Novelist as a Vocation

by Haruki Murakami

Yet how many of those budding writers who debuted twenty or thirty years ago are active as novelists today? Not many.

The way I see it, people with brilliant minds are not particularly well suited to writing novels.

In my considered opinion, anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist. That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace—in low gear, so to speak. Faster than walking, let’s say, but slower than riding a bicycle.

For the most part, novelists are trying to convert something present in their consciousness into a story.

Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words—it’s much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience.

In the same vein, it is unnecessary for someone with a wealth of knowledge to drag out a fuzzy, dubious container like the novel for his purposes.

It is for these reasons, I think, that so many critics have trouble understanding—or, if they can understand at all, effectively verbalizing or theorizing that understanding—a certain type of novel or story.

At any rate, I have witnessed a great many intelligent and quick-minded people—many hailing from fields other than literature—head off to new destinations after writing a novel or two.

Another reason why so few stick it out is that someone with a fair amount of literary talent may have a single novel in them that they can roll out fairly easily, but no more.

I understand these feelings. Novel writing is indeed a most inefficient undertaking, consisting of repeating “for instance” over and over.

An extreme way of putting it is that novelists might be defined as a breed who feel the need, in spite of everything, to do that which is unnecessary.

More precisely, our world is constructed in a multilayered way, so that the realm of the roundabout and the inefficient is in fact the flip side of that which is clever and efficient. If one or the other is missing (or if one is dominated by the other), then the world is distorted as a result.

That is what novel writing is really all about. It is time-consuming, tedious work.

I can’t help thinking that novelists share something in common with those who spend a year or more assembling miniature boats in bottles with long tweezers. I couldn’t possibly do that—my fingertips aren’t that dexterous—but on some essential level what I do and what they do seem quite similar.

I remember reading a book when I was a boy about two men who travel to learn what there is to know about Mount Fuji.

Novelists (at least most of them) tend to be more like the second man—in other words, the stupider guy. They are the type who has to climb to the top to understand Mount Fuji.

This is why a novelist is not alarmed when someone from another field writes a critically and publicly acclaimed novel, even if it goes on to become a bestseller.

novelistic intelligence.

razor’s edge

hatchet’s edge,

axe’s...

A novelist, however, sees the idea of “a leisurely life” as practically synonymous with “the waning of one’s creativity.” For novelists are like certain types of fish. If they don’t keep swimming forward, they die.

So how do you discover if you have what it takes to be a novelist? There is only one answer: you have to jump in the water and see if you sink or swim.

Gunzo Prize

At any rate, having started out by getting married (it’s a very long story, so I won’t go into details), and hating the prospect of working for a company (those reasons would also take a long time to explain, so I’ll omit them, too), I decided that I wanted to open a jazz café, a place that served coffee, drinks, and some food.

Kokubunji Station

Fortunately for us, it was a time when, unlike today, young people could still start small businesses without a huge pile of money.

All over the world, you could still find small niches in which to live. If you could locate one you could fit into, you could get by somehow. Things could get wild at times, but it was an interesting era.

Musashino

Kokubunji

Shigeharu Mukai,

Aki Takase,

Kiyoshi Su...

Yoshio ...

Takao Ue...

Ryojiro Fu...

Fumio Wat...

One night my wife and I were trudging home with our heads down, too broke to make the bank payment that was due the next day, when we stumbled upon a crumpled wad of bills lying in the street.

I don’t mean to go on and on about how hard we had it, only to stress that life wasn’t easy when I was in my twenties.

I learned a lot about the world during those years too.

“Learning about the world”

This desperate frame of mind helped get me through the hard years without major injury until, somehow, I came out on the other side into a space that was slightly more open and relaxed.

Now I am not suggesting that the more hardship you endure the better off you will be. If you manage to get through this life without suffering, so much the better. I know there is nothing at all pleasant about hardship—it can drive you so low you can’t get up again. Nevertheless, if you are dealing with adverse conditions and the painful thoughts that come in their wake, you should take it from me that what you’re going through now may bear fruit down the road.

Kobe

Osaka district

One thing I always loved, though, was reading. I doubt any of my peers in junior high and high school read as many books as I did. I was also absorbed in listening to all kinds of music. As a result, I spent little time studying. I was an only child, well looked after (in other words, spoiled), who had led a protected life. In short, I was hopelessly ignorant of the world.

I have never been comfortable in groups or in any kind of collective action with others, so I didn’t become a member of any student groups, but I did support the movement in a general sort of way and tried to do what I could within my own private circle.

positive power of imagination

Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles.

Kabukicho