The New Yorker: Fiction cover image

Andrea Lee Reads Haruki Murakami

The New Yorker: Fiction

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I Burn Other People's Barns

I burn other people's barns without their permission, he said. I pour on the gasoline, strike a match and take off, then i have a good time watching it all from a distance with binoculars. The world's full of barns that are like waiting for me to burn them down. Give me ten minutes and i'll burn them clear to the ground so it looks like there was never any barn there to begin with. No one gets choked up over it. It just disappears. Whosh. But you're the one who judges that they're expendable, right? I don't judge anything. I merely accept what's there. That seems about the right pace for

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