#510 Nausea 1979- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami is talking to a friend with an odd story. This friend has a very unique philosophy on life and friendship.
He likes to sleep with his friend's wives and girlfriends. He doesn’t have
relationships with them, and doesn’t want them to break up, but he finds no
moral issue with it either. In fact he thinks it helps their friendship.
“It was the act of sleeping with his friends’ girlfriends
and wives that really turned him on…[he] had absolutely no interest in tricking
[his] friends—in turning them into cuckolds, that sort of thing. Sleeping with
their woman makes [him] feel closer to them. It’s a family thing.”
The problems he is having don’t seem to revolve around the
infidelities of friendship. Once for forty straight days, he vomited every day.
He could only hold down enough food so he wouldn't starve. Strange phone calls
accompanied the sickness. No matter where he went or tried to hide, both the phone
calls and the vomiting continued. Then just like that it stopped.
The vomiting could have been a prank, or could have been
retribution from one of his friends, or it could have been his own guilt. Since
it only happened when he was alone, maybe he was sick of being alone. It is
never revealed.
Because Murakami inserted himself into this one, I’d like
for minute to think that this was a story about him talking to a potential
character in one of his books. When discussing what all this meant he says:
“Anyway it’s a just a theory. I can give you hundreds of
those. The problem is which theory you’re willing to accept. And what you learn
from it.”
Murakami has often written shorter pieces that go on to
evolve into larger things. I think he’s telling this character to think about
this idea and predicament I put you in, and lets see if it goes anywhere. Very
Meta.
Notable Passage: “Things that start for no reason end for no
reason. And the opposite can be true.”
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