Nobel odds or Who will be awarded the Nobel Literature Prize / Murakami

[Mark Kohut]

In Japanese, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is 3 thick square volumes, I have heard......
   
  I read that Knopf thought that if translated and published as written, the market would be too small...book was just too LONG..and TOO JAPENESE.........
   
  Rubin translated it on spec--no contract to translate---, I believe....and he and Murakami 'cut it" themselves....to Knopf's satisfaction............
   
  A-And, they published it BIG...big PUSH....with that great hardback cover......
  and it sold slowly----NYTimes, MKakutani, dissed it..(too long among other things!) but
  the LATimes, under Wasserman, raved and it sold very will on the Pacific rim......
   
  and then like Catcher in the Rye when in paperback.....and still......
   
  Best,
  Mark

Robert Mahnke <robert_mahnke at earthlink.net> wrote:
        v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}  o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}  w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}  .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}        st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }                Jay Rubin (the translator) says that much was cut from the English version of Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, apparently because Murakami’s contract with Knopf called for such a length.  Crazy, huh?
   
      
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  From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Mark Kohut
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 3:08 PM
To: David Morris
Cc: pynchon -l
Subject: Re: Nobel odds or Who will be awarded the Nobel Literature Prize

   
    David,

     

    I love Murakami, have written a long review/essay (still unpublished..but close) but do know and agree that the line on him is: He is only with Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, latest book[After Dark] and some recent stories has he started to really develop a 'tragic vision".....The Harold Bloom/M. Wood of Germany took him apart [for that] on a TV discussion (with another "critic'. not Murakami)  Other guy walked off he was so angry..........more legnedary than the Vidal-Mailer TV tiff..........

     

    Haruki has put the experience of his reception into a short story in his last collection.....

     

    I think there is a place for such.......as HM........but "too much Hello Kitty is a great line...and too true of too many works.......he is great on women. on men trying to understand them. listening to them......some "getting them"...and he has translated many English writers into Japanese....

     

    But the Swedish Academy loves tragic and (generally) left-critical.

     

    I think the massive good and less good of ATD...particularly the massive 'mixed' scope, continued critique of the Western world (and more. and more)...a year to read it.......means

    if OBA does not win this year then..........odds are against.....unless

    he has another major one before...............

     

    Adonis is an Arab...known all over the Middle East......bigger than Frost and Gibran together ever were.....Google him.......been written as a nobel fave for years.........couple-three in NY Times.......(they must be 'backing' him as they did The Sopranos....

    

David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

    I don't exactly dislike Murakami, I just think he's not all that.
I've read Kafka on the Shore (pretty good) and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
(not as much), and I think he's constantly hinting at deeper levels of
meaning and complexity, but never delivers, leaving so many threads
just hanging. Maybe it's because I'm not Japanese. I think his
magical realism is just a little too much Hello Kitty.

I've only read Rushdie's satanic Verses, which I really liked, but if
one is to be faulted for later works "falling off," I think OBA
suffers from that fault too. Pynchon should have gotten the Nobel
back in the eighties, but not now.

Roth's very good, but who is this Adonis guy? Does he really go with
this single iconic nome de plume? Like Madonna?

David Morris

On 10/3/07, Mark Kohut wrote:
> I'd spread my bucks on Pynchon, Adonis, and Roth.
>
>
> Richard Ryan wrote:
> I'd spread my bucks on Rushdie, Murakami, and Roth.
>
> The Joyce Carol Oates line must be a joke the
> Ladbrokes guys threw in. To have JCO at 10-1 and not
> have Norman Mailer, John Ashbery or W.S Merwin on the
> list at all defies all sense and reason.
>
   
    
    
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