First Person Singular POV: Juliana Leite vs. Haruki Murakami
Comparing "My Good Friend" with "A Window"
I like first person singular as a POV in fiction. It feels very intimate when a character is telling their story directly to you. And it can be fun when a story plays with an unreliable narrator and you get to figure out what is actually happening based on a character’s lies.
I also find it to be a difficult mode to write in. When I write stories in the first person, it’s as if I confuse myself with the speaker. Suddenly the story becomes a confessional of Wylie’s most precious emotions rather than just a made up story for people to read for fun.
I think that both Juliana Leite and Haruki Murakami do a good job with first person POV in the stories we’re going to be looking at today; however, I think Murakami does it slightly better. The reason is that Murakami is able to avoid that preciousness that often creeps into first person stories, whereas Leite indulges in it just a hair too much for my taste.
Let’s look at the first few lines of each of them to see what I’m talking about.
Juliana Leite
Here’s Leite in her story “My Good Friend,” from the Summer 2023 edition of The Paris Review:
Sunday evening
About the roof repair, I have nothing new to report. The tiles were supposed to arrive yesterday; they did not. I rang that young man at the store to give him a piece of my mind, but he’s always so nice that I forget I called to quarrel. He told me the news about his mother (new boyfriend). We chatted for fifteen minutes, and it wasn’t until I hung up the phone that I realized I’d once again neglected to give him an earful. Meanwhile, the roof is still in shambles.
I like this as an opening. It’s clearly good writing and was compelling enough to make me buy the Paris Review after browsing the first few pages.
What I like about it is that, on first glance, it doesn’t feel like the author is trying too hard to set up a story for me. Too often I feel like the writer is rushing to tell me the central plot points and to convince me that what I’m about to read is going to be very moving or very funny or very whatever-it-is-trying-to-be. It makes sense that a lot of stories do this because it really is the job of the writer to hook you in the opening lines. The trick is to do it without looking like you’re doing it— confidently and elegantly.
These opening lines bring us into the world of the character in an understated way. We get a diary entry where she complains about her roof and her inability to reprimand the nice young man at the hardware store. Neither of these are the central focus of the story (the “good friend” is not the young man but a man introduced in the next paragraph).
I like that it’s understated but what I don’t like is that it is a hair too understated— a bit too “humble.” This gives me that precious feeling I don’t like. It feels a little too goody two-shoes that the speaker can’t reprimand the young man at the store. It’s like she just can’t help but be a pacifist, she just can’t help but be nice to those who are nice to her. As a conflict-averse person, I relate to this on some level. But when I read fiction I’m much more interested in immoral freaks than good virtuous people.
I found that this precious feeling stuck with me throughout the rest of the story. The story is about her long time friend who was formerly married to their other friend who passed away. The speaker and her “good friend” now have a quasi-romantic relationship that her friend’s children disapprove of. This is nice but it feels a bit like virtue fantasy to me. It feels like it’s saying, “My friend and I are so good, we love and support each other, and it’s not a sex thing at all.” And it bugs me that the “good friend” is always referred to as just that, emphasizing this “good”-ness.
It’s not to say that I hate this story. But it’s like a cup of coffee that really hits a certain spot— but you feel like it could have one more layer of complexity (I’m thinking specifically of the iced latte at Alfred).
Haruki Murakami
Now here’s Murakami in “A Window”
Greetings,
The winter cold diminishes with each passing day, and now the sunlight hints at the subtle scent of springtime. I trust that you are well.
Your recent letter was a pleasure to read. The passage on the relationship between hamburger steak and nutmeg was especially well written, I felt: so rich with the genuine sense of daily living. How vividly it conveyed the warm aromas of the kitchen, the lively tapping of the knife against the cutting board as it sliced through the onion!
In the course of my reading, your letter filled me with such an irrepressible desire for hamburger steak that I had to go to a nearby restaurant and have one that very night.
As in Leite, Murakami does not seem like he’s trying too hard to set up a story. He presents us with a character who for some reason cares a lot about hamburger steaks and his correspondent’s representation of them. It’s only later that we understand he is working a job in which he writes letters to people who want feedback to improve their writing.
What’s different is that it’s not too precious. The story’s not taking itself too seriously. “Greetings,” it says, like an alien. The next few lines about the changing of the seasons is weirdly elevated. The speaker is a bit of a weirdo. And then it goes right from the changing of the seasons to the particularities of hamburger steak. Something about hamburger steak is comical— I think of brown mush on a plate, or the frozen Salisbury steaks I’ve seen in super markets. It’s weird that anyone would care so much about something so pedestrian. That’s what’s funny and interesting.
With this comedic tone, the story is able to wade into precious emotions later on. It turns out his correspondent is a childless housewife whose husband is never home and does not seem to care about her all that much. When the protagonist quits his job, she invites him to lunch so that she can fix him a “perfectly normal hamburger steak.” He comes over and they listen to jazz as they talk about their life stories, the woman saying she’s always wanted to be a writer but she just can’t. He tries to encourage her but she says that his critiques proved to her that she doesn’t have the talent. He blushes. Around five, he says he ought to be going so she can prepare dinner for her husband, but she sighs, “He won’t be home before midnight.” They don’t sleep together but ten years later, whenever the protagonist passes through her neighborhood, he thinks of her and wonders if he should have.
The story ultimately hits this very vulnerable, sighing tone. It would play as melodramatic without its playfulness. It says something about vulnerability itself. Our vulnerabilities are very precious to us. A story like “A Window” is able to sympathize with that feeling without letting the characters indulge in it too much. The story shifts from a comedic beginning to a more serious ending. Front-loading it with humor makes that ending possible. What starts off as silly transmutes into something sensitive.
Conclusion
Here’s how I’d summarize what my aesthetic taste is telling me.
It can be good to start a story in an indirect way such that you feel you’re being guided into the world of fiction rather than feeling “set up” for a story.
Being understated can be a good thing as long as you are not too understated, which ironically calls attention to itself.
Be wary of being too emotionally indulgent when you’re talking about a character’s most precious feelings.
But by all means, tell me why I’m wrong!