Novelist as a vocation, p.16
Novelist as a Vocation, page 16
Almost everyone I knew was against this decision, claiming I shouldn’t rush into things. My café was doing good business at the time, with a steady income, and they felt it was a waste to give that up. “Can’t you let someone else run the shop while you write novels?” they asked. Most of them probably didn’t expect I’d be able to earn a living just writing novels. But I had no doubts. I’ve always been the type who, when he does something, plunges in headfirst. My personality just wouldn’t allow me to let someone else run the shop. This was a crucial moment in my life. I needed to make a firm decision and stick by it. Even if it was just one time, I wanted to use everything I had to focus on writing a novel. If it didn’t work out, then so be it. I could start all over again. Those were my thoughts then. I sold the café and gave up my apartment in Tokyo in order to concentrate on writing. I left the city, started going to bed early and getting up early, and began running every day to stay in shape. In other words, I did a complete makeover of my lifestyle.
Maybe at this point I should have had a clear sense of my readers in mind.
But I didn’t really consider who my readers might be. There was no need to. I was in my early thirties then, and it was obvious my readers were the same age as me or perhaps younger. Young men and women, in other words. At the time I was considered a “rising young writer” (I’m a little embarrassed to use the term), and the people who supported my work were clearly the younger generation of readers. And what kind of people they were, and what they thought about, was not something I had to ponder much. My readers and myself as a writer were, as a matter of course, one. It was a sort of honeymoon period, I suppose, between me and my readers.
As I recall, for a number of reasons A Wild Sheep Chase got a cool reception from the editorial staff at the magazine Gunzo, which first published it, but fortunately many readers enjoyed it, reviews were positive, and it sold more than expected. In short, it was a smooth start for me as a professional, full-time writer. And I got the strong sense that I was moving in the right direction. In that way, A Wild Sheep Chase was my real starting point as a novelist.
* * *
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Time has passed. I am now far removed from being a rising young writer. I didn’t plan it, but as time passes you naturally age (not much you can do about it). And as time has passed, of course the kind of readers who read my books has also changed. But if I were asked what kind of people read my books now I’d have to say I have no idea. I really don’t.
I get a lot of letters from readers, and have the opportunities sometimes to actually meet some of them. But there’s nothing connecting their ages, sex, and places they live, so I really have no mental picture of the main type of people who read my books. I get the feeling the sales departments at the publishers don’t have a good grasp of it, either. My readers are about evenly split between men and women, and apart from the fact that many of my women readers are quite beautiful—this is no lie—there’s no characteristic that they all share. In the past it seemed one trend was that I sold well in urban areas but not so much outside, but now there doesn’t seem to be any clear regional difference.
I can imagine people might ask, “Are you saying you write your novels with no idea who your readers are?” Well, come to think of it, that’s absolutely right. I have no clear mental image of my readership.
As far as I know, most writers age along with their readers. What I mean is that a writer’s readers generally age in tandem with him. So in many cases the writer’s age and the readers’ ages overlap. Easy enough to understand. If that’s the case, then you write novels assuming that your readers are the same age as you. But for me that doesn’t seem to be true.
There are genres, of course, that target a predetermined age group or audience. Young-adult fiction, for instance, targets teenage boys and girls, romance fiction is written for women in their twenties and thirties, while historical novels and period fiction mainly targets middle-aged and older men. Again, easy to understand. But the novels I write seem a bit different.
Which takes us all the way around, back to where I began. Since I have no idea what kind of people read my novels, all I can do is write them so I myself enjoy them. Back to the starting point, you might say, which is kind of strange.
Since I became a writer, though, and started regularly publishing books, there is one lesson I’ve learned. Which is that no matter what or how I write, somebody’s going to say something bad about it. Say I write a really long novel, someone is bound to say, “It’s too long. Too verbose. Half that length would be fine.” If I write a short novel, some complain that it’s too “shallow,” too “hollow,” that I’m “just phoning it in.” If I write a novel similar to an earlier one, they say, “He’s just repeating himself. He’s stuck in a groove and it’s boring.” And others will say, “His earlier work was better. This new approach is just going round and round and getting nowhere.” Come to think of it, for the last twenty-five years there have been people who say, “Murakami’s out of step with the times. He’s finished.” It’s easy to criticize—all you have to do is say what you’re thinking, and you don’t have to take any responsibility for anything. For the person who’s being criticized, though, if he takes each and every criticism seriously he’ll never survive. So I’ve concluded, “Whatever. If people are going to say terrible things, then I’m just going to write what I want to write, in the way I want to write it.”
Rick Nelson had a song late in his career called “Garden Party.” The lyrics included the following:
See, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself.
I know exactly how he feels. It’s impossible to please everyone, and all you end up doing is spinning your wheels and wearing yourself out. In that case it’s better to stand up for yourself and do what makes you happy, what you really want to do, the way you want to do it. Do that, and even if your reputation isn’t so great, if your books don’t sell well, you can tell yourself, “It’s okay. At least I enjoyed myself.” You’ll be convinced it was all worthwhile.
Thelonious Monk said something apropos of this: “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing—even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.”
Enjoying yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll produce an outstanding work of art. A process of rigorous self-examination is a crucial element. Also, as a professional, of course you need a minimum number of readers. But clear that hurdle and I think that your goal should be to enjoy yourself and write works that satisfy you. I mean, a life spent doing something you don’t find enjoyable can’t be much fun, right? I return again to our starting point: What’s wrong about feeling good?
* * *
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Still, if someone asks me straight up, “Do you mean to tell me you really write novels only thinking about yourself?” I’d have to respond that of course that’s not the case. As I’ve said before, as a professional writer I always have readers in mind as I write. Forgetting about the existence of readers—if you wanted to—is impossible, and is also not a healthy thing to do.
But saying I keep readers in mind isn’t the same as a company, when it’s developing a new product, surveying the market, analyzing consumers, and zeroing in on a target audience. What always comes to my mind is more an “imaginary reader.” That person doesn’t have an age, an occupation, or a gender. In reality he would, but those are interchangeable in my mind. In other words they’re not important elements. What is important, what is not interchangeable, is the fact that that person and I are connected. I don’t know the details of where and how we’re connected. Yet I get the distinct sense that deep down, in some dark recesses, my roots and that person’s roots are linked. It’s such a deep, dark place, not something you can casually drop by and see. Yet through the system of narrative, I feel that we are connected, the real sense that nourishment is passing back and forth.
Yet if that person and I were to pass each other in some back street, or be seated next to each other on a train, or lined up together at the same checkout counter in a supermarket, we wouldn’t (in most cases) notice that our roots are connected in that way. We’d just pass by each other, strangers, and go our separate ways without ever realizing it. Probably never to see each other again. But in reality, down deep in the ground, in a place that penetrates below the hard crust of everyday life, we are, novelistically, connected. Deep within our hearts we share a common narrative. That’s probably the type of reader I assume. And every day I write my novels with the hope that that reader will enjoy them a little, and feel something when he reads them.
Compared to that, the actual people around me in everyday life can be a lot of trouble. Every time I write a new book some people like it, and others don’t. Even if they don’t clearly express their opinions and thoughts, I can usually read it in their faces. It’s only to be expected. Everybody has preferences. I can work as hard as I want, but as Rick Nelson said, you can’t please everyone. Seeing everybody’s individual reactions is, for the writer, pretty exhausting. Those are the times I simply take a stand and say, “You got to please yourself.” I’m able to keep these two stances distinct, which is a skill I’ve learned over long years of writing. Maybe it’s the wisdom I need in order to live.
* * *
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One thing that makes me very happy is that people of many different age groups seem to be reading my novels. I often get letters to the effect that “all three generations in my home are reading your works, Mr. Murakami.” The grandmother is reading them (perhaps one of my “young readers” from years past), the mother’s reading them, and so is her son and his younger sister…This kind of scenario seems pretty common. Hearing that really cheers me up. A copy of one book being passed around to several people in a family means that book really has a life of its own. Of course if each one bought their own copy, that would boost sales and make the publisher happy; but as the author of the book, honestly, I’m far happier if five people cherish the one copy.
Which reminds me of a phone call I got once from a former classmate. “My son, who’s in high school, has read all your books,” he told me, “and we often talk together about them. We normally don’t talk too much, but when it comes to your books we’re able to say a lot to each other.” He sounded happy when he said this. “Oh,” I thought, “so my books do have a small role to play in the world.” At least to help a parent and child communicate. That’s an achievement. I don’t have children myself, and if other people’s children enjoy reading my books, and that arouses a response in them, that means I’ve passed on something to the next generation, albeit in a modest way.
Realistically speaking, though, I have hardly any individual, direct relations with any of my readers. In Japan, I don’t make public appearances, first of all, and rarely appear before the media. I’ve never been on TV or radio, even once (though I’ve been caught on film a few times against my wishes).[*] I don’t do public book signings. People ask me why, and the reason is I’m a professional writer, what I can do best is write novels, and as much as I can I want to invest all my energy in that. Life is short, and I have only so much time and energy. I don’t want to use up time in something apart from my main occupation. Abroad, though, I do a public talk, a reading, or a book signing about once a year. I see this as my duty as a Japanese writer, something I have to do on occasion. I’ll delve into that topic more some other time.
I have, though, set up websites a few times. They were only online for a few weeks at a time, but I received countless emails from readers. And I made it a rule to look at each and every one. I might skim through the really long ones, but I did read every email sent to me.
And I wrote a reply to about one out of every ten. I would answer questions, give a bit of advice, give my reaction to the message, etc. The exchanges were of all sorts, from casual comments to fairly serious, formal replies. During that time (which might extend over several months) I work like mad to reply to the emails, hardly taking on any other work; yet it seems like most people who get a reply from me don’t believe I actually wrote it myself. They think someone else wrote it for me. There are many cases where replies to fan letters to celebrities are written by others hired for the job, so they must think I do the same. I made it clear on these websites that all replies are written directly by me, but it seems like most of the time people don’t take that at face value.
I hear that especially with young women: they’ll be really happy telling their boyfriend, “I got a reply from Haruki Murakami himself!” and their boyfriend will often put a damper on that, telling them, “Don’t be stupid. Murakami’s too busy to write each reply himself. He has someone else write them for him, and just says he writes them himself.” There really are a lot of suspicious people in the world, apparently (or maybe it’s that there are a lot of people who try to deceive others). But the truth is, I work very hard to answer these myself. I think I’m pretty fast at writing replies, but with the great number of emails I get, it’s a lot of work, believe me. But it is fun to do it, and I learn a lot.
And through that exchange of emails with actual readers, I’ve come to understand something: as a whole, people have a really solid grasp of my work. Sometimes I’ll find misinterpretations, or places where they’re overthinking things, and occasionally emails where (pardon me for saying so) I think they’ve got things a bit mixed up. Even my self-styled fervent fans will, depending on the work, like some and be critical of others. Some works they’ll respond to, others they’ll resist. The opinions I hear from them are all over the place. But when I take a step back and look at the whole picture they paint from a distance, I get the distinct sense that my readers really read my works deeply, and understand what they’re all about. There are small, differences, depending on the person, some of whom are more on target than others, but if you deduct those and average it all out, in the final analysis they wind up where they should be.
“Ah!” I think when I read them. “So that’s how they see it?” Like mist clearing up over a ridge. Gaining this awareness was, for me, a rare and valuable experience. An Internet experience, I guess you’d say. Though it was such hard work I doubt I’ll be able to do it again.
I mentioned having an “imaginary reader” in mind when I write, and I think the definition is almost the same as this image of a “whole readership.” But since the image of a “whole” is too broad to get a mental picture of, I’ve compressed it into a single entity and called it an “imaginary reader.”
* * *
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In bookstores in Japan, male writers’ and female writers’ works are often placed in separate corners, something you don’t see in bookstores abroad. Maybe there are some, but at least I’ve never seen them divided this way. I’ve given some thought to why they divide things like this, and came to the conclusion that perhaps women readers read more books by female writers while men readers read books by male writers. So it’s a question of convenience, placing the two groups in separate areas in a bookstore to make it easier for readers. When I think of my own reading habits, I realize I tend to read a few more books by male writers than by women writers, too, though not because I decide from the start I’ll read something just because it’s by a man. It just turns out that way. Of course there are a lot of women writers I enjoy. Among foreign writers I love Jane Austen and Carson McCullers. I’ve read all their books. I like Alice Munro, too, and I’ve translated several of Grace Paley’s works. So I get the feeling it’s wrong to have male and female writers’ works plunked down in separate areas of a bookstore. It’s just going to make the division of which works are read by which sex even more pronounced. Not that society’s going to listen to what I have to say about it.
As I mentioned a little earlier, readers of my works seem about equally divided between men and women. I haven’t compiled statistics to back this up, but through meeting and talking with readers, and through the email exchange I mentioned, I get the sense that my readers are about equally male and female. It’s true of Japan, and also seems true abroad. There’s a nice balance. I don’t know why it’s this way, but I get the feeling it’s something I should be genuinely pleased about. The world’s population is about half men and half women, so it’s a natural and healthy thing for my readers to be evenly split as well.
Once when I was talking with a young woman reader, she asked me, “Mr. Murakami, how is it that though you’re a man in your sixties, you understand young women’s feelings so well?” (Naturally, there are lots of people who don’t share this opinion; I’m just giving this as the opinion one reader had.) I’ve never thought that I have a good handle on young women’s feelings, so (truly) I was quite surprised to hear this. I would probably respond with something like, “As I write a story, I try very hard to put myself inside the characters, and gradually I might get a sense of what they’re feeling or thinking. But always just in a novelistic sense.”
In other words, as I move the characters around in the framework of the novel I get to understand these to a degree, but this is a bit different from understanding real-life young women. Unfortunately, I should say, when it comes to flesh-and-blood people, I don’t understand them so well. But still, knowing that flesh-and-blood young women—at least a certain segment of them—enjoy reading the novels I (an old guy in his mid-sixties) have written, and can feel sympathy for the characters that appear in them, makes me happier than anything. It almost feels miraculous.
