The Year of Spaghetti

Thanks to M for tipping me off to new Murakami fiction in The New Yorker.

I assume this flurry of Murakami short stories (last check 1 in Harper's, 3 in The New Yorker), is courtest of his collection due out in March. And we all had better enjoy them, seeing as his current novel is due to be translated in 2010. (How many intrepid Murakami fans could learn a second language before then?)

Comments

[Kelsey]

Loneliness

In this article, Haruki Murakami, describes a year of his life that was probably the loneliest of all. It was year that all he could do was eat spaghetti, and block society out.
This story invites people who are interested in the effects of loneliness; it is a quite confusing article, short and sweet. Those to fully understand the article must be an adult. The occasion of this article is that of a random writing expressing the author’s feelings of this one year the stuck out differently then all others. The year of 1971.
This was a fiction story about a lonely man, but I’m sure the story is related directly back to the author. The author wanted to portray the loneliness, and sanity of a person avoiding society. The lies and deception the brain does to oneself. Being buried in spaghetti is similar to being buried in lies. When his friend’s ex-girlfriend called, he didn’t want anything to do with her, so he lied. He said, “I said I’m cooking spaghetti,’ I lied…But the lie had already become part of me-so much so that, at the moment at least, it didn’t feel like a lie at all.”(pg. 87) He was so used to lying to himself, that lying came a s a routine act. “From Sunday to Saturday, one spaghetti day followed another. And each new Sunday started a brand new spaghetti week.”(pg. 85) Avoiding society, eating spaghetti, and staying out of business was his way of life, he wrote, “I was through with getting caught up in other people’s messes. I’d already dug a hole in the back yard and buried everything that needed to be buried in it. Nobody could ever dig it up again.” (pg. 85)
The funny thing about cooking spaghetti is that it makes the feeling of loneliness go away. Avoiding society completely will make you desperate. This is what makes the title so significant, is that this boy is lonely, but spaghetti makes a person happy. One thing a person has control over is what they eat. Spaghetti is not only a delicious meal but a psychological healing, it is said, "No man is lonely while eating spaghetti,” said Robert Morley, British actor and wit. Another wrote, “No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention,” said Christopher Morley .See the man Haruki portrays lived only for spaghetti, he wrote, “ in 1971, I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti. Steam rising from the pot pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life.”(pg. 85) He took people and replaced them with spaghetti.
He had lost hope in people, in feelings, probably there was some incident that occurred, but in the story it does not give information. Haruki wrote “I cooked and cooked, as if cooking spaghetti were an act of revenge.”(pg. 85) An act of revenge this was, to some extent he did not fully understand. Due to his neglect and by the tone of the article I feel that he went partially insane. Haruki wrote, “Not one of these people, however, actually ventured into my apartment. They hovered outside the door without knocking, like fragments of memory, and then slipped away.” (pg. 85) With the spaghetti and this isolation, he turned into a spaghetti freak.
In the end of the story the author admits he was lonely he wrote, “Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness?”(pg. 87) the Spaghetti represented loneliness to him, and he wanted out. He said in the article that he didn’t want anyone’s help he said, ““At the time I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. That’s why I kept on cooking spaghetti, all by myself.” (pg. 87)
The purpose of this article is not to scare us into never eating spaghetti again, because it might mean that were lonely. It was to show the obsession of human nature, and the psychological deception and pain we can make up in our mind. It was made for us to relate to the feelings of blocking people out. Next time I eat spaghetti, I hope it’s only cause my mom made it.

Does anyone agree?