meet Haruki Murakami

I saw him! I saw him! Here are photos from his Murakami Reading at MIT! http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaxxon/sets/1087699/

so…I was lucky I arrived early..because when I got there at 6:15 PM the MIT classroom was already half-full!! Till the end there were so many people that the fire dept. @MIT made all who did not have a seat leave…what a shame what a pity…
Yet Murakami spoke with vim and energy and sparkling self-effacing humor! It was such a pleasure to hear him speak tho’ I cannot say I had enjoyed reading “Kafka on the shore” that much… :-)

I think I would pull out less hair. In this rat-race of a society, I have learnt so many lessons from his novels, from being the Zen-like yet disinterested observer of humanity to just being altogether disenchanted with mankind’s antics. Sometimes, I do a little ‘bald, balding, not balding’ private people-count whenever I’m stressed. It makes me feel better. Cheap thrill I know, but who cares if it does not hurt anyone?
It’s purely my opinion, but it’s Murakami for me any day to Kafka.
Is it likely he’d come to Singapore?

I would love to listen to him speak. I have read hard boiled wonderland, norwegian wood, dance dance dance and just finishing wind-up-bird chronicle. It looks like I have a clash though with the IgNobel awards at Harvard which I said I would already go to. Anyone know if he’ll be speaking anywhere else?

Thursday, October 06, 2005
Writer’s Series: Haruki Murakami.
time: 7:00p
Rm 10-250 (enter 77 Mass Ave). 617/253-7791

Japanese writer andtranslator, whose work has been described by the Virginia Quarterly
Review as “easily accessible, yet profoundly complex”. He studied
studied Greek drama at Waseda University in Tokyo where he met his
wife. After finishing his studies he opened a Tokyo jazz bar which he
ran from 1974-1982. Many of his novels have musical themes and titles
referring to a particular song, including “Dance, Dance, Dance” (from
The Dells or The Beach Boys), “Norwegian Wood” (after the Beatles song)
and “South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first part being part of
the title of a song by Nat King Cole). His third novel, “A Wild Sheep
Chase” earned the Noma Literary Award for New Writers and ended his
career at the jazz bar, and his next novel, “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and
the End of the World,” won the prestigious Tanizaki Prize. In 1996,Murakami
received the Yomiuri Literary Award for “Wind-Up BirdChronicle.”
He is also known as a translator of Scott Fitzgerald,Raymond Carver,
John Irving, Paul Theroux, and other Americancontemporary authors

open to: the general public
cost: free
web site: http://web.mit.edu/humanistic/www
sponsor: Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, The Angus MacDonald Fund
for more information, contact: 617/253-7894

I live in Boston and apparently Murakami lives in Boston. I’m in the process of trying to find out where he lives. I don’t want to stalk him, but man I would do anything to get my copies of Kafka on the Shore and Wind Up Bird Chronicle signed.