Exploring the Craft and Work of a Writer

 Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami Graffiti in Tbilisi by White Demon, CC BY-SA 4.0  via Wikimedia Commons

Haruki Murakami (signature), CC BY-SA 4.0  via Wikimedia Commons

I was so excited to learn about Novelist as a Vocation from Haruki Murakami, one of my all-time favorite writers. While I love just about all of his books, I’ve found that the quality of some of his fiction has been gradually decreasing. I liked most of the stories in First Person, but also found that some of them lacked the magic and odd humor that earlier story collections had. I also tend to really like his non-fiction writing, whether it is about music, running, or t-shirts. He brings out a level of meaning in his simple style and observations that requires a deeper thinking about why we do or like these subjects. Much like his analysis of the Tokyo subway attack in Underground, his nonfiction challenges us to question these subjects on a deeper level and consider the implications of why we feel a certain way about them. I think that this book is a great addition to Murakami’s collection. Although he’s written about his early career previously, and the whimsical story of the inspiration to write from a baseball game, it’s still compelling to hear about it and learn more about his craft, process, and continued continuity as a writer. Although it seems kind of rote and monotonous, I really love the regularity of his writing regimen, and how it often equates this with running. Just as in What We Talk About When We Talk About Running, his writing process follows a similar regularity for marathon training where he sets a kind of regular pace and outcome for his work on a daily basis. Although he’s not necessarily living the kind of glamorous and decadent life of other writers he admires like Fitzgerald and Hemmingway, I think it is important to find this kind of regularity and consistency in a process that he writes about. Anytime we can learn from a master writer in their own words, I think that is a good thing, and I really appreciated learning more about his work and experience as a writer. I hope that sometime soon, there is a translation of his work about jazz music or that he writes a book about record collecting, since I really enjoy these nonfiction books.