I'm still working my way through the deliciousness and madness that a back to back re-read of Murakami's novels will induce. I just finished Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and will begin Dance Dance Dance this week. I've been through the proverbial ringer. This is a fascinating challenge I've set for myself that requires much stamina and I'd be remiss if I didn't take at least a day to pause and assess what I'm understanding and not. What I'm seeing and not. And how I might go about documenting, even in a rudimentary way, the interconnectedness between the novels.
Part of that taking pause involved a little coming up for air. A re-entry back into this world. A little Googling. As I try to make sense of what I just read, I stumbled upon this excellent Paris Review interview from 2004.
A few of Murakami's responses that I've particularly enjoyed reading today:
"I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world."
"Even now, my ideal for writing fiction is to put Dostoevsky and Chandler together in one book. That’s my goal."
"...writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."
"In War and Peace Tolstoy describes the battleground so closely that the readers believe it’s the real thing. But I don’t. I’m not pretending it’s the real thing. We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake. But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same; we are walking through fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that it’s a commitment, it’s a true relationship. That’s what I want to write about."
