The writing style of Haruki Murakami’s can be as tedious, plodding and uneventful as watching an endurance event on TV. In his defense, the often repeated observation that life as a marathoner informs his writing, he is speaking to the act of writing a novel and not to what’s on the printed page. His latest book, a memoir titled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a hat tip to the favored Raymond Carver, settles into that soft and fertile ground created by juxtaposition–that of the long-distance runner to the long-distance writer (novelist). As the main conceit of this slim book, it can be perplexing to see so much distressed cliche.
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Murakami’s critics commonly shelve him as a writer of pop-culture. When I think of popular culture, Brittney Spears will always come first to mind, then after focusing a bit the Hardy Boys series of my childhood, and later, Dean Koontz and Clive Cussler. What these writers and Britney share is choreography and repetition to the extent of commodification. The Stratemeyer Syndicate, a writer factory contracted to fill in pre-fabricated plot scaffolds designed after the popular adventure and detective novels of the early twentieth century, captured the market and won Frank and Joe Hardy immortality. Koontz peddles in heroines and innocence pitted against improbable abominations and darkest evil. Cussler’s brand is Dirk Pitt, a rugged, cowboy version of James Bond, who has something like a 30-0 record for rescuing the planet from imminent ruin (only the payroll office at Viking House can know the real number). And whatever the double-digit it is identical to the number of chicks Pitt’s laid. Murakami doesn’t belong here. As much as his writing is riddled with heavy-handed metaphor, it’s also meticulous, soft-spoken and thoughtful. For example, Murakami is in his forties, old enough to see signs of wear, and the fear of a mortal body and mind is palpable throughout as it grapples with the irreversible.
In traditional Japanese aestheticism inborn talent means little, often viewed as a pitfall, toward mastering a discipline. Just as attaining the perfect manicured garden, shaped nigiri, or kanji character brush-stroke, writing and running for Murakami require a reverence to daily practice to such an extent that the only finish line that matters is the mortal one. With a nice balance of insight and ambiguity, Murakami avoids the spectre of the triumphal memoir. In other words, he isn’t following the trend.
Bioblog Rating: C+