Murakami

"The Underground Man," by Sam Anderson, New York Times Magazine Section, October 23, 2011.

portrait of novelist Haruki Murakami

This happens upon us as one of the more heartening pieces read in recent times. My copy of his book on What We Think About When We Think About Running has been lost out on loan, but the lesson of the physicality of craft remains. "Most of what I know about writing I've learned through running," Mr. Anderson quotes, as I remember. Running gives him a main source of discipline.

There are several gems to take here. He regards himself as a fairly plain and drab vessel, just that it is his job to go and patiently delve into his deeper consciousness for six hours a day on a daily basis. Interestingly enough, this basic set-up covers that part of him which would have political thoughts, which quite largely he keeps to himself. He knows his work; he maintains himself as a novelist.

"For 30 years now, he has lived a monkishly regimented life..."

Interesting, for me personally as well, is his former work in a Tokyo jazz bar, a life amongst people, given up after an intense ten years for the writer's solitude. (It doesn't surprise me that The Brothers Karamazov is one of his favorites.) An epiphany at a baseball game, that he could write a novel, recorded in 'Running.'

This is all hopeful stuff. It's about organic creative processes, and about someone daring to follow them. This is not about the comfortable discomfort we have arguing hopelessly and often tiresomely about politics, the rehash, the necessity of reestablishing the grounds of what constitutes an intelligent discussion freed from polite abeyance to the nut-jobs. This is beyond that, and one must say, it is refreshing.

So, how do you yourself, I posit to you, carry out your own little but significant shot at creativity?

I've fallen so far as to write at night, after I get through four long intense nights at work. My body finds it easier, after all that, to be awake at night, though I am not proud at all of that. It is the source of some misery, after all. Out of synch, but writing must be done. Even if it is accompanied by a lost monasterial bit of dinner and wine to go with it.

Murakami finds his confinement, "voluntary, happy confinement." Blessings to this long-distance runner and writer.