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Related Pieces
Piece Description
"The thing about Murakami that everybody seems to share even though nobody has come up with a final answer as to what it is about him that has caught on or what they like so much but there's this sense that he does something weird to your brain." - Jay Rubin, English translator Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer of increasing renown, is arguably the most internationally-acclaimed contemporary Japanese writer. In 2006, he was awarded the Franz Kafka prize for Literature. Both a cafe in Kiev and a cannabis-laced cocktail at a Moscow bar have been named after him. He has been translated into three dozen languages. Murakami himself has translated many of the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux, among others, into Japanese. His book Underground, a haunting exploration into the sarin gas poisonings of the Tokyo subway, is a non-fiction illustration of the characters who people Murakami's long and short fiction. Adrift in the world, these characters speak to us of what it is to be human. According to a New York Times review, Murakami "is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers .." Descend with producer Teresa Goff into "Murakami's Well."
Broadcast History
aired on CBC Radio One's IDEAS, January 8, 2007
Transcript
The voices you heard were:
English translator Jay Rubin, author of "Murakami and the Music of Words"
French translator Corinne Atlan,
Czech translator, Tomas Jurkovic,
Indonesian translator Jonjon Johanna,
with interpretation by Kemal Wahyu.
Professor of Japanese Literature at York University
Theodore Goossen
Chief Librarian of the Japan Foundation, Toronto office
Mariko Liliefeldt
Knopf Editor
Gary Fisketjon
Knopf website design and music composer
Jefferson Rabbe
Poet and wife of the late Raymond Carver
Tess Gallagher
Readings by
Maiko Bae Yamaduff and James Ruttan
special thanks to:
- Sarah Elzas and Jerry White, for recordings in Paris and Tokyo
- The Japan Foundation Head Office organizers of the symposium,
"A Wild Haruki Chase"
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
To me the great thing about Murakami, the thing that everybody seems to share is ....
... you must not take your eyes away from the skull. No matter how brilliant you must not look away. (music)
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Joseph Dougherty
Posted on May 02, 2007 at 07:11 PM | Permalink
Review of Murakami's Well
I remember an old Zen chestnut: "There's the thing and then there's the name for the thing, and that's one thing too many." And that's the problem at the heart of this exploration of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. My brush with Murakami has been brief, but memorable: the book of short stories "After the Quake." I remember the stories and I remember the hotel room I was in when I read them. So for my money anything that can nudge a reader toward the fiction of Murakami is to be encouraged. This is an earnest and serious effort to make you turn off the radio and pick up a Murakami book. However it runs the risk of ossifying what it's praising. One should be leery of all critics, especially literary ones who speak with the dry tone of expertise. But the mission here is a noble one. Will it move anyone toward Murakami or will it send them running for the hills? Depends on the listener. For me, if you're trying to decide if you should read Murakami, the only thing you need to know about him is who he has chosen to translate into Japanese: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Carver.