I just reread this collection of short stories after seeing the Berkeley Rep production of the same name, which is actually a combination of two short stories in this book. I adore Murakami, of course, but short stories are not my favorite genre; I am like the editor in one of the stories who tells the protagonist that short stories are very outdated and he should start writing novels before he completely depletes the resources in his short story universe.

There are a couple of short stories in this collection that I actively dislike: the one about the man with the missing earlobe, for example, I have hated since reading it in Harper’s a million years ago. I think the Mr. Frog Saves Tokyo story is pretty much the best one; that is the main subject of the Berkeley Rep production, so they made a good choice.

There is this one point in the story where a character talks about the denial a person has to sustain to live in an area that could be devastated by an earthquake at any moment, and you could identify all of the newcomers or non-Californians in the audience by a collective shiver. I did not even flinch. I still think earthquakes are better than tornados or hurricanes or living somewhere without good restaurants.