What does it mean to be a novelist? How does one go about becoming one? How is a novel even written? All fine questions to pose, but the answers, as Murakami presents them in his new book Novelist as a Vocation, are somehow unsatisfactory. For one thing, the book doesn’t seem to know what it is. Is it a memoir? A collection of essays? A how-to guide? A setting straight of the record? No doubt books can and have been more than one thing (“genre-bending”, I believe, is what it’s called), but Murakami is not exactly breaking new ground in the field of non-fiction writing. Nor does he want to, it should be added: he’s simply “jotting down [his] thoughts”.
Some thoughts are interesting; some are better left in the notebooks they’re scribbled in. The author’s stories from his days as the owner of a jazz cafe in the earlier part of the book make for quite engaging reading, though one wishes that the “master storyteller” (according to the back of my proof copy) might have used that mastery a little more in the telling of the rest of his story. Instead, the book devolves into a rather boring essay on literary prizes and how little the author cares about them (why, then, has he penned a piece on the matter?).
[ Killing Commendatore review: a Japanese Gatsby in a subconscious WonderlandOpens in new window ]
The second half tries to answer more practical questions wannabe-writers might have about novel-writing, and there are some interesting reflections here on the development of his own distinct style, on time, and on the importance of keeping physically fit while writing. Another tedious piece on the shortcomings of the Japanese education system breaks the flow of these more craft-oriented musings, before jumping back into an essay on characters, narrative devices, and the expansion that comes with moving from first-person to third-person writing. Throughout, however, any fascinating insights into craft are undermined by repetitiveness and a lack of coherent structure, both within the pieces and in how they’ve been arranged.
“I don’t know how far you generalise about or apply my way of writing and living,” Murakami cautions in the foreword. The takeaway of these essays is there from the beginning: there’s no one way to becoming a novelist. My two cents? You might not even need to read a book on it.
