Earlier this year, as the looming threat of the COVID-19 pandemic came into view, worldwide death tolls began an exponential rise, and Loyola indefinitely moved classes online, I found myself once-again reaching for the fiction of Haruki Murakami. In hindsight, I suppose it was a subconscious attempt to find solace in a world parallel to the one I found myself in—as I scrambled to shove my remaining clothes into boxes and said goodbye to my beloved Fordham dorm, I had trouble grasping the situation the world, as well as I, was thrown into. In essence, the events of the past six months have felt utterly surreal. This is exactly how I would describe the literary worlds of Haruki Murakami.
Murakami is a Japanese author born in 1949 Kyoto.
After graduating from Waseda University in Tokyo, he opened and ran a small
jazz bar for seven years—his knowledge and love of jazz eventually becoming a prominent
motif in his work. It wasn’t until he was sitting in the bleachers of a Japanese
baseball game—more precisely the instant American Dave Hilton hit a double—that
he was struck with the possibility of writing a novel; “he went home and began
writing that night,” the well-known story goes. Although I hesitate to call this
an instance of insight because there isn’t really an explicit problem to be
solved (unless, of course, he was searching for a purpose beyond owning a jazz
bar), there certainly exists the elements of emotional experience and sudden
awareness. It is interesting to note that Murakami’s “insight” isn’t
necessarily specific; he wasn’t motivated to write a certain kind of
story, but merely just to create. Although he has written a number of
nonfiction works as well, I have chosen to focus on the creative process involved
in the writing of his fiction, that of which has been translated into more than
fifty languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.
But, what makes him so popular? What is it about his stories
that resonate with such a diverse audience?
For one, it’s the genre. Murakami allows fantasy to
bleed into reality, creating worlds where the fears and mundanity of postmodern
society are intertwined with omniscient “little people” and talking sheep. Most
would agree he falls into the magical realism category, his fantastical stories
providing commentary on metaphysics and human consciousness. The nature of Murakami’s
writing is captured in his own words:
“For me, writing a novel is like having a dream.
Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can
continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday
life. It’s also a way of descending deep into my own consciousness. So while I
see it as dreamlike, it’s not fantasy. For me the dreamlike is very real.”
The idea of utilizing a magical realism genre and
writing from a dreamlike perspective, however, isn’t necessarily what makes his
novels appealing; but, this combined with his writing process may be what makes
it unique. According to an interview with the Paris Review, Murakami
combines simple and easy-to-read prose with a seemingly complicated and
bewildering plot, allowing the reader to get from A to B seamlessly while also
forcing the reader to interpret for themselves why they are going from A
to B.
The borderline idea of insight seen at the start of
his career also carries into his actual writing process, for he mentioned in
this same interview:
“When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all.
I just wait for the story to come. I don’t choose what kind of story it is or
what’s going to happen. I just wait.”
This method of writing highlights the overlap between
insight- and analytical-based problem solving. On the one hand, Murakami waits
for “a new interpretation of a situation” to “suddenly spring to awareness.” On
the other, the act of writing and editing is in and of itself a course of
analysis. Implicit cognition is also likely at play in the way stories seem to abruptly
emerge out of this “waiting.”
The inevitable critics of Murakami’s work, however, cite
his inability to effectively restructure his thinking—an important aspect of
insight—when developing new novels. In other words, some see his fiction as “cookie-cutter:”
the same uninspiring prose with the same cats, jazz, and depression.
Considering this, is it possible that Murakami’s presumable reliance on
implicit cognition is negatively affecting his potential to create different
stories?
Regardless, there is something special about the literary worlds of Murakami and his creativity that I—as well as millions of other readers—absolutely love. Whether you are looking for a story that seemingly reflects the surreal nature of our current world or just simply want to escape that world, Haruki Murakami may have something for you.
(For those who are interested, I recommend starting with A Wild Sheep Chase!)
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References:
https://www.harukimurakami.com/
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami
https://slate.com/culture/2011/11/murakamis-1q84-is-the-japanese-novelist-a-great-writer.html
http://tasseled.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/haruki-murakami-library-john-gall-design.png
I was so glad to read this post as I also love Haruki Murakami's work. He was one of my first experiences with "magic realism," which is now probably my favorite genre of literature. Another famous magic realist is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was a pioneer of the genre. This category often combines realistic fiction, sometimes historical fiction, with unexplained phenomena. Toni Morrison’s Beloved also fits in this genre. A lot of Murakami’s work roots otherworldliness in some Japanese tradition of higher powers, but sometimes it’s based in a universal curiosity about what might be possible beyond the constraints of normal physics. (The stone, the bizarre precipitation, the time/dream-travel, etc. in Kafka on the Shore.) Murakami is one of the most famous writers in Japan (his novel Norwegian Wood is almost universally read throughout the country). I like to think of him as Big-C creative, mostly because I’ve never read anything like what he’s written. He might be more middle-C, though, considering he certainly didn’t invent the genre, but operates very well in it.
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