Murakami Haruki on Stories and Storytelling
The Mainichi Daily News site is running a series of interviews with popular novelist Murakami Haruki this week in which he talks about his influences, the rhythm of translation, his latest epic (on which he is now working) and the greater purpose of storytelling…
“What I fear more than anything else is ‘psychological enclosure’ imposed by those who are pushing a particular cause. Most people need some sort of boundary, and it becomes unbearable if their boundaries disappear. …but there are lots of cages, or enclosures, and some people get caught up in these and find themselves unable to get out if they’re not careful,” Murakami says.
Murakami says it’s because of this situation that literature is important.
“Stories must exist to work against those psychological enclosures. A good story is not something you can see, but it should give depth and width to people’s minds. And a broad, deep-thinking mind is not something that likes to be shut off in a narrow space,” he says.
And if you want to know what three novels have proven most significant for Murakami’s own writing the list runs as follows: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye”, and “The Brothers Karamazov,” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Hmmm. I can feel another amazon order coming on.
Links to 1st article, 2nd article and 3rd.
