Jean-Michel Serres, Composer-pianist (Apfel Café Music): Website

14 May 202024 August 2023

Book Review | Novelist as a Profession by Haruki Murakami, Switch Publishing, 2015

Novelist as a Profession by Haruki Murakami is an auto-biographical essay (on the afterword, mentioned by Murakami). This essay treats themes of novelist, novel, literature, writing, art, school education and life. On this essay Murakami told how he lived, spent his life, wrote novels, think about literature and novel. Anyway, as a result, for readers, this essay Murakami told readers how to write novel and induced them to write a novel. But it is not a usual “how to” book or a guide book at all.

On this essay, Murakami wrote honestly his experience, way of life, thought and policy. He didn’t want to be a novelist seriously. At first, he had no enthusiasm to write novel. He ran a jazz cafe or bar, and earned a sufficient amount of money. Some epiphanies, chances and lucks made him a novelist. Also he continued to write novels of his own will.

Murakami is an ordinary and modest person, also is uncategorized and unconventional individual. He was a usual student, spent a daily life as an ordinary and normal citizen. Also he isn’t a stereotyped great writer or artist.

Murakami’s policy is such as a policy of non-policy or non-rule. He live and write by spontaneousness, freedom and nature. He doesn’t depend on any authorities, academism and large systems. He live his life the way he like. He doesn’t interest in any prizes and the Japanese literature scene. So he migrated to foreign countries, and made a distance to the Japanese literature scene.

His policy links to his way of writing and the content of his works. He writes his novels the way he like. He writes a novel by rhythm and free improvisation like jazz. He doesn’t set a heavy and proper theme, a strict plan and fixed personalities of characters. His policy and way of writing made the “voice” echoes with the hearts of readers.

Murakami wrote his novels for himself, “writing for enjoy myself as my basic stance” (p. 269). So the title of a novel by an imaginary writer Derek Heartfield in Murakami’s debut novel Hear the Wind Sing is “What’s Wrong About Feeling Good ?” (p. 270), it expressed the sense of incongruity to the Japanese literature scene.

Murakami has been enjoyed writing and wrote by his spontaneousness from his debut until now. And he has no desire to become a novelist or to succeed in a novel, and there’s any limitations. He alway wrote a novel by a plentiful and spontaneous pleasure. So he can own “a natural feeling that I’m free” and “free and natural feeling” (p. 111), and he thinks his originality caused by freedom.

On the other hand, Murakami has will and durability to write story, and his original way of work. He had been built his own style of writing and his original grand narrative by trial and error. When he write a long novel 5 hours in early morning everyday. And he trains the body and keeps his physical strength without fail. He founded healthy life for writing. He thinks to complete a long novel it’s necessary of concentration and durability.

Murakami is only a novelist and a creator. He isn’t good at analyse and criticize things like a scholar, also he want not his works analysed and criticized by scholars and critics. He won’t be a councillor or a literature prize, also he isn’t interested in any prizes. Over almost 40 years, he only wrote novels and texts. He only want to enjoy writing a novel. Murakami thinks he is only an ordinary person has a certain measure of capacity to write a novel, but by some chances and accidents made him a novelist, and by his will and durability he continued to write novels. I think Murakami told that “everyone can write a novel and become a novelist”. As a matter of fact, by this book, you should want to write a novel or create something.

A spring clear afternoon, Murakami visited the 1978 opening game of the Central League at an outfield stand of the Jingu Stadium, Tokyo. When the first batter of Yakult Swallows, Dave Hilton hit a fine double, an epiphany fell into Murakami, then he realized “That’s it, maybe, I can write a novel !” at the moment. (pp. 46 – 47) This essay makes you want to write a novel or want to do a creation. Like Murakami realized “That’s it, maybe, I can write a novel !”, to read this essay, you may realize “That’s it, maybe, I can write a novel !”.

Product Details

Novelist as a Profession
Haruki Murakami
Switch Publishing, Tokyo, 10 September 2015
313 pages, JPY 1944
ISBN 9784884184438
Content

Are Novelists Tolerant Persons?
When I Became a Novelist
About Literature Awards
On Originality
Well, What Should I Write?
Taking Side with Time: To Write Long Novels
Extremely Individual and Physical Activity
About School
How Characters That I Should Present?
Who is I Write for?
Going Abroad: The New Frontier
Place a Story Is in: Memories of Dr. Hayao Kawai

‘Barthes (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Jonathan Culler

‘Barthes (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Jonathan Culler is a guide book about Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) was a french ‘écrivain’ (writer), literary critic, literary theorist, semiologist (semiotician) and structuralism thinker. He made vast influences to humanities, social science, sociology, literary study, literary critic, philosophy and social thought.

In this small book, Culler summarises Barthes’s thoughts and pick out their essences.

Culler divided Barthes and his works into many various periods and aspects such as a Literary Historian, Mythologist, Semiologist, Hedonist and Writer. He don’t describe Barthes’s career as 4 periods usually mentioned (literary critic – semiologist or social mythologist – text theorist – romanesque author). And he describes clearly in each chapters but not surely chronologically.

A feature of this book is philosophical analysis of Barthes’s ‘pleasure’, in the French tradition, from Descartes to structuralism. The Cartesian consciousness to mind and subject is contrary to Barthes’s pleasure and emphasises of social codes and cultural skills. But ‘The notion of the body permits Barthes to avoid the problem of the subject: appealing to “the given that separates my body from other bodies and appropriates suffering or pleasure to it“, he emphasizes that he is not talking about subjectivity.’ Then Culler explains that ‘replacement of “mind” by “body” accords with Barthes’s emphasis on the materiality of the signifier as a source of pleasure. When listening to singing he prefers the corporeal “grain of voice” to expressiveness, meaning, or articulation’.

In this book Culler describes Barthes as a fixed figure or an intentionally thinker. Barthes wrote the society as the myth, in the same way Barthes and his works are myth constructed and consumed by people, society and Barthes himself.

This Culler’s introduction to Barthes, one of few english commentary book about Roland Barthes for beginners.

Barthes (A Very Short Introduction)
Jonathan Culler
Oxford University Press, Oxford, May 16 2002
152pp $11.95
ISBN: 978-0-19-280159-3
Contents:
Preface to This Edition
List of Illustrations
1. Man of Parts
2. Literary Historian
3. Mythologist
4. Critic
5. Polemicist
6. Semiologist
7. Structuralist
8. Hedonist
9. Writer
10. Man of Letters
11. Barthes after Barthes
Notes and References
Further Reading
Index

‘Roland Barthes (Routledge Critical Thinkers)’ by Graham Allen, Routledge

“Roland Barthes (Routledge Critical Thinkers)” by Graham Allen is an one of few english guide book about Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) was a french ‘écrivain’ (writer), literary critic, literary theorist, semiologist (semiotician) and structuralism thinker. He made bold influences to humanities, social science, sociology, literary study, literary critic, philosophy and social thought.

This book is a introduction to Roland Barthes and his works. The chapters in this book, also register a certain chronology, and Barthes’s career is divided by four periods, moving from Barthes’ early phase of thought in Chapter 1 and 2, through his work on semiology and structuralism in Chapter 3 and 4, onto his poststructuralism phase in Chapter 5 and 6, and finally onto a set of issues emerging from his later writings (Barthes’ interest and writing about theoretical approaches to texts, music, photography and movie) from Chapter 7 to 9.

Allen traces Barthes’s transition of thought and life along with backgrounds from Marxism, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson to post-structuralism, Jaques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva and so on. And Allen explains semiological terms and philosophical term by difference between Barthes’s and traditional means or other thinkers’. Also Graham Allen is a lecturer of text theory, so he describe Barthes as a literature critic and text theorist (the ‘texts’ includes language, literature, bourgeois society, music, photography and Roland Barthes himself) rather than an écrivain, structuralism philosopher, semiologist and sociologist.

The feature of this books is a concentrate on commentaries on Barthes’s text theory and literary analysis such as narrative analysis, zero degree writing, ‘myth’, intertextuality, neutral writing, hedonism, stadium/punctum and pheno-text/geno-text.

Another feature is a commentary on “Camera Lucida” of Barthes’s later life (Chapter 8 and 9), in which Barthes writing about music, photography and him life. Allen mentions Barthes’s last investigation reached the concept of ‘impossible’ practise of text. And Allen explains that ‘In “Camera Lucida” Barthes mixes theoretical writing with intense mourning for his mother in oder to present a text which exemplifies what is unrepeatable in his later writing. Barthes’s “Camera Lucida”, in pursuing an ‘impossible’ of practice of writing attempts to resist and defy the violence of language, which would turn his own mother into an archetype of the Mother. In performing such a personal act of writing, “Camera Lucida” offers to its readers many illuminating, if not immediately usable, insight into the nature of photography and representation generally’. Then Allen’s conclusion for Barthes’s activity is this. ’Writing for Barthes, is a meaning of perhaps, a meaning or perhaps, a disturbance of meaning rather than a production of meaning.’

This book is a basic, usual and total introduction to Roland Barthes and his theory, so it is the most useful book for beginners want to know about Roland Barthes especially his literally theory and text analysis.

Roland Barthes (Routledge Critical Thinkers)
Graham Allen
Routledge, Oxon, October 1 2003
192pp $24.95
ISBN: 0-415-26362-X
Contents:
Why Barthes?
Key Ideas
1. Writing and Literature
2. Critical Distance
3. Semiology
4. Structuralism
5. The Death of the Author
6. Texuality
7. Neutral Writing: Pleasure, Violence and the Novelistic
8. Music and Photography
9. Camera Lucida: the Impossible Text
After Barthes
Further Reading