PS: The story is here:

http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/people/efros/personal/murakami.txt


JB: I'd like to talk about your story from the New Yorker, "The Year of Spaghetti," and the different things that spaghetti means in your work.

HM: I wrote that story more than twenty years ago, when I was much younger. I was in my early thirties at the time. That is one of my favorite stories. I remember how it was when I wrote it. I like spaghetti myself, very much. And I lived in Italy for a couple of years, so I ate spaghetti every day, as a meal. I just wanted to write some story about spaghetti, about making spaghetti every day. It's just an idea. And when I remember cooking spaghetti I remember other things, what happened as I was cooking spaghetti. It's strange, but many things can happen when you are cooking spaghetti. I don't know why.

JB: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle also begins with someone cooking spaghetti.

HM: Yes, that's right. The same thing. I cook myself, and I cook spaghetti very often. And it takes time to boil the water, so many things happen.

JB: It's funny that both of them are about cooking spaghetti and being interrupted.

HM: While you are cooking spaghetti, you think about many things. So many things happen in your mind while you are cooking spaghetti. And you are getting kind of philosophical while you are cooking spaghetti.

JB: In the story, spaghetti is also related to loneliness, and it's a similar scene in Wind-Up.

HM: Before I was married, I cooked spaghetti just for myself. It's a very lonely task, to cook spaghetti for yourself. So I think its kind of natural that you think about loneliness when you cook spaghetti for yourself. You know, when you're making a sandwich for yourself you don't think about loneliness so much. But when you cook spaghetti, it's different.

JB: Because of that waiting...

HM: That's right. And eating a sandwich by yourself is not so lonely, but eating spaghetti by yourself is different. You have to be conscious about your loneliness when you cook and when you eat spaghetti alone. It's a fact.