The disappointment of Murakimi's latest story

Over the past 40 or so years Haruki Murakami has made a career by writing strangely elusive narratives that follow a dreamlike pattern of strange encounters and hallucinatory moments but set against a background of noir or quest narratives in which, usually, a young professional in contemporary Tokyo pursues a vision or follows a series of steps or commands. These journeys are marked by certain repeated tropes and obsessions: cats, earlobes, Western food (spaghetti), jazz, distance running, to name a few. Over time, HM's narratives have become ever more elusive and, in fact, arbitrary: the protagonists seem to be running the same course again and again, and the narratives seem increasingly about the mood and the locale and less about character, much less about plot. I still think HM should have won a Nobel Prize, though that seems less likely w/ each passing year; in fact, sometimes I think the committee made a gaffe in awarding the prize to the much less accomplished British writer Kazuo Ishiguro. That said, his story in last week's New Yorker doesn't advance his case - in fact, it shows the rut into which he's run. Again we start off w/ a character in a curious quest and follow a pathway of obstacles seemingly set out before him as in a dream: He's invited to a musical recital and when he arrives at the destination it's obvious no recital had been scheduled, which leads him onto a bit of a quest. But, sadly, despite many intimations and possibilities (who is the woman from his past who invited him?, what was her motive if any in misleading him?, why does a car pass by w/ a speaker imploring people to accept the grace of Christ?) the story offers no answers, no conclusions, and no intimations of anything meaningful or significant beyont the stated facts of the journey. If there is a deep metaphor or allegory, it eludes me. It's further evidence that few are as good as Murakami at setting a scene, but he too often disappoints us as he has no more idea of what to do w/ his narrative than do his readers.