Novelist as a Vocation

by Haruki Murakami

Jorge Luis Borges?

Akutagawa

Haruki Murakami

Akutagawa Prize

It’s a very rough estimate, but my guess is that about five percent of all people are active readers of literature.

Fahrenheit 451,

Once the habit of reading has taken hold—usually when we are very young—it cannot be easily dislodged. YouTube and 3D videos may be within easy reach, but when we five-percenters have free time (and even when we don’t), we reach for a book.

What can I offer those book lovers next?

ninety-five percent?

latent readers,

Akutagawa Prize,

Beaujolais Nouveau

Nobel Prize for Literature.

That is my yardstick, my recipe for success, but although it works for me, I doubt it would be suitable for other writers.

individualism;

self-centered and egotistic person.

Should someone attack me for having abandoned my social responsibility as a writer, I would have to confess he or she might have a point.

Gunzo Prize for New Writers

There is, however, another way to think about this.

egoism?

self-centered.

Please don’t misunderstand—by no means am I denigrating writers (my comrades in arms) who sit on literary prize juries.

I have written very little about literary prizes until now. That is because the media tend to play them up irrespective of the quality of the works.

Akutagawa Prize

It is not as easy as it looks, though, to talk about what that article claims, given its fishy origins and its contentious nature.

Algren

Chandler

What is originality? That’s a hard question to answer. When we say that a work of art is “original,” what exactly do we mean?

Oliver Sacks

Creativity in this sense involves the power to originate, to break away from the existing ways of looking at things, to move freely in the realm of the imagination, to create and recreate worlds fully in one’s mind—while supervising all this with a critical inner eye.[1]

Perhaps the concept of “originality” can be understood more easily if we set direct definitions and rational theories aside and look instead at concrete examples.

Beatles—I

Beach Boys

Looking back, it was the originality of these groups that enthralled me. Their sound was new, their music different than what anyone else was doing, and its quality was far and away the best.

Beatles

Beach Boys

Beatles

Beach Boys

The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring.

Gustav Mahler’s

Mahler

Mahler’s

Mahler’s originality.

Schubert’s

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk

Vincent van Gogh