‘Novelist as a Vocation’ by Haruki Murakami (Review)

While I’ve covered just about all of Haruki Murakami’s fiction that’s appeared in English, as well as reviewing a couple of books about the Japanese writer, surprisingly, perhaps, I’ve never read any of his non-fiction work.  It’s something I was mulling over recently when I was offered the chance to take a look at his newest book in English, which just happened to be a collection of essays…  Well, when the world gives you a spade, it seems a shame not to dig a well, so let’s see what the king of cats has to say for himself – and about his ‘vocation’.

*****
Novelist as a Vocation (review copy courtesy of Penguin Random House Australia) is a collection of eleven essays, each running to around twenty pages in length, in which Murakami muses about different aspects of the writing life.  The first six were serialised in the Monkey Business magazine, and the extended book edition appeared in Japan in 2015.  Now, after a bit of tinkering, it’s available for everyone in the Anglosphere to try, and I expect that most of the writer’s fans will be eager to take a look at it.

When you hear ‘essays’, you might imagine something dry and rather academic, but that’s definitely not the case here.  The book is pervaded by an avuncular, conversational tone, which is very similar to some of the writer’s fiction in places.  Imagine, if you will, Uncle Haruki sitting in a comfortable armchair, patiently responding to the questions of his excitable nephews and nieces (that’s you, by the way).  Novelist as a Vocation is easy to read, and enjoyable, too, not a book to rush through, but one to come back to when you have time to appreciate its easy-going nature.

But what does he actually talk about?  Well, as the title suggests, the book is mainly about Murakami’s life as a writer, discussing such matters as how he became a writer, how he writes and the details of his daily routine.  However, on occasion, he does branch out a little, expounding upon the idea of originality, the nature of Japanese literary prizes or the failings of the Japanese school system.  While Murakami’s never preachy, he does have some strong views, and he makes sure you know what they are.

If you’re looking for insights into individual works, though, you’re probably in for a disappointment.  The focus here is very much on the process of writing, and where all these novels come from:

Novelists basically tell stories.  And telling stories, to put it another way, means delving deep down into your unconscious.  To descend to the darkest realms of the mind.  The broader the scale of the story, the deeper the novelist has to descend.  It’s like constructing a large building, where you need to dig down very deep for the foundation.  And the more hidden the story you’re telling, the heavier and thicker is that subterranean darkness.

‘A Completely Personal and Physical Occupation’, p.120 (Harvill Secker, 2022)

Whenever individual works are named, it’s generally only to support certain ideas, such as when discussing his very gradual shift from first-person to third-person perspective.  Interesting, yes, but also frustrating for those wanting more analysis of individual works (who should perhaps check out Jay Rubin’s Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words instead!).

Novelist as a Vocation is most interesting, perhaps, when the writer focuses on his work ethic and methods.  On two occasions, he mentions a certain Anthony Trollope, and Murakami, while not having read the Victorian writer’s work, agrees with the idea of the author punching in and punching out, producing a set number of pages every morning, no matter what.  Unlike Trollope, though, Murakami goes through multiple passes of his work, rewriting a number of times over a long period before submitting a manuscript.  If we’re to take him at face value, it’s a wonder he’s managed to write so many long novels.

Even if I believe him on this point, when it comes to taking him at his word, we should be slightly wary.  Murakami makes himself sound genuine, artless and accepting, perhaps best shown in a lovely piece on how novelists, unlike many other artists, are welcoming to newcomers, competitors, even, claiming there’s no need to treat them as enemies and encouraging all and sundry to take a shot at a life of writing novels.  Yet I’m not convinced he’s as self-aware as he might be.  Certainly, when he quotes a fan who claims he ‘understands young women’s feelings so well’, you start to wonder if he’s trolling us a little.

At times, it’s best to be a little more cynical.  Many of his comments are commonplace generalities, with little evidence to support his views, and some of his nonchalance isn’t as convincing as he would like.  An insistence that he’s not bothered about never winning the Akutagawa Prize (apparently, he wasn’t even considered after his first two short works – Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 – failed at the shortlist stage) is followed by comments on the inadequacy of literary prizes to truly judge good writing:

At the risk of stating the obvious, it is literary works that last, not literary prizes.  I doubt many can tell you who won the Akutagawa Prize two years ago, or the Nobel Prize winner three years back.  Can you?  Truly great works that have stood the test of time, on the other hand, are lodged in our memory forever.  Was Ernest Hemingway a Nobel Prize winner? (He was.)  How about Jorge Luis Borges? (Was he?  Who gives a damn?)  A literary prize can turn the spotlight on a particular work, but it can’t breathe life into it.  It’s that simple.
‘On Literary Prizes’, p.45

So, completely unbothered by the Nobel snubs?  Methinks the writer dost protest too much…

If you look beneath the surface, there are even more signs that the Haruki Murakami brand is carefully constructed and strictly controlled.  The final essay, ‘Going Abroad: A New Frontier’, makes for a nice companion piece to David Karashima’s Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami, a non-fiction work that examines Murakami’s rise in the west.  This is the writer’s own view of this period, in which he describes his luck at being picked up by titans of the US literary scene.  However, he also casually mentions how he decided to ditch his old publishers and head off to pastures new, which hints at a rather ruthless nature.

This slightly controlling tendency is also evident in his mentions of translation.  Murakami introduces his four translators (Alfred Birnbaum, Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen) and is careful to praise them, yet if you look at the translation copyright for this book, you’ll search in vain for their names.  Instead, you’ll find that it’s attributed to the slightly sinister-sounding ‘Harukimurakami Archival Labyrinth’.  Murakami gives a partial explanation for this, saying that he actually organises the translations into English himself, checking them and then sending them off to the publisher – which to me has control freak written all over it.

I doubt the average reader will approach the book as cynically as I did, though, and the truth is that Novelist as a Vocation is a lovely way to while away a couple of hours, a collection of interesting pieces from a writer who (like Gabriel and Goossen) is experienced enough to make even the commonplace sound appealing.  Yes, it’s what Murakami wants you to know about Murakami, but I’m sure there’s some truth in there, somewhere, and what’s clear is that for him, writing novels genuinely is a vocation:

When I was writing this first book, there was also a sense of it being therapeutic.  All creative activity is, to some extent, done partly with the intention to rectify or fix yourself.  In other words, by relativizing yourself, by adapting your soul to a form that’s different from what it is now, you can resolve – or sublimate – the contradictions, rifts, and distortions that inevitably crop up in the process of being alive.  And if things go well, this effect can be shared with readers.
‘Who Do I Write For?’, p.170

And if he’s happy, and his readers are happy, then surely that’s enough?  Modern great or not, you can’t deny that Murakami has put in a some decent shifts in his job – the rest, as the writer himself would agree, can be left for posterity to decide.