Mishandling Murakami
Haruki Murakami is pissed off, and well he should be.
Turns out that his former editor, one of his former editors, now dead, secretly tried to sell the future Nobel prize winner’s earlier handwritten manuscripts, pocketing the money for himself. The cad!
Popular novelist Haruki Murakami said in a monthly magazine released Friday that a number of his manuscripts have been put up for auction on the Internet and at secondhand bookshops without his permission.
In a contribution to the April issue of the magazine Bungei Shunju, Murakami discussed details on the auctions, denouncing it as “unlawful trading of original manuscripts.”
Murakami, 57, a celebrated contemporary Japanese writer, said that among the manuscripts is a handwritten translation of The Ice Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940). A set of 73 of the manuscript’s
400-character pages was put up for sale at a secondhand bookshop for more than 1 million yen.In the 16-page article in the magazine, Murakami said he had handed the scripts to a now-deceased editor of the Chuokoron publishing house.
I love Murakami’s work. Hate to see him getting ripped off like that.
March 11th, 2006 at 9:41 pmMurakami made all this public in an
March 12th, 2006 at 1:17 pmarticle in the April edition of Bungei Shunju, titled “Aru Henshusha
no Sei to Shi” (The life and death of a certain editor).
One other issue that this story brings out is how Murakami’s editor actually influenced him, and the editor’s actual role in developing Murakami as a celebrity writer.
It turns out that his former editor, the late Akira Yasuhara, first met Murakami when Murakami was still running his jazz bar in Tokyo, before he made it big, and it could be that Yasuhara was Murakami’s ticket to fame, that it was Yasuhara who discovered him and gave him his entree to the literary world, his connection, in other words. There is always a hidden story in these things.
Yasuhara, who edited for a publishing firm whose magazines Murakami
contributed to, died in 2003.
In the carefully phrased 16-page essay, Murakami recounted his friendship
and falling out with Yasuhara, whom he met when the future novelist
ran a jazz bar in Tokyo.
Murakami characterized Yasuhara as an old-fashioned editor, who was a
straight-talking heretic in a literary world filled with gossip and deceit.
While he called Yasuhara “a friend,” Murakami rejected the notion — as
claimed by the late editor — that Yasuhara guided him as a young novelist.
Murakami said there were two types of editors: Those like Yasuhara who
tried to be like producers of music, and others who were “clerical”
and allowed writers their own voice.
“I have no recollection of being nurtured by him. Rather, to use a perhaps
impertinent phrase, I grew on my own,” Murakami wrote.
“Of course, I have received much good advice from many people. But,
basically, I banged my head against this and that and through the pain I
learned,” Murakami said.
[I hear that the New York Times is developing a big story on this literary brouhaha right now, as we speak.]
Stay tuned…
March 12th, 2006 at 1:23 pmIs this reviewer named Akira Yasuhara the same Akira Yasuhara who was Murakami’s editor?
QUOTE:
Is Haruki Murakami still worth reading?
Review of Kami no Kodomo wa Mina Odoru (All God’s Children Can Dance) published on Feb. 25, 2000
From Asahi Weekly Magazine (March, 17, 2000)
Reviewed by Akira Yasuhara, a former magazine editor and literary critic
Haruki Murakami wrote a terrific masterpiece after a long time.
I didn’t appreciate any of his works after Dance, Dance, Dance and especially I severely criticized South of the Border, West of the Sun, calling this novel a very cheap Harlequin Romance.
About his ultimate failure, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, I pointed out which parts were bad and worthless, wasting 200-page-manuscript paper. (Don’t read books, otherwise you’ll be a fool)
Even about his recent Sputnik Sweetheart (Vintage Books.), though it might be a little better than the previous two works, it is really no good at all , if compared with his early works. (My Comment: Despite Mr. Yasuhara’s harsh comment, Sputnik Sweerheart was among top 10 best-selling Japanese fictions in June, 2001. I don’t agree with his opinion that Sputnik Sweetheart is no good. I’d rather think it is more worth reading than Kami no Kodomo wa Mina Odoru.)
Finally, I got angry at his not writing a “masterpiece” for too long, and I declared that his talent as a novelist had already been exhausted..
This is all because we are very long associates and I thought highly of his talent.
The masterpiece waited for so long has just been published at last..
It is almost ten years since I was deeply impressed by the novel of Haruki Murakami…
March 12th, 2006 at 1:58 pmBy the way, for all you Murakami fans out there, there is now a recent interview with Murakami in a new literary magazine from New York, called A PUBLIC SPACE. It is edited by Brigid Hughes of THE PARIS REVIEW. You can order it online here:
http://www.apublicspace.com
This is an amazing interview, according to one fan. Murakami talks about his experiences with J.D. Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He also talks about eating a hamburger for the first time in his life!
He talks about his first encounter with grapefruit. He also talks about Al Qaeda as a metaphor for “closed systems” in his novels.
According to the interview, he is translating THE GREAT GATSBY and THE LONG GOODBYE now.
He is interviewed together with the great Japanese translator and Tokyo University Professor, Motoyuki Shibata.
March 12th, 2006 at 2:06 pmBTW NOTE:
A number of newly-translated literary stories from central Mexico
March 27th, 2006 at 11:39 amstrike interesting tones, among them one story by Pedro Angel Palou.
In “Huaquechula,” a divorced photographer takes his two daughters for
the weekend to see altars to the dead. It’s hard to imagine a North
American daddy doing this, but the children are delighted by the
little sugar skulls with their names on them, offered like Hershey’s
Kisses or M&M’s. Sleek, contemporary, skilled, this story by Palou
delivers a kind of Mexican equivalent of the work of Haruki Murakami.
By the way, I heard of an interesting class at Tufts this summer:
Professor Hirata will be teaching a course this summer, “Murakami Haruki and Raymond Carver,” in the second session, July 5 - August 11. Students from other universities, as well as professionals, are welcome. For more information go to Tufts Summer website: http://ase.tufts.edu/summer/default.asp
The course number is: JPN 0091BA. It is under Japanese.
http://ase.tufts.edu/summer/courses/index.asp?Dept=&Course=o&ot=39&o=2117
Professor Hirata says it’ll be ”a relaxed class discussing our favoritie writer along with his favorite writer…”
March 27th, 2006 at 4:33 pmBy the way, as the Agence France Press article on the wires today noted, Mr Murakami and his wife are living in Boston now, in a program associated with MIT, and will stay there likely through the spring.
March 27th, 2006 at 11:30 pm>Is this reviewer named Akira Yasuhara the same Akira Yasuhara who was Murakami’s editor?
>Is Haruki Murakami still worth reading?
Yes, he’s the one. Sorry, I didn’t realize Akira is his real name ’till I read your comment as he’s better known as Yasuken in Japan……thanks!
Yeah, Murakami was pissed off, but his anger was more against the things that made Yasuhara like that. When Yasuhara was with ChuoKoron, his magazine Marie-Claire was the coolest of all, and if I’m not wrong, Murakami’s debut novel, Hear the Wind Song, was first published on that magazine in 1979. Later on, though, Yasuhara was kicked out of that prominent publishing house. People say Nobel prize winner, Ohe, made that happen. I don’t know much about Japanese literature society, so that’s all I know. I’ll be looking into the NYTimes article.
March 28th, 2006 at 2:16 amThanks for that info, Satomi. Very interesting. Murakami, Oe, Yasuhara, looks like a good NYTimes story for someone to pursue. Maybe Motoko Rich, the new publishing beat reporter, will look into all this later in the year….
March 28th, 2006 at 1:46 pmSatomi has posted a very insightful blog here, and worth reading again:
QUOTING
I read Haruki’s article on Bungei Shunju -April Edition about his former editor who sold his manuscripts without permission. He has known the Super Editor, AkiraYasuhara (a.k.a.Yasuken: 1939-2003), more than 25 years since he had a jazz bar and Yasuken was his customer. Yasuken published Haruki’s debut novel from the established publishing house, Chuo Koron.
73-pages translation of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Ice Palace (above) was sold for 1 million yen after Yasuken died. (photo courtesy of The Mind of the Strategist)
The long time friendship, however, ruined when Yasuken suddenly began criticizing Haruki’s works, starting from Dance Dance Dance, the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, South of the Border, West of the Sun and Kafka on the Shore. Even worse, Haruki learned that Yasuken put some of his early manuscripts on sale before he died. A lot more ended up in the hands of used book retailers and net auctioners after his death by his family who didn’t know his belongings contained those manuscripts.
Haruki argues it’s an act of “selling stolen property” and questions Yasuken’s professional morality.
If it’s merely an act of theft that matters, though, he wouldn’t have written such a lengthy article. What drove him was something he couldn’t solve by taking a legal action. He tells he doesn’t know WHY Yasuken hat*d him, what changed his attitude “over night.” That remains unanswered since he already died. It’s killing him.
The conflict reminded me of D. T. Max’s article “The Carver Chronicles” that examins to what extent Gordon Lish, editor of early Raymond Carver’s novels, was involved in rewriting and reshaping the Carver world.(A Review From In Dissent)
It was translated by Haruki in the first chapter of his book below, which Yasuken praised a lot (2000.08). In the book review, Yasuken didn’t mention much about Lish’s heavy editing, maybe because he is different type of editor who gets the original to be printed ‘as-is.’
Some say Yasuken, wanna-be novelist, was jealous of Haruki’s talent and fame, others say the hatr*d is deeply founded on the core culture of Japan’s literature society, still others say Yasuken was in a financial trouble after he was kicked out of Chuo Koron (in “Yasuken-no-Umi,” you can read the full texts of Kenzaburo Ohe’s threat mail to Yasuken.) . Yasuken’s editor who was with him when that happened said Yasuken was not a kind of person who would sell manuscripts, and it must have been just an accident.
It’s hard to judge. Regarding the hatr*ed, the closest I came up with a possible explanation was when I found a blogger suspecting that Yasuken might have found himself betrayed when Haruki’s novel began the path to healing.
What I feel reading Haruki’s article is a huge loss, a loss that’s never going to be filled, recovered, or healed.
March 30th, 2006 at 5:40 pmSATOMI, blogging over at longtailworld.blogspot, tells me that: “Comments [here] and [here] suggest the origin of their conflict, [between HM and Ken] may go well back to the time when Haruki refused Yasuken and other prominent novelists’ offering to get his “Pinball 1973″ (1980) compiled in “Showa Bungaku Zenshu (Showa Era Literature Collection),” causing its editor to commit suicide. HM himself recalled it as an unfortunate event in his essay collection published in 1999.
One thing sure about HM is that his literary power and stature has grown so much as to make some people live in fear in Japan’s literary society.”
April 5th, 2006 at 3:51 pm