{"id":11139,"date":"2015-10-16T06:30:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T13:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11139"},"modified":"2015-10-05T14:35:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T21:35:46","slug":"lit-matters-haruki-murakamis-fusion-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/10\/16\/lit-matters-haruki-murakamis-fusion-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Matters<\/em>: Haruki Murakami\u2019s fusion fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cThe good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake,\u201d Japanese author Haruki Murakami once said.<\/p>\n

Murakami\u2019s books, often featuring a dream-like blend of realism and surrealism, have sold millions of copies worldwide and made Murakami a literary superstar in his native Japan.<\/p>\n

But the literary life came as a surprise to Murakami.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Japan in the \u201960s, he felt stifled by the culture of the post-war era. Instead of reading the Japanese literature of his father (who was a lit teacher), he listened to jazz and read western fiction, falling in love with J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka, and American detective fiction.<\/p>\n

Murakami\u2019s distinctive style shows the influence of this cultural fusion: with uncanny skill he blends a highly realistic style with elements of the surreal and the absurd, and he mixes genres such as hard-boiled detective fiction with Shakespearean romance.<\/p>\n

In Kafka on the Shore<\/i>, an old man who can talk to cats sets off to find a mysterious stone that he knows nothing about, and a young runaway boy lives in a library and falls in love with a ghost. But the symbolic elements are carefully chosen so that they fit alongside the characters without a bump. They are the innermost hopes and desires of the characters, and their presence in the world of the novel only enhances the reader\u2019s empathy with the characters and their struggles.<\/p>\n

Murakami adds surrealistic elements to more closely mimic the tangled reality we experience in our daily lives. \u201cI always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions,\u201d he once said. \u201cI would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haruki Murakami must-read: <\/b>Kafka on the Shore
\n<\/i>(Lansdowne library code: PL 856 U673 K33)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake,\u201d Japanese author Haruki Murakami once said. Murakami\u2019s books, often featuring a dream-like blend of realism and surrealism, have sold millions of copies worldwide and made Murakami a literary superstar in his native Japan. But the literary life came as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-october-7-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t