Writes Haruki Murakami in "Novelist as a Vocation" (Amazon link).
February 8, 2023
"In my considered opinion, anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist."
"That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace—in low gear, so to speak. Faster than walking, let’s say, but slower than riding a bicycle. The basic speed of a person’s mental processes may make it possible to work at that rate, or it may not... .This is quite a roundabout way to do things.... Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words—it’s much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience. A message or concept that might take six months to turn into a novel can thus be fully developed in a mere three days. Or in ten minutes, if the writer has a microphone and can spit it out as it comes to him.... In the final analysis, that’s what being smart is really all about. In the same vein, it is unnecessary for someone with a wealth of knowledge to drag out a fuzzy, dubious container like the novel for his purposes...."
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31 comments:
I like that explanation for why I can't finish a novel.
So that's why I was never able to write the great American novel!
Message novels are terrible.
Atlas Shrugged is the most famous example off the top of my head.
He seems to think that the purpose of writing a novel is to "convey a message". Like you've got it all set up in your head, and you just need to determine the most effective way of getting it across. Maybe that is how he approaches it. I tend to regard writing as an exploration. If you can say what the "message" of a story is, it isn't much of a story.
Obvious message novels are terrible. Subtle message novels can be great. The thing is not to simply write out your message, it's to illustrate your message with compelling characters and a compelling story line that resonates with your audience. Catch-22 was also a "message novel." End of rant.
A year ago I spent hours every day for four months working on a novel. At the end of it, I decided that I did not want to live so totally inside my own head, the way it caused me to live. All I could talk about with my friends was my novel, obviously one's novel must find its audience in the mass of people who speak English and read, and you are unlikely to find them among a few friends who sort of arrived at your side by random, I told myself, anyway, they soon grew sick of it. Maybe if I needed the money...
There are nine-and-sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays
And-every-single-one-of-them-is-right!
—Rudyard Kipling, “In the Neolithic Age”
This makes me think of Stephen King for some reason?
There are so many counterexamples! Including Murakami!
I've got this book on my shelf waiting to be read, and as soon as I read that first sentence I thought "it's got to be Murakami". I had better get it.
He assumes that good novels are didactic, whereas the general view when I was in school was that novels may be good despite being didactic.
I'm not sure if that's my problem, but I'm going to use it as my excuse.
That's why I am working on the Great American Novella.
I know precisely one novelist, who makes a (good) living at writing novels. After a decade or so, she will tell you that it is work. Not just the writing, but dealing with fans - it takes work to respond frequently on fan sites, show up at events, etc. you don’t go anywhere without a fan base.
Could I do it? No way!!! Sure, as everyone here knows, I love to write. And might be able to write non fiction (which I kinda did as a patent attorney). But my mind is use not inventive enough in the right way to be a novelist.
"All he has to do is put it directly into words"
Are there things better put into words "indirectly"? Not meant to imply a negative answer, just wondering how you'd characterize, in a general way, the distinctive insight(s) potentially to be gleaned from novels.
Never read any Murakami, but I got a strong sense from previous Althouse references that he's hardly the message type.
Yabbut.....with the new speech to text programs that prolific novelists use, then you can put it down as fast as you can organize your thoughts. And some of the really good ones are putting out several books a year.
I submit Isaac Asimov as a counter example. Wrote over 500 books. A notoriously fast thinker.
CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien were apparently lightning quick with amazing storehouses of knowledge on many subjects. Isaac Asimov. Arthur C. Clarke. PG Wodehouse. I don't think I am going to bother looking for any more.
Just for grins;John D. MCDonald's'TravisMcGee series.Message?
If a writer starts with a message to tell, then the novel that's produced is probably crap. I start with either a story engine, a main character at a certain point in life (or already dead), or a set of circumstances imagined. Then I write and if I finish, I might have an interesting novel to be read and maybe it has a message or not, but I don't care either way.
Murakami's best novels and stories have elusive messages that I don't think Murakami knew about beforehand. Elusive messages are that way -- elusive to the writer as well.
What SteveWe said late last night: "Murakami's best novels and stories have elusive messages that I don't think Murakami knew about beforehand. Elusive messages are that way -- elusive to the writer as well."
"That's why I am working on the Great American Novella."
Coffee spit.
"If a writer starts with a message to tell, then the novel that's produced is probably crap"
There are geniuses. The rest of us don't like the fact.
"Murakami's best novels and stories have elusive messages that I don't think Murakami knew about beforehand. Elusive messages are that way -- elusive to the writer as well."
Yes, and in that light, you should understand what he's saying. Not that novels should be "didactic" or have a message, just that very smart people already know what they have to say and can express it in general, abstract terms. They wouldn't be motivated to develop characters and scenes and a narrative. That would be inefficient to them, so they wouldn't do it (or, if you read on, you'll see, they might write one or two novels but they wouldn't go on and on and make that their career).
For slower, more ordinary people — like Murakami, by his own account — they don't know what they have to say and writing the novel is finding things, thinking it through. They are not putting their message into a narrative, they are discovering what they think. They're thinking — the only way they can. They can't cut to the message, because they don't know what it is. It doesn't exist in a general, abstract form that could be stated directly. So what else can they do but write novels.
It's a very funny argument against genius. He doesn't think he's any kind of genius. He says he's just an ordinary guy and if he didn't write novels, he wouldn't be of any interest to anybody.
Makes me think of the Bob Dylan lyric:
"I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, the same as you
I’m everybody’s brother and son
I ain’t different from anyone
It ain’t no use a-talking to me
It’s just the same as talking to you"
"Obvious message novels are terrible. Subtle message novels can be great. The thing is not to simply write out your message, it's to illustrate your message with compelling characters and a compelling story line that resonates with your audience. Catch-22 was also a 'message novel.' End of rant."
I'm not so sure CATCH-22 is a "message novel" in the sense that it is trying to teach the reader a lesson. It is a satiric depiction of war and (more to the point) the military and its bureaucratic nature, often arbitrary and self-refuting, (as per the titular "Catch-22" itself). Among other things, no doubt, it is about the meaninglessness of that in which we seek to find (or apply) meaning. It is about Heller's own experience.
I can't make out what you think of it, but I think it's great!
I think some of the comments here focus too much on the word "message." It's being read as a lesson or reason for writing the book, whereas I think Murakami is talking about the conclusion a smart person reaches and can express succinctly.
For example, a smart person could conclude that all institutions eventually turn corrupt, and particularly political institutions that rely on coercive taxation for its income. Businesses that turn corrupt (and therefore inefficient) go bankrupt (hopefully). Governments never run out of other people's money to spend.
The smart person could conclude that a government beset with occasional reform movements have a better chance of surviving. Movements can reset the clock by cleaning out the bad, and it'll take the corrupt more time to find the chinks in the protective armor and reestablish themselves.
If corrupt institutions defeat reform movements before they can effect change, subsequent movements will become more intent on defeating the corrupt, to the point where revolution comes and blood flows in the streets.
Now, I could write a novel about this that would take years, or I can write a blogpost that takes ten minutes. Far more efficient to write the post.
(BTW, I read his book and it's great. It got me back into reading his books.)
"Businesses that turn corrupt (and therefore inefficient) go bankrupt (hopefully)."
They can also thrive tremendously, growing richer, more powerful, and long-lived.
With all due respect, Asimov was a poor guide to many subjects outside of science. I used to amuse myself finding mistakes about history in his encyclopedic efforts, as opposed to his novels, which must be judged by different criteria and most of which I haven't read anyway.
Heller wrote that Catch-22 was set in a war but it wasn't about war. It was about humanity's proclivity to trap itself inside systems and rules, war being the extreme example and a good frame.
"I can't make out what you think of it, but I think it's great!"
One of the best novels I ever read. Right up there with Enderby, by Anthony Burgess. (I think that one didn't have a message, it was just a romp.) A Clockwork Orange certainly did.
Genius abrogates all rules. Oscar Wilde wrote a sort of timeless play "On the Importance of Being Ernest," yeah, he took that sentence and wrote an excellent play, people still love the movie. "A Farewell to Arms," message novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," message novel, it's in their titles, both great English language novels of the 20th century. Ayn Rand was very smart, but she didn't have the genius for literature the greats have. Genius is about accessing creativity other people can't.
"They can also thrive tremendously, growing richer, more powerful, and long-lived."
Generally they accomplish this by inveigling their way past the voters, and bribing their way into the halls of government, and then putting their thumb on decisions made there. (Raytheon, General Dynamics, to name a couple)
"One of the best novels I ever read. Right up there with Enderby, by Anthony Burgess. (I think that one didn't have a message, it was just a romp.) A Clockwork Orange certainly did."
I love A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and have read it three (or four?) times. I have tried a few others by Burgess, THE WANTING SEED, 1985, and INSIDE MR. ENDERBY, (the first of the quartet of Enderby novels). I didn't get more than a few pages into THE WANTING SEED, and not more than a few chapters into 1985; I did read all of INSIDE MR. ENDERBY. Neither SEED nor 1985 captured my interest sufficiently for me to continue to their ends. INSIDE MR. ENDERBY held my interest and entertained me enough to complete that volume...but not enough for me to move on to the other three Enderby novels.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is the only Burgess book I have enjoyed so thoroughly that I have reread it several times. It is Burgess' invented teen slang in which the first person story is told that captures me. It is expressive and musical and it provides the primary and lasting pleasure of the novel. The plot is entertaining but not unusually original. Had it been told in ordinary vernacular English, I don't think it would have captured my imagination and admiration so strongly, if at all. Kubrick's movie is a faithful and entertaining adaptation, but it lacks the novel's unique and compelling power. It's been quite some years since my last rereading of ORANGE, so I will have to get to that soon. (I have several editions of the book on my shelves.)
LOL, Robert. I love what Burgess did with the English language as much in Enderby as it seems like you did in A Clockwork Orange. For me it was the language that kept me reading. My niece does behavioral therapy for autistic kids, seeking to help (make?) them fit in, and A Clockwork Orange comes up in those circles, still. It's the same question, is it moral to change a person's behavior because you have adjudged it to be wrong?
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