I am a gigantic fan of his and I am working through his 'Kafka On the Shore' right now after reading a collection of short stories by him (After the Quake) and I'm just wondering how exactly you'd classify his fiction? The best I can come up with is Post-Modern surrealist- kind of in the same vain as the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm wondering because I am wanting to write many future works in similar fashion. Thoughts?
Excuse me , yes- I meant 'Post-modern magical realism', I guess in a word, that's what he is, but I believe he's a bit more than that - one of his biggest influences is Franz Kafka, afterall
I'm not sure what else you would want to call him to be honest. My thoughts turned over Modernist, Post-Modernist and Magical Realism. I've never wanted to go anymore specific than that, and I'm a Murakami fan.
Hmm, right fair enough.Your thoughts were mine, it's just sometimes frustrating because when you're trying to compare new authors to past movements in literature, it sometimes still doesn't seem to do it justice or capture it. No matter how much a part of a movement or style an author might be , a truly skilled one will always be their own at the same time.
A movement can only really be a vague overall description of their work I guess. Think about a movement like Modernism which has within its canon people like Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, the Bauhaus school, Robert Frost, Henry James, Hart Crane, and Elizabeth Bishop. You can't really say they are all alike. Look at Romanticism, was Robert Burns much like Percy Shelley? All those people are fine artists, and we only really group them together because of convenience. No one can really agree on what exactly 'Modernism' was anyway, I personally agree with John Carey that it was an attempt to keep Existentialist angst at bay. But then again if I was to call myself anything I'd call myself an existentialist, so ... yeah. Murakami can be pretty existentialist, his 20 something college student characters often seem inclined to Existentialism anyway. especially Toru from Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Toru from Norwegian Wood too actually, now I think about it.
Yes! Existentialist is a great way to put it! He's very, very existential. But what I love about Murakami is he gets us beyond existentialism into the magical and does it so well. I haven't read either of those titles of his yes but I hope to soon!