Haruki Murakami fans discussion

Topic for discussion of Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami, eng trans by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen. First published 2015(jpn) and 2022(eng).

May - June 2025 group read for those who would like to participate. The thread will stay open for those that would like to comment after the group read period.

This is the first group read or discussion of this Murakami non-fiction collection of essays.

You can see what members have said in their GR reviews by clicking on “view activity” where the book is featured as “Currently Reading” on the forum page.

This is widely translated: Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Portuguese,
Arabic, Dutch, Czech, Romanian, Polish, German, French, English, probably more.

The forum conversation is in English, but read along in any language!

Novelist as a Vocation is a collection of essays. The first chapter of the book is "Are Novelists Broad-minded?". In the book there is an essay about Haruki Murakami with the title “How I Became a Novelist”

If I can trust memory, There is something of a habit in the translation biz to wait and see if the English language version of an other wise non English language novel sell before publishers are ready to invest in more translations. (source is I think Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami )

I think they were trying to say that the English version made for a more common language from which to start. That or, if the huge English language market is not making money on this book, why should we with a relatively smaller market try.

If this last case has any validity, a good selling Mandarin translation would serve as a much larger test. To this I can only conjecture over the reliability of sales figures from China, and their willingness to translate anything.

Murakami began these series of essays about 2010. The book was published in Japanese in 2015 and the English translation of the essays by Phillip Gabriel and Ted Goossen was published in 2022. The forward in the book talks about the interval between 2015 and 2022.

The first six chapters of the book was serialized in the magazine Monkey Business. Murakami provided a short story of the magazine when it started in 2008 and then went on to provide the essays. The last five chapters were written just for the book.

I don't know if we will discuss the chapters in detail. They are written as if he is speaking to a small group of perhaps 30 people and feel informal, conversational in nature. The chapter that lent its name to the book explains how he got started in the "vocation".

Novelist as a Vocation is available in print, ebook, and audiobook. It was readily available through the local library system and via interlibrary loan.

CONTENTS
Foreword
Are Novelists Broad-minded?
When I Became a Novelist
On Literary Prizes
On Originality
So What Should I Write About?
Making Time Your Ally: On Writing a Novel
A Completely Personal and Physical Occupation
Regarding Schools
What Kind of Characters Should I Include?
Who Do I Write For?
Going Abroad: A New Frontier

I am up to “Reading Schools” and not rushing through the essays. When I am interested in a writer’s works, I enjoy learning more about the author and their thoughts. I am finding the series fulfilling that enjoyment. This helps prepare for our June read of his first novel given the substance of the essays.

(5 May 2025 update) I finished one complete pass now. I plan to read through one more time during the group read event. On a second pass I will be more focused on taking notes and marking sections for follow up.

I’m midway through the second essay, On Literary Prizes, and quite enjoying his restrained prickliness about the Akutagawa Pruze and “the literary world,” in general.

Carol, I enjoyed the essays and felt that I learned a bit more about HM. I am glad you are reading this collection and happy to hear your thought on the essays.
In On Literary Prizes I learned about the 1979 Gunzo Prize for new writers for his entry Hear the Wind Sing and how that event opened the way for him to become a writer. As HM discussed this, it was enough for him and that Akutagawa would have been a “hinderance”.
This specific essay motivated me to read Hear the Wind Sing with the essay as a background. In his first and the title essay he wrote, “I had sent them my only copy. If they hadn’t selected it, it probably would have vanished forever. I probably never would have written another novel. Life is strange, when you think about it.”

Jack wrote: "Carol, I enjoyed the essays and felt that I learned a bit more about HM. I am glad you are reading this collection and happy to hear your thought on the essays.
In On Literary Prizes I learned abo..."

I missed the statement where he said he sent them his only copy! Oh, my.

I finished the book, and am glad I read it, but it lacked the wow factor as it wound on. I found several things interesting.

He is so over the moon about The New Yorker, and, honestly, I just don't see being published in The New Yorker as a particularly impressive credential at least for US readers. There was a time when publication in TNY might have meant something to the Manhattan literati, but still. I'm not young and it has never been a super-meaningful credential, a la, well, if he's getting published by TNY, I should read him. Your thoughts?

Maybe it's the arrangement of the essays, but I think they needed to think more about energy and finish it as strongly as it started. It doesn't. It just ... ends. Perhaps the essays were arranged in original chronological order. I know not. And as I said, I enjoyed it, but it's not a must-read.

The two things I'll likely remember about this book in a couple of years are: in Japan, female authors are separated from male authors into different corners of a book store !!! and he's never agreed to a deadline, so he's got no external pressure to deliver. What a nice life, for a writer. I wonder how common it is, at least in the West, to get an advance without a delivery deadline. Perhaps, he never needed an advance?

I am only a minor reader of The New Yorker but it is read US nationwide, with 53% of its circulation in the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas. It has a reputation for publishing well-regarded fiction.
I think, in HM's case, it helped "establish" him as a serious writer with a significant future. Therefore publishers might feel that investing in his work to get it to readers would be likely profitable.

Though I don't think that The New Yorker affected me directly in the case of HM literature, the likely impact of TNY is in the influence on the publishing industry to take on HM, therefore giving the international English language audience the opportunity to read his works. I am only guessing here but as I chase down threads for this forum, I keep running into TNY publication of HM works and interviews.

I was unsure what to expect from the essays, or little conversations, in Novelist as a Vocation. They did provide background that helps me personally in reading his novels and NF work. It is a collection of essays about writing and HM's life. Most interesting for me was learning more about his writing process through publication.