Murakami is one of Japan’s most creative and widely read authors. Writing novels, short stories, essays, and non-fiction books, he shuns the public spotlight, rarely giving interviews or appearing in public and refusing to participate in the honors and awards culture of modern writing.

I’ve read three of his  novels, enjoying each of their quirky, unusual structure and style.  My favorites are ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ and ‘Kafka on the Shore’.  I also enjoyed his memoir ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’ (he is a daily runner and an annual marathoner!) and his book of conversations with Seiji Ozawa about music (he owned a jazz club and is very knowledgeable about music.).

This book is written in his informal, digressive style in which he often inserts asides or tangents in parentheses, sharing his insecurity and self-questioning with the reader.  The book itself is a fascinating inside look at his motivation, methods, and his life as a novelist.  Relishing his  role as an ‘outsider’, he draws comparisons to Thelonious Monk’s style of jazz piano and his interest in looking at the often mundane world in terms of ‘reversals’, e.g. trees sink and rocks float in one quote.  He emphasizes the mental and physical discipline necessary for writing a novel and the importance of reading, reading, reading in building up a memory from which stories and characters can be drawn.  The novelist must fill his head with his own world and then share that with readers.  His advice for would-be novelists is to read widely, observe people closely, and avoid being limited by literary cliche and conventional logic.  Beyond that, however, he notes that novelists must have freedom, a free and natural sensibility, and spontaneous joy in creating and sharing their stories.  He points out that the indispensable ingredient is ‘magic’ and likens it to the same feeling in jazz—creating a new work that while drawing on memory and those who wrote before retains its differences and unique viewpoint.

If you’ve read Murakami, you will enjoy this opportunity to read about his methods and his philosophy of novel writing. If you haven’t, the book may lack some immediacy, so go out and read ‘Norwegian Wood’, ‘Kafka on the Shore’, or ‘Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ and then sit back and enjoy his meanderings about writing.