Novelist as a Vocation

by Haruki Murakami

The way I see it, the “E.T. method” is their sole option. Their only recourse is to throw open their garage doors, drag out whatever they have stored away to that point—even if it looks like no more than a pile of useless junk—and slave away until the magic takes hold. No other approach can help us contact distant planets. We can only try our best with what we have at hand. If you do give it your best shot, though, success can be yours.

The mental image I have of a space of individual recovery is exactly like that. It’s not limited just to reading. Even for kids who can’t adjust to the actual school system, the ones who aren’t especially interested in studying, if they are able to find their own customized space of individual recovery, and can discover something there that fits them in order to develop possibilities at their own pace, they’ll be able to naturally overcome the wall of the system.