Of course I may be wrong, he might, it’s
just that I think it would be highly unlikely. Japan seemed to be desperate for another Nobel Prize
Winner. There last one was
Kenzaburo Oe in 1994, high time for another, they seem to think. And who is their best writer at the
moment? It seems to be Huraki
Murakami. The Japanese press
really wanted Murakami to take the Swedish prize and to some he appeared to be
a reasonable choice. There is no
doubt of his popularity and I try hard to think of another contempory Japanese
writer still alive. His books can
be charaterised as post-modern, engaged with modern feelings and ideas. They fizzle and dazzle and sparkle in
public acceptance. They appeal to
what is mysterious, confusing, dream-like. His books dance.
Yet Mo Yan, a Chinese writer, won last year’s prize. Murakami is indeed a very good writer,
but not, I think, a Nobel Prize candidate. Why? Well let
us explore this issue of what makes a writer likely to win the Nobel Prize.
First we need to understand exactly what the Nobel Prize is awarded
for. In Alfred Nobel’s will the
prize is to be given to ‘the person who shall have produced in the field of
literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction’ in the given
year. The prize can be awarded to
any nationality but the candidate has to be alive. Now acknowledging the most outstanding work is not the
difficult bit as great literature will make itself known with volume. The tricky part is the ‘ideal
direction’ as it is at best a subjective value and at worst a vague guess. Whose ‘ideal direction’? What’s the goal? Which ideal?
The will has been interpreted in many ways and I imagine that it is the
job of the committee to argue for a particular interpretation that favours a
particular writer. How I would
like to be a fly on the wall for those meetings. This means that writers as varied as Samuel Beckett and
Herman Hesse can be eligible for the award. The award is supposed to go for the most deserving candidate
not the most popular and so despite Murakami’s immense popularity he will not
win it by that alone.
So this leaves us with his books:
‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicals’, ‘Kafka On the Beach’, ‘The Wild Sheep
Chase’ and most recently ‘IQ84’.
Having only have read one of them, it was the Bird Chronicals, but
knowing a bit about his style and themes I will give you my opinion of Murakami
as a Nobel Prize candidate.
First I will say that he should be read, his books are fantastic, and
fantastical, journeys into everyday life where the strange and the ordinary mix
and mingle. Secondarily the main
restriction from him winner the Nobel Prize is mainly what I find to be a
superfical populism that pervades his work. This is not to say that he is a superfical writer as he is
able to produce the odd profound moment.
What I mean is that his style of writing is very current, very much in
vogue with our times. This is one
reason for his popularity. He is a
writer that speaks to our interconnected, globalised world. He is deep within the zeitgeist and
this is the problem.
I would imagine that one reason why the Nobel Prize Committee will not
award him with the prize as he may not have lasting appeal. Sure he’s popular now but will he still
be read in ten, hell even five, years time? They aren’t certain enough yet. It’s important to point out that there are many Winners who
are no longer read, such as Kawabata or Anatole France, so just because he’s
not being read in the future will not necessarily prevent them from giving out
the prize.
Another thing is that he has not produced the most outstanding work in
the field of literature at the moment.
I can think of others more deserving, and I will be giving these
potentials an airing in their own posts in the future, and others who work at a
higher plane than Murakami. There
may seem to be a lot going on in his books but what is there underneath the
dancing? Compare to a book like
‘Soul Mountain’ by Gao Xingjian who looks at a divided indvidual searching for
meaning in his life in the countryside while trying to decide whether he should
live in or outside a community, to the rest of humankind. Yes, Murakami deals with the meaning of
life but only in a very adolescent way, extenstialism as a lifestyle not a
sentence as it is in ‘The Outsider’ by Albert Camus. Even comparing him with fellow Japanese writer Oe a book
like ‘Somersault’ does all Murkami can do and much more, seriously more people
should be reading Oe he’s brilliant.
Am I saying that Murakami will never win it? Like I said at the beginning, I don’t
know. If he writes more books,
which by the look of it he is bound to do, then it is certainly fesiable that
he could win it, depending on who else he is contending with at the time, but I
would not bet on it. Is he a good
writer? Definitely, and a lot of
fun, which sometimes the Nobel Prize literature can be barren of (we need more
Dario Fo’s) so by all means read and enjoy. But on who I would bet on? That needs it’s own post, which I will do soon in the
future. If you have an opinion, and it's a good chance that you do, comment below on whether you think Haruki Murakami could, or should, win the Nobel Prize.
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