Murakami T
The T-Shirts I Love
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The international literary icon opens his eclectic closet: Here are photographs of Murakami’s extensive and personal T-shirt collection, accompanied by essays that reveal a side of the writer rarely seen by the public.
Many of Haruki Murakami's fans know about his massive vinyl record collection (10,000 albums!) and his obsession with running, but few have heard about a more intimate passion: his T-shirt collecting.
In Murakami T, the famously reclusive novelist shows us his T-shirts—from concert shirts to never-worn whiskey-themed Ts, and from beloved bookstore swag to the shirt that inspired the iconic short story "Tony Takitani." These photographs are paired with short, frank essays that include Murakami's musings on the joy of drinking Guinness in local pubs across Ireland, the pleasure of eating a burger upon arrival in the United States, and Hawaiian surf culture in the 1980s.
Together, these photographs and reflections reveal much about Murakami's multifaceted and wonderfully eccentric persona.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this collection of beguiling pieces novelist Murakami (1Q84) wrote for the Japanese fashion magazine Popeye, he reflects on his collection of T-shirts and the comfortable, quippy, and blithely consumerist aspects of life they represent. An "I Put Ketchup on My Ketchup" T-shirt prompts a fond tribute to American hamburger joints; a selection of car-brand shirts sparks a discussion of why Ferrari or Porsche T's make one look like a rich jerk while Volkswagen T's are tastefully middle-class; lizard T-shirt images remind Murakami of uneasily stroking the scaly creature at a zoo, while bird images remind him of getting attacked by crows while out running; and a T-shirt with a dog cartoon provokes a warning to men that they may feel "a little uncomfortable" wearing such adorable designs: "chances are very good that a girl or woman will tell you ‘Woah—that's so cute!' " Seekers of deep cultural analysis should be advised that Murakami's pensées resolutely avoid that. ("In crowded, noisy bars," he observes in an essay on beer T-shirts, "you have to shout out your order to the bartender, and I've found through experience that the one brand I can pronounce so that it gets through to them is Heineken.") Murakami's many fans will eat up this charming ramble.
