Advanced capitalism

From Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami:

I enjoy shopping at [the fancy-schmancy Kinokuniya supermarket]. You may not believe this, but the lettuce you buy there lasts longer than lettuce anywhere else. Don’t ask me why. Maybe they round up the lettuce after they close for the day and give them special training. It wouldn’t surprise me. This is advanced capitalism, after all.

Nearly all of my friends who have read Murakami say they dislike his books because they don’t like the narrator. Murakami’s narrators are similar in that they all seem to represent the postmodern everyman — detached, deadpan, resigned to the fact that the best of days have long passed. The big complaint is that this character is annoying because he is apathetic and you don’t wind up loving him or hating him enough to find him interesting. Dance Dance Dance is only the third Murakami novel I’ve read (the others being A Wild Sheep Chase and Norwegian Wood) and I have to say that I find the narrators to be introspective and relatable, the perfect windows into Murakami’s surreal worlds. Very Nick Carraway-esque; I’m sane and everyone around me is crazy — or is it that I’m crazy and everyone else is sane?