Murakami's "Barn Burning" brought to mind a snippet of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." In the play, Algernon creates a fictitious character called Bunbury who is an invalid and whose illness is alway an excuse for Algernon to get out of social engagements. Thus, "bunburying" is a humorous noun used to mean "avoiding one's duties and responsibilities by claiming to have appointments to see a fictitious person."
While Murakami's story and Wilde's word may have nothing more in common than they are slight homonyms, I can't help but see that the excuse "barn burning" is a way for the barn burner in Murakami's story to disconnect from the woman. He claims to have burned the bar yet the narrator can't seem to find it - the only thing missing is the woman and their relationship to her, thus she has been avoided by the fictitious excuse of barn burning.
This is a stretch, I know, yet every time I say "barn burning" out loud, I hear "bunburying," and thus the connection is unavoidably made.
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