Review: Novelist as a Vocation

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For Murakami fans, this was a great insight into a little of his life. Otherwise I'm not sure there is much to this.

Many of Murakami's points seem to contradict each other. For example, he says novelists are open-minded and don't mind newcomers, while a few essays later he talks about all the vitriol he encountered when he wrote his first novel(s), or how he says writing is not a chore and comes naturally to him, but then discussing how he had to "discipline" himself into writing for 4 hours straight each day (or was it 1600 words?).

Regardless, it might be this pseudo-consistency that make his novels so good. In many ways, these essays, like his novels, seemed not like reality, but reality-adjacent.

I really liked his advice: "I think the first task for aspiring novelists is to read tons of novels".



A good read if you're already a Murakami fan.



3.5 stars




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