Monday, 17 October 2011
Haruki Murakami: 'I took a gamble and survived'
1Q84, Haruki Murakami's new novel, is 1,000 pages long and is published in three volumes. It took the author three years to write and it is possible, on an 11-hour flight from New York to Honolulu, to get through about half of it. Murakami looks crestfallen on receipt of this news – the ratio of writing to reading time is never very encouraging for a writer – and yet if anything tests a novel's power to transport, it is reading it at the back of economy on a full flight over long haul. For those 11 hours, you disappear wholly into Murakami world.
We are in the presidential suite of the Hyatt, Waikiki, overlooking an ad-perfect beach framed by mountains. Murakami, who at 63 still looks like an adolescent skateboarder, divides his time between homes in Hawaii, Japan and a third venue he calls Over There. This is where he disappears every morning while writing his novels, a place populated by the kind of characters who have come to define the Murakami style: enigmatic, deadpan, full of big emotions sheared flat by repression and presented with a detachment that, unusually for a novelist who sells in the millions, has given him a cult-like status. Before I leave for Hawaii a friend confesses his enthusiasm for Murakami is partly based on a desire to be the kind of person who likes Murakami.
"I don't think of myself as an artist," says the author more than once in the interview. "I'm just a guy who can write. Yeah."
Murakami's cool benefits from an un-nerdy background running a jazz club in his 20s, and his equally un-nerdy Ironman routine. As he detailed recently in his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami rises at 4am on most mornings, writes until noon, spends the afternoon training for marathons and browsing through old record stores and turns in, with his wife, at 9pm. As a regime, it is almost as famous as his novels and has the clean, fanatical air of a correction to the mess of his 20s. It is also the kind of discipline necessary to crank out 1,000 complicated pages in three years.
To Murakami, built like a little bull, it's a question of strength. "It's physical. If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong."
His habit of repetition, whether a stylistic tic or a side-effect of translation from the Japanese, has the effect of making everything Murakami says sound infinitely profound. He has written about the metaphorical importance of his running; that to complete an action every day sets a kind of karmic example for his writing. "Yes," he says. "Mmmmm." He makes a long contemplative sound. "I need strength because I have to open the door." He mimes heaving open a door. "Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door. So it's literally physical strength to open and shut the door. So if I lose that strength, I cannot write a novel any more. I can write some short stories, but not a novel."
Is there an element of fear to overcome in those actions every morning?
"It's just routine," he says and laughs loudly. "It's kind of boring. It's a routine. But the routine is so important."
Because there's chaos within?
"Yeah. I go to my subconsciousness. I have to go into that chaos. But the act of going and coming back is kind of routine. You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed." He laughs again. "They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical..."
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Emma Brockes @'The Guardian'
ioerror Jacob Appelbaum
The United States is a fascist police state; it used to be hyperbole to say but now we can cite issue after issue to support that statement.
Israel planning thousands of new homes in East Jerusalem
On Tuesday a reparcelization plan was published for Givat Hamatos, in south Jerusalem. The plan calls for building 2,610 residential units, one third of them as part of an expansion of the Palestinian village of Beit Safafa, on the southern border of the capital.
The land included in the construction plans is owned by the state, which holds ultimate authority over the project. Objections or reservations to the plan must be submitted within 60 days of the plan's publication. A report about the intention to establish the neighborhood reached Washington and European capitals on the eve of the Sukkot holiday, sparking criticism from U.S. and European officials.
While the Jerusalem District Planning Council vetted development plans for other Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, it is the Jerusalem Municipality that must make the decisions about Givat Hamatos. Given the right-wing composition of its planning and building committee, swift approval is expected. Even if Netanyahu were to give in to international pressure he would have a hard time halting the project. Yet the fact that the Israel Lands Administration has released the plan means the political leadership has the authority to freeze it at any stage, even if the Jerusalem city council approves it.
Right-wing activists are likely to object to the idea of using public land to build more housing for a Palestinian neighborhood. Beit Safafa suffers for severe overcrowding, and very few building permits have been issued for the neighborhood.
The plan to build 1,700 homes for Jews in Givat Hamatos is more ambitious than the 1,100 new residences planned for Gilo, which earned a sharp rebuke to Netanyahu from German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as criticism in Washington.
Building the new neighborhood in Givat Hamatos would impede an agreement with the Palestinians based on the framework proposed by President Bill Clinton and frustrate attempts to create territorial contiguity between Palestinian neighborhoods in the Jerusalem area.
The scope and location of the plans conform to the Housing Ministry's E1 plan, designed to connect Jerusalem with Ma'aleh Adumim. For years Israel has not taken action to implement this plan owing to stiff opposition articulated by the United States. The Givat Hamatos plan also accords with other initiatives to expand Israeli power and control in East Jerusalem beyond the 1967 Green Line while creating a settlement belt including the expansion of Gilo and Har Homa in the south and Pisgat Ze'ev and Ramat Shlomo in the north.
Akiva Eldar @'Haaretz'
Israel plans new settlement of 2,600 that will isolate Arab East Jerusalem
Mordot Gilo in Context
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