2020-06-02
1 小时 3 分钟Bryan Washington joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “U.F.O. in Kushiro,” by Haruki Murakami, which first appeared in a 2001 issue of the magazine and was then republished in 2011, after an earthquake and tsunami devastated northern Japan. Washington’s début story collection, “Lot,” was published last year, and his first novel, “Memorial,” will come out in October.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month we're going to hear UFO in Kushiro by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by J.
Rubin, which was published in the New Yorker in March of 2001.
Each article contains some new tragedy, but to Komodo, those tragedies registered as oddly lacking in depth.
The aftermath of the earthquake was like a distant, monotonous echo to him.
The only thing he could give any serious thought to was his wife's drawing ever further away.
The story was chosen by Brian Washington, whose debut story collection, lot, was published last year and whose first novel, memorial, will come out in October.
Hi, Brian.
Hey, Deborah.
How are you?
I'm all right.
Doing okay.
So we're here to talk about Murakami, and I get the sense that he's been important to you as a writer.
Why is that?
I think that it's a question of timing.
On my end, I didn't really grow up as voracious of a reader as a lot of my peers, and I think that the authors and creators that I had first contact with in depth have an outsized influence on how I view form and structure.
But I came across Haruki Murakami, and the first work that I read from him was Kafka on the shore.
And I just remember feeling as if I were reading something that I just hadn't been not only privy to, but just like a sort of reality that I hadn't imagined even.