“Novelist as a Vocation” by novelist Haruki Murakami

“I am a very ordinary person…I’m not that good at logical argument or abstract thought” (1, pp. x-xi).

“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” (1, p. 10).

“One of the things I most enjoy about writing novels is the sense that I can become anybody I want to be” (1, p. 156).

“Of course it’s the writer who creates the characters; but characters who are—in a real sense—alive will eventually break free of the writer’s control and begin to act independently…many fiction writers acknowledge it. In fact, unless that phenomenon occurs, writing a novel becomes a strained, painful, and trying process. When a novel is on the right track, characters take on a life of their own, the story moves forward by itself, and a very happy situation evolves whereby the novelist just ends up writing down what he sees happening in front of him. And in some cases the character takes the novelist by the hand and leads him or her to an unexpected destination” (1, p. 162).

Murakami says he first got the inspiration to become a novelist when he was attending a baseball game, and the “idea” suddenly came to him: “I think I can write a novel” (1, p. 27).

However, I suspect Murakami is fibbing about his getting an “idea,” per se. He probably heard a voice in his head, the voice of an alternate personality destined to become one of his “independent” characters. And the voice probably said: You can write a novel.

1. Haruki Murakami. Novelist as a Vocation. Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

2. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami

See Wikipedia (2). Search “Murakami” for past posts.