일인칭 단수

무라카미 하루키 저/홍은주 역 | 문학동네 | 2020년 11월 26일 | 원서 : 一人稱單數

 

"열아홉살 무렵의 나는 내 마음이 어떻게 움직이는지 거의 알지 못했고, 당연히 타인의 마음이 어떻게 움직이는지도 제대로 알지 못했다. 그래도 기쁨이나 슬픔이 뭔지는 대충 알고 있다고 내 딴은 생각했었다."

-무라카미 하루키, 일인칭 단수-

 

『노르웨이의 숲』 『1Q84』 『기사단장 죽이기』 등의 작품으로 세대와 국경을 넘어 독보적인 존재감을 발휘하고 있는 세계적인 작가 무라카미 하루키가 『여자 없는 남자들』 이후 6년 만에 선보이는 소설집. 작가 특유의 미스터리한 세계관과 감성적인 필치, 일인칭 주인공 ‘나’의 시점으로 진행되는 작품이라는 공통점을 지닌 단편들을 모았다. 누군가의 삶을 스쳐가는 짧고 긴 만남을 그려낸 여덟 작품 속에서 유일무이의 하루키 월드를 구성하는 다채로운 요소들을 한데 만나볼 수 있다.

 

목차

돌베개에 7

크림 27

찰리 파커 플레이즈 보사노바 51

위드 더 비틀스　With the Beatles 73

『야쿠르트 스왈로스 시집』 123

사육제(Carnaval) 149

시나가와 원숭이의 고백 183

일인칭 단수 215

 

저 : 무라카미 하루키 (Haruki Murakami,むらかみ はるき,村上春樹)

1949년 일본 교토시에서 태어나 효고현 아시야시에서 자랐다. 1968년 와세다 대학교 제1문학부에 입학했다. 재즈 카페를 운영하던 중 1979년 『바람의 노래를 들어라』로 제81회 군조 신인 문학상을 수상하며 29세에 데뷔했다. 1982년 『양을 쫓는 모험』으로 제4회 노마 문예 신인상을, 1985년 『세계의 끝과 하드보일드 원더랜드』로 제21회 다니자키 준이치로 상을 수상했다. 미국 문학에서 영향을 받은 간결하고 세련된 문체와 현대인이 느끼는 고독과 허무의 감성은 당시 젊은이들로부터 큰 공감을 불러일으켜 작가의 이름을 문단과 대중에게 널리 알렸다. 1987년 발표한 『노르웨이의 숲』은 일본에서 폭발적인 반응을 얻은 후, 일본을 넘어 세계적으로 ‘무라카미 하루키 붐’을 일으켰다. 1995년 『태엽 감는 새 연대기』로 제47회 요미우리 문학상을 수상했다. 2002년 『해변의 카프카』를 발표하여 2005년 영어 번역본이 [뉴욕 타임스]의 ‘올해의 책’에 선정되면서 국제적인 명성을 한층 높였다. 2006년 프란츠 카프카 상을 수상하고, 2009년 세계적 권위를 자랑하는 예루살렘 상을, 2011년에는 카탈로니아 국제상을 수상하여 문학적 성과를 다시 한번 평가받았다. 『댄스 댄스 댄스』, 『언더그라운드』, 『스푸트니크의 연인』, 『신의 아이들은 모두 춤춘다』, 『어둠의 저편』, 『도쿄 기담집』, 『1Q84』, 『기사단장 죽이기』 등 수많은 장편소설, 단편소설, 에세이, 번역서를 발표했다. 현재 그의 작품은 45개 이상의 언어로 번역되어 전 세계 독자들로부터 사랑받고 있다.

 

역 : 홍은주

이화여자대학교 불어교육학과와 같은 대학원 불어불문학과를 졸업했다. 2000년부터 일본에 거주하며 프랑스어와 일본어 번역가로 활동하고 있다. 옮긴 책으로 『기사단장 죽이기』, 『수리부엉이는 황혼에 날아오른다』, 『고로지 할아버지의 뒷마무리』, 『마사&겐』, 『실화를 바탕으로』, 『미크로코스모스』, 『녹턴』 등이 있다.

http://www.yes24.com/Product/Goods/95538356

 

*'하루키스트' 힘은 무엇일까···홍은주 번역가에게 들어봤다 - 중앙일보

https://news.joins.com/article/21803772

 

*무라카미 하루키의 매혹적인 사실 15가지

http://www.nyculturebeat.com/?mid=People2&document_srl=4038660

 

 

First Person Singular, STORIES 

By HARUKI MURAKAMI, Translated by Philip Gabriel (April 6, 2021)

 

ABOUT FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

“Some novelists hold a mirror up to the world and some, like Haruki Murakami, use the mirror as a portal to a universe hidden beyond it.” —The Wall Street Journal

 

A mind-bending new collection of short stories from the internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami.

 

The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator may or may not be Murakami himself. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides.

 

Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory. . . all with a signature Murakami twist.

 

Excerpt.

First Person Singular

 

I hardly ever wear suits. At most, maybe two or three times a year, since there are rarely any situations where I need to get dressed up. I may wear a casual jacket on occasion, but no tie, or leather shoes. That’s the type of life I chose for myself, so that’s how things have worked out.

 

Sometimes, though, even when there’s no need for it, I do decide to wear a suit and tie. Why? When I open my closet and check out what kind of clothes are there (I have to do that or else I don’t know what kind of clothes I own), and gaze at the suits I’ve hardly ever worn, the dress shirts still in the dry cleaner’s plastic garment bags, and the ties that look brand new, no trace of ever having been used, I start to feel apologetic toward these clothes. Then I try them on just to see how they look. I experiment with various tie knots to see if I still remember how to do them. Including one making a proper dimple. The only time I do all this is when I’m home alone. If someone else is here, I’d have to explain what I’m up to.

 

Once I go to the trouble of getting the outfit on, it seems a waste to take it all off right away, so I go out for a while dressed up like that. Strolling around town in a suit and tie. And it feels pretty good. I get the sense that even my facial expression and gait are transformed. It’s an invigorat­ing sensation, as if I’ve temporarily stepped away from the everyday. But after an hour or so of roaming, this newness fades. I get tired of wearing a suit and tie, the tie starts to feel itchy and too tight, like it’s choking me. The leather shoes click too hard and loud as they strike the pavement. So I go home, slip off the leather shoes, peel off the suit and tie, change into a worn-out set of sweatpants and sweatshirt, plop down on the sofa, and feel relaxed and at peace. This is my little one-hour secret ceremony, entirely harmless— or at least not something I need to feel guilty about.

 

Editorial Reviews

“All fiction is magic. That’s the thought that occurred to me often as I read First Person Singular, the brilliant new book of stories by Haruki Murakami. . . . Whatever you want to call Murakami’s work—magic realism, supernatural realism—he writes like a mystery tramp, exposing his global readership to the essential and cosmic (yes, cosmic!) questions that only art can provoke: What does it mean to carry the baggage of identity? Who is this inside my head in relation to the external, so-called real world? Is the person I was years ago the person I am now? Can a name be stolen by a monkey?. . . . [Murakami allows] his own voice to enter the narratives, creating a confessional tone that reminded me of Alice Munro’s late work. . . . Describing how these stories succeed is like trying to describe exactly why, more than 50 years later, a Beatles song still sounds fresh.”

—David Means, The New York Times Book Review

 

“First Person Singular marks a blazing and brilliant return to form. . . . Here we have a taut and tight, suspenseful and spellbinding, witty and wonderful group of eight stories. . . . All are told in the first person, most by narrators looking back from the vantage point of middle age on youthful experiences, obsessions, or encounters. And there isn’t a weak one in the bunch. The stories echo with Murakami’s preoccupations. Nostalgia and longing for the charged, evocative moments of young adulthood. Memory’s power and fragility; how identity forms . . . the at once intransigent and fragile nature of the “self.” Guilt, shame, and regret for mistakes made. . . . Music’s power to make indelible impressions. . . . The themes become a kind of meter against which all the stories make their particular, chiming rhythms. . . . This mesmerizing collection would make a superb introduction to Murakami for anyone who hasn’t yet fallen under his spell; his legion of devoted fans will gobble it up and beg for more.”

—Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe

 

“Haruki Murakami is a master of the mesmerizing head-scratcher. His fiction, whether long or short, highlights life's essential strangeness and unfathomability. . . . The eight stories in First Person Singular [. . .] are classic Murakami, filled with multiple recurrent obsessions — jazz, classical music, Beatles, baseball, and memories of perplexing young love. . . . Murakami's plainspoken short stories, like his more complex novels, raise existential questions about perception, memory, and the meaning of it all—though he's the opposite of heavy-handed, and rarely proposes answers. . . . What is it all about, his frequently awestruck and befuddled characters wonder repeatedly—and contagiously. . . . "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey" is a standout that will appeal especially to readers enchanted by Murakami's surrealist turns, which blur the line between dreams and reality. . . . [A] winning collection.”

—Heller McAlpin, NPR

 

“Haruki Murakami often seems most at home in his short-story collections, cycling through his various fixations unburdened by the narrative mechanics of his novels. First Person Singular is no exception, offering ruminations on the fickleness of memory while fleeting from baseball to Beatlemania to a Kafka-inspired talking monkey.”

—Chris Stanton, Vulture

 

“For new readers, First Person Singular is a crash course in appreciating Murakami. . . . [These stories] are steeped in the love of music—especially of jazz, classical and the Beatles—that reverberates throughout his work. There is a piece on his famous passion for baseball (it was supposedly while watching a game that he was inspired to become a writer) and another that includes the return of a talking monkey he first wrote about 15 years ago. Most of all, though, these stories are unmistakably Murakami’s for the way they traffic in his signature themes of time and memory, nostalgia and young love. They are characterized, like so much of his writing, by the collision of everyday realism with the surreal and the sublime.”

—Alexander Nurnberg, The Times (UK)

 

“Murakami has woven a lifelong obsession with music into his writing, including in his stunning First Person Singular. . . . The pieces here tap the author’s infatuations with the Beatles and Mozart, baseball and poetry, transgressive sex and fleeting romance, served up with dollops of American pop culture. It’s all here, narrated in a range of voices, from deadpan poet to magical realist to song critic. Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and other jazz greats pop up throughout. . . . But his tastes are wide-ranging: the Beatles make a cameo as well, and the author’s passion for classical music fuels the subtle, stirring “Carnaval”. . . . Murakami’s encyclopedic knowledge of music surges to the fore, echoed in vivid imagery.”

—Hamilton Cain, Oprah Daily

 

“I’m four stories into the eight that make up First Person Singular, and I can’t stop thinking about their beauty, their charm, and their weirdness.”

—Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

“The stories in Haruki Murakami's new collection, First Person Singular, have a sort of fractal nature—you're reading a story by a middle-aged Japanese man in which a middle-aged Japanese man is telling you a story (and sometimes that story involves him telling other stories). You get drawn into the spiral, and soon you're in that strange world where many of his stories exist, a place full of his favorite things (jazz, baseball, the Beatles, though surprisingly few cats this time) and yet unmistakably odd, existing at a slight, unexplained angle to reality.”

—Petra Mayer, NPR

 

"Murakami’s engrossing collection offers a crash course in his singular style and vision, blending passion for music and baseball and nostalgia for youth with portrayals of young love and moments of magical realism . . . Murakami’s gift for evocative, opaque magical realism shines in “Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova,” in which a review of a fictional album breathes new life into the ghost of the jazz great, and “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey,” wherein a talking monkey ruminates with a traveler on love and belonging. Murakami finds ample material in young love and sex, showcased in “On a Stone Pillow,” in which a young man’s brief tryst with a coworker, unremarkable in itself, takes on a degree of immortality after she mails him her poetry . . . These shimmering stories are testament to Murakami’s talent and enduring creativity." 

—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

 

“Whether in his epic-scale novels or in his shorter works, much of Murakami's appeal has always come from the beguiling way in which his characters react to wildly fantastical events in the most matter-of-fact manner, ever ready to accept how the twists and turns of everyday life can blend into more audacious alternate realities. In these eight stories, we see that phenomenon most disarmingly in "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey," in which a monkey strides into a sauna at a remote hotel and asks the narrator if he would like to have his back scrubbed . . . The glue that holds together Murakami's blending realities—in these stories and, indeed, in all of his fiction—is always the narrator's love for something (a woman, a song, a baseball team, a moment in the past) that is both life-giving and deeply melancholic. Masterful short fiction.”

—Bill Ott, Booklist (Starred Review)

 

“You can’t have a conversation about literary fiction of the past 50 years without mentioning Haruki Murakami, and First Person Singular reminds us why. . . . As one of the standard-bearers of contemporary magical realism, Murakami has traveled deep into the hearts and minds of both his characters and his readers. In First Person Singular, he offers eight new stories, all told in first person—hence the title—as perhaps memoir, perhaps fiction. For example, “The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection” finds a baseball-loving writer named Haruki Murakami musing on his favorite team and the ties that bind us together. Murakami is always blurring lines, and here it’s left up to the reader to decide what’s real. By distorting reality, the author creates a special closeness to his audience, and he acknowledges this relationship with intelligence and grace.”

—Eric Ponce, BookPage

 

"A new collection of stories from the master of the strange, enigmatic twist of plot . . . Music is never far from a Murakami yarn, though always with an unexpected turn: Charlie Parker comes in a dream to tell one young man that death is pretty boring and meaningless . . . Murakami’s characters are typically flat of affect, protesting their ugliness and ordinariness, and puzzled or frightened by things as they are. But most are also philosophical even about those ordinary things, as is the narrator of that fine Beatles-tinged tale, who ponders why it is that pop songs are important and informative in youth, when our lives are happiest . . . An essential addition to any Murakami fan’s library." 

—Kirkus (Starred Review)

 

“The versatile and prolific Murakami collects eight first-person stories that affirm his obsessions—American pop music and magical realism, baseball and sex—yet break new literary ground. From a messy hookup to an imaginary Charlie Parker album to a monkey masseur, the Japanese maestro taps the weirdness of the everyday, exposing conflicts that simmer within us all.”

—Oprah Daily

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award in 2016.

 

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653392/first-person-singular-by-haruki-murakami

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593318072/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_glt_fabc_BQWWX1G1181WKARB09ND?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1