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Summary
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller--and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84 , Norwegian Wood , and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running .
"Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers" -- New York Times Book Review
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Esquire, Vulture, LitHub, New York Observer
Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally best-selling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.
Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game, when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer's "mental chest of drawers"; the necessity of loneliness, patience, and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career and more.
"What I want to say is that in a certain sense, while the novelist is creating a novel, he is simultaneously being created by the novel as well." --Haruki Murakami
Author Notes
Haruki Murakami was born on January 12, 1949 in Kyoto, Japan and studied at Tokyo's Waseda University. He opened a coffeehouse/jazz bar in the capital called Peter Cat with his wife. He became a full-time author following the publication of his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, in 1979.
He writes both fiction and non-fiction works. His fiction works include Norwegian Wood, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, The Strange Library, and Men Without Women. Several of his stories have been adapted for the stage and as films. His nonfiction works include What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. He has received numerous literary awards including the Franz Kafka Prize for Kafka on the Shore, the Yomiuri Prize for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and the Jerusalem Prize. He has translated into Japanese literature written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist Murakami (1Q84) reveals the tricks of the trade in this stellar essay collection, originally published in Japan in 2015. In "Are Novelists Broadminded?" he observes that "people with brilliant minds are not particularly well suited to writing novels," while "A Completely Personal and Physical Occupation" makes a case that it's crucial for a writer to cultivate stamina: "You have to become physically fit. You need to become robust and physically strong. And make your body your ally." In "When I Became a Novelist" Murakami shares stories of his time at the Waseda University in Tokyo at the peak of student protests and recalls his days operating a jazz café with his wife in the mid-'70s: "We were all young then, full of ambition and energy--though, sad to say, no one was making any money to speak of." Especially enjoyable is a mystical tale he shares about a baseball game he attended in 1978 during which "based on no grounds whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel." Lighthearted yet edifying, the anecdotes make for a fantastic look at how a key literary figure made it happen. Murakami's fans will relish these amusing missives. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Nov.)
Booklist Review
The 29-year-old Murakami was sitting in the bleachers at a Yakult Swallows baseball game in 1978 when he had a thought, "I could write a novel." That thought led to the creation of Hear the Wind Sing, which launched an award-winning career that has extended to many more novels and numerous stories and essays. In 2015, Murakami published six essays in the Japanese magazine Monkey that he imagined as speeches offering a "comprehensive look at my views on writing novels." These "records of undelivered speeches" appear here with five additional essays written for this book. Covering such topics as "So What Should I Write About" and "Who Do I Write For," Murakami employs the unadorned style that distinguishes his fiction, a style that he developed by writing first in English and then translating his work back into Japanese, striving for a natural voice "as far removed as possible from the strictures of 'serious literature.'" The author's devoted readers will be fascinated by how his unique style and tone came into being and will also find much to ponder in his reflections on music and writing and on how he views physical fitness as central to maintaining the mental toughness it takes to sit down at the keyboard day after day. These conversational, self-deprecating musings on how one person writes novels are as close as we can hope to come to talking books with a modern master.
Guardian Review
Haruki Murakami is not one for getting out and about much. Famously, the Japanese's novelist's day consists of running, writing, listening to jazz and going to bed at nine o'clock. He doesn't waste his time getting gussied up for television appearances or prize-giving shindigs; the organisers of literary festivals are used to having their invitations politely declined. That doesn't mean, though, that Murakami wants to remove himself completely from the world. Indeed, in many ways he seems to long to be known by it. His 2007 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was a meditation not just on the pain and glory of doing the 2005 New York City marathon, but also a slant-wise glimpse into what he almost certainly doesn't call his "process". Now he is back again, but this time looking straight and hard at the whole business, or rather the vocation, of writing novels. There are 11 essays here. Some have been published previously and others have been written just for this collection. They deal with all the things that you'd like to ask the author of Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Kafka on the Shore in the highly unlikely event that you were able to corner him at a book-signing session. Such questions might include: "Is it true you had an epiphany at a baseball game that you were going to be a novelist?"; "How do you manage to write such simple words that run so deep?" and, most cheekily, "Is it true you don't value literary prizes, or is it because you haven't won that many?" On the first matter, Murakami repeats the story that he has told before, but which never loses its talismanic power. One day in 1978 the 29-year-old jazz cafe owner attended a baseball game at Jingu stadium in downtown Tokyo. His team, the poorly performing Yakult Swallows, had recently signed an unknown American hitter called Dave Hilton. At his first appearance Hilton belted the ball with a satisfying stadium-ringing smack, and at that point Murakami experienced an epiphany: "I think I can write a novel." He left the match in a daze and went home via a bookstore where he splurged on an expensive fountain pen. That evening, in one feverish all-nighter, he embarked on the first draft of his novella Hear the Wind Sing. On the point about style, Murakami gives an extraordinary account of how, at first, he couldn't produce a literary voice that he could bear to read. So he translated one of his try-too-hard, over-burdened paragraphs into fairly rudimentary English and then translated the result back again into a correspondingly simple Japanese. At a stroke he had found the famously "neutral", unadorned voice that, duly translated into scores of other languages, has made him into one of the most read authors around the world. Then there's the business of literary prizes. Murakami declares that he thinks they don't matter and, no, it's not because he hasn't won quite as many as you might expect. The truth is that the razzmatazz of the event, the psychic and physical disruption it entails, would cause more trouble than it's worth. "A literary prize can turn the spotlight on a particular work, but it can't breathe life into it. It's that simple." And, honestly, it probably is. You end this collection of beautiful essays vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again.
Kirkus Review
The acclaimed novelist opens up about his methods and how he creates his own private worlds. In a series of self-deprecating, introspective essays, six previously published, five written for this book, Murakami shares his modest views on writing. The fact that he has been able "to write novels as a profession…continues to amaze me." He begins with generalities: what qualities successful novelists possess and how they are able to sustain them. The author recounts how, at 29, married, attending school and struggling to keep his jazz cafe afloat, he was outside watching a baseball game, and "based on no grounds whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel." He wrote his first novel--later to become Hear the Wind Sing--in rudimentary English, "a rough, uncultivated kind of prose." He then "transplanted" it into Japanese in a "creative rhythm distinctly my own," finding the "coolest chords, trusting in the power of improvisation." Murakami believes his jazzy literary originality, voice, and style were born then. Even today, he doesn't experience writer's block. Words come out in a joyful "spontaneous flow" as his narratives grow lengthier and more complex. After dismissing the significance of literary prizes, he advises young writers to read numerous novels, good and bad, as he did growing up, observe the world around them, and draw upon their memories. Essays are "no more than sidelines, like the cans of oolong tea marketed by beer companies." Stories are like "practice pieces." When he composes his novels, he limits himself to 10 pages per day; then his wife reads it, and he makes countless revisions--"I have a deep-rooted love for tinkering." Novelists require stamina, which Murakami gets from one of his favorite pastimes: running. Over time, he gradually began writing more in third person, creating more named characters and "simultaneously being created by the novel as well." He doesn't comment much on his own works nor those of others. Dry and repetitious in places, Murakami's gentle encouragement will appeal to hesitant novice writers. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Murakami has written 14 acclaimed novels, including Hear the Wind Sing, Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, and his best-selling IQ84; dozens of short stories; and over a dozen books of essays and other nonfiction. Many films, plays, and other stage presentations have been based on his work. He has been a writing fellow at Princeton, Tufts, and Harvard. Novelist is indeed his true vocation, and in this collection of 11 interconnected essays, he tells would-be fiction writers, struggling novelists, and his many devoted readers about the path he's followed and the ideas and thoughts he's had in the process: competition among novelists; how he became a novelist (an epiphany at a baseball game in downtown Tokyo), literary prizes; originality (obvious in his writing); subject matter; use of his time (he writes six hours a day, then edits and rewrites extensively); physical fitness (he runs an hour a day to maintain the strength he needs to focus in his writing); the usefulness (or not) of writing schools and courses; creating and developing characters; audience (he writes primarily for himself); and extending his work abroad. VERDICT Although this is a concrete and practical guide, as Murakami intended, it is also a fascinating personal and professional memoir.--Marcia Welsh
Excerpts
Excerpts
Writing fiction is an entirely personal process that takes place in a closed room. Shut away in a study, you sit at a desk and (in most cases) create an imaginary story out of nothing and put it in the form of writing. The formless and subjective is transformed into something tangible and objec-tive (or at least something that seeks to be objective). Defined sim-ply, this is the day-to-day work we novelists perform.I'm sure there are many people who will say, "But wait, I don't have anything like a study." The same was true for me when I started out writing--I had nothing resembling a study to work in. In my tiny apartment near the Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine in Sendagaya (in a building that's since been torn down) I sat at the kitchen table late at night after my wife had gone to bed, scratching away with a pen on Japanese-style manuscript paper. That's how I wrote my first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. "Kitchen-table" fiction is what I've dubbed these early works. When I first started writing Norwegian Wood, I wrote at cafés in various places in Greece, on board ferry boats, in the wait-ing lobbies of airports, in shady spots in parks, and at desks in cheap hotels. Hauling around oversized, four-hundred-character- per-page Japanese manuscript paper was too much, so in Rome I bought a cheap notebook (the kind we used to call college-ruled notebooks) and wrote the novel down in tiny writing with a dis-posable Bic pen. I still had to contend with noisy cafés, wobbly tables that made writing difficult, coffee spilling on the pages, and at night in my hotel room when I'd go over what I'd written, some-times there would be couples getting all hot and heavy beyond the paper-thin walls separating my room from the room next door. Things weren't easy, in other words. I can smile at these memories now, but at the time it was all pretty discouraging. I had trouble finding a decent place to live, and moved all over Europe, all the while continuing to work on my novel. And I still have that thick old notebook, with its coffee stains (or whatever they are; I'm not really sure about some of them). Wherever a person is when he writes a novel, it's a closed room, a portable study. That's what I'm trying to say. Excerpted from Novelist As a Vocation by Haruki Murakami All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.