magnificent murakami

Happy birthday to Haruki Murakami (b. January 12, 1949), one of Japan's premier authors and known, read, and loved by many others outside of his native country. Per Wikipedia, Murakami has also done Japanese translations of American writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger, and it's always a fine combination of talents when a translator has an intuitive sense of fiction the way Murakami does.  The titles of Murakami's own works tend to be evocatively quirky and memorable, as is the book cover art that graces his novels and memoirs.

He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual. **  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

fumio niwa

Today was the birthday of Japanese author Fumio Niwa (born November 22, 1904), who penned many works but is probably best known for his 1956 novel The Buddha Tree.  Niwa's writings often went against the traditional grain of Japanese culture, such as his 1947 The Hateful Age, which focused on the hold an aged grandmother has on her family and their societal obligation to care for her.  Grandma is not lovingly wise and appreciative, however, but rather at a point where her already flawed personality has "coagulated into a solid core of wickedness."  In The Buddha Tree, Niwa's troubled childhood as the son of a Buddhist priest is fictionalized as anything but serene and contemplative. 

Beyond his controversial works, Niwa was known for his charismatic personality and for helping his colleagues as a director of the Japanese Writers' Association.  In his later years he was drawn back to the Buddhism he had rejected as a young man, and he also entered a hateful age of his own through his battle with Alzheimer's.  He died at age 100 on April 20, 2005.

born today

 

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891), author of Moby Dick, Billy Budd, Typee, and a personal favorite, "Bartleby, the Scrivener."

It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener's business to verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand. 

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street -- Herman Melville, 1853

man of mystery

Are you a fan of unflappable pipe-smoking French detective Jules Maigret? Georges Simenon, the Belgian mind and man behind the sleuth was born today in 1903 (d. 1989) -- and perhaps having a birthdate on the cusp of Valentine's Day gave him special powers involving the opposite sex, as he claimed to have had some 10,000 female lovers throughout his lifetime.  (Reportedly many of these were prostitutes but maybe he just considered it like going to Starbucks every morning.)  With such a busy extracurricular schedule, it's a wonder that he found enough time to peck away at the typewriter as well and write his literal hundreds of novels, but it seems that from sheer determination, focus, organization and a realistic scope of what he wanted to put into a literary work, he managed to get it all done.

The idea condition for the reader is to have time to read a whole book in one evening.  ** Georges Simenon, "Chez Simenon" -- NY Times, Oct. 24, 1971