Late-Stage Capitalism by Haruki Murakami

To me, A Folklore for my Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism is the best piece of writing the highly praised writer has ever created. The plot of the story is kind of strange though. The writer started the story with almost non-fiction on sixties and seventies from first person perspective (most probably the writer himself), then went on about his friends at around his twentieth birthday, 'the most vulnerable, most immature, and yet most precious period of life, 'he wrote.

With the passage of time, the story was moved to a friend of his, an all-around good student, and his girlfriend, another all around good student.

Perfectly matched, they dated. Then the narrator whose profession was writer too, accidentally met his old friend twice after graduation. It's the second time in Italy that he told all the story and he wrote it down. In my opinion, the story is somewhat disconnected or even illogical, but that's how life is, at least through my eyes.

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Humans are cursed. They look back to the past and see only beautiful memories, wishing for the life events that will never return. To be very honest, I did not like any of the characters; although I am with the writer because he beautifully describes all of the characters.

Murakami's writing is a tad overwrought on occasion. The writer's main objective of writing this story is to evoke a certain mood and the feeling. And in this story he succeeds I strongly agree that economic stability is one of the most important issues now-a-days and it is affecting our lives adversely.

I see in my daily life that people like to make relationships with those people who are rich and economically stable and they avoid people who are poor and those who are not able to give any benefit to them. This shows the hypocrisy of our society. I also observe that many girls and boys are getting rejected just because they are not financially stable. Girls as well as boys have to face rejection because they belong to poor family, this makes them mentally disturbed.

In our society, the respect is for those people who have millions of money no matter they are bad in moral values and the people who are morally strong are being disrespected for having no money. When I came to university life, I observed that some girls and boys like to make friendships with those students who are financially strong. I think, hypocrisy is at its peak now-a- days.

I also think that Murakami's short stories are not just tales of particular people in a particular place at a particular time, but instead they connect to other people, the rest of us, in many levels. You and I could be some characters in those fables. We are different and one at the same time. I liked the main themes of the story which are alienation and loneliness. I learnt from this story that we should try to be happy in every state. We should value the people and things when they are available to us. We should not prefer money; instead we should value our internal happiness. If we do mistakes then we should take lesson from our mistakes.