Lessons from Murakami

Thoughts on "Novelist as a Vocation" + my reading list since moving to NYC

In the city that never sleeps, I have spent a couple of early mornings reading Haruki Murakami at a café before starting my day job. I was the café’s only customer after it had just opened for the day. The tranquility, the freshly-baked bread, the promise of a brand new day, the warmth of the hot chocolate, the window view of the lazying winter sun that had yet to become fully awake…

Indeed, Murakami used to own and operate a jazz café in Sendagaya and finds cafés to be inspiring spaces, as he shared in the recently-translated nonfiction Novelist as a Vocation. The book was published in Japan a few years ago, but just became available in English. Hopefully, my Japanese will be competent enough for me to read the original work with more ease in a couple years. #Goals.

Novelist as a Vocation focuses on a few core topics: whether novelists are broad-minded, when/how Murakami became a novelist, his thoughts on literary prizes and originality, what novelists should write about, making time one’s ally when writing a novel, novel-writing as a completely personal and physical occupation, his thoughts on schools/education, the kinds of characters one should include, who one should write for, and going abroad as a new frontier.

Here’s the library copy I read.

To me, the most interesting parts can be summarized as follows:

• One of the most eccentric aspects of his writing process is that Murakami started writing in English (his second language that he described as not very fluent) to restrict his ideas, and then self-translated the words back to Japanese. That’s quite unconventional. It’s inspiring that he says if it’s already unconventional to dedicate so much effort in writing a novel, you might as well try an unconventional approach to writing.

• Murakami got married, worked (by opening and managing his own jazz café), and then graduated from college — in a sequence that is rather uncommon, as people tend to do the reverse. His path really shows how powerful one’s passions can be, as he has been passionate about 2 things in life: music and books. I find it powerful that he managed to find a way to combine his passions (e.g. a few of his novels involve musical elements), pursue both, and persevere against challenges.

• Murakami apparently didn’t enjoy school (though he did well enough to graduate from Waseda University) and even makes an argument that those who love school don’t usually become good novelists. I get that schools can be a very regimented approach to thinking and learning (especially in East Asia), but beg to disagree with Murakami on this point, as I know of some excellent novelists who overall enjoyed school.

• Murakami writes about 1,600 words a day consistently “without hope, without desperation.” He doesn’t exceed or go under that word count out of habit. He also has a “gestation period” for new novel ideas and later on, a rewrite phase, unsurprisingly.

• The “writing studio” for Murakami’s earlier works was his humble kitchen table. He would write during the few hours leading to dawn.

• He wrote one of his most famous books, Norwegian Woods, in Greece (not Norway) and finds writing abroad less distracting. I find this point quite fascinating as one would expect one to be more distracted by all the new things you experience in a foreign country. He apparently wrote everywhere, including inside ferries and cafés.

• Murakami could have enjoyed comfortable success in Japan with enticing offers like write in a European chateau for free, but he challenged himself by pursuing publishing opportunities abroad in the US, Europe, other East Asian countries, and other markets.

• He is surprised himself that his novels have appealed to readers across the age groups without explicitly intending that to be the case. He estimates having similar levels of popularity among male and female readers.

• Murakami has mixed feelings about literary awards. His rise to fame seemed in large part due to him winning a prestigious literary award for debut writers, but he repeatedly emphasized that he declined opportunities to judge literary awards and overall doesn’t seem to think too much about those. He seems to have a certain obsession with describing his thoughts on the Akutagawa Prize in particular — expressing nonchalance while repeatedly talking about it, seemingly comparing his attitude about the award to the Nobel Prize winners who didn't fly to Stockholm to receive the award. I take it that he might still be a bit bitter about not winning it…

• Writing is not only a solo exercise you do in a confined room, but also a highly physical one. Murakami stresses the importance of keeping fit. I did read his book on his love of running and marathons and hope to work out more, though I’m nowhere close to running marathons at this point.

• Murakami is known for declining public speaking engagements, but has been trying harder abroad in part to represent Japanese authors abroad. He also noted that he personally responds to roughly 1 out of 10 fan mails and sometimes disagrees with fans’ interpretations of his novels, and often learns from those fan mails. There’s no ghostwriter who does this for him, contrary to many readers’ assumptions.

Overall, I enjoyed this relatively short book. It is easy to read and digest, and left plenty of food for thought as I walked out of the café each time after the second and third customers walked in with their dogs, well-nourished and ready to embrace my lawyering work for the day. My only complaint about Murakami’s book is that at some points, I found it rather repetitive. It is written in an informal and conversational tone, perhaps mirroring some of the more repetitive styles of everyday conversations.

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While we are still on the topic of books, here is a list of other books I’ve read since moving to NYC in May that I’d recommend checking out. A special thanks to the New York Public Library and the Harvard Club Library for the opportunity to continue my love of reading (for free) and for bearing with my many book requests. If you’d like me to analyze one of the below titles in a subsequent Substack article, do let me know!

I. Memorable Novels/Short Stories

• First Person Singular - one of my favorite collections of short stories from recent years; love the monkey at the onsen story

• The Strange Library - truly strange and also short & sweet; you can finish reading it in one sitting

• Men Without Women

• Life Ceremony - very memorable/haunting — you’ll see what I mean if you read it! Reading it alongside some works on animal rights (see below for my recs) can be an interesting approach to take. I personally didn’t like the author’s 2016 novel Convenience Store Woman as much, but very much enjoyed this book.

• Where the Crowdads Sing - also a Netflix film featuring a Taylor Swift song written specifically for the movie (I might blog about this book)

• Normal People

• Conversation with Friends

• Apples Never Fall

• Rebecca

• Novels about doctors written by an ER doctor: Doctors and friends, The antidote for everything, Queen of Hearts; if you are interested in reading more about doctors and doctors-in-the-making, check out my earlier article co-authored with Evan Iliakis:

  Doctor of Law (J.D.) vs. Doctor of Medicine (M.D., aka “the real doctor”) – College Friends’ Musings on Law and Medicine

II. Books to better understand the modern British monarchy

• Dressing the Queen

• The Other Side of the Coin

• Palace Papers

• The Spare by Prince Harry (Recent and notorious; I might write about it)

III. Animals/Animal Rights/Cultivated Meat

• Billion Dollar Burger

• The Horse: a Natural History

• Meat Planet

• The End of Animal Farming

IV. Broadway / Phantom of the Opera

• Unmasked: a Memoir

• Phantom of the Opera - the novel (hope to read the French version in the future!)

• The Complete Phantom of the Opera

• Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera Companion

• Broadway’s Most Remarkable Showstoppers

V. Other Nonfiction Books/Biographies/Essays

• The Making of a Justice by Justice Stevens

• I Was Told There’d be Cake

• The Partner Track: How to go from associate to partner at any law firm

• My Lifelong Challenge: Singapore’s Bilingual Journey

• Singapore Story - Third World to First (also by Lee Kuan Yew — as above)

• Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton (aka Draco Malfoy)

• Educated (can read alongside the novel and movie Crowdad)

• The Woman I Wanted to Be by designer DVF

• Getting Along by Amy Gallo

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Especially if you have any book recs for me and other readers!