japanamerica

I was recently interviewed in Tokyo by Darren Paltrowitz of Hype Magazine . He was in New York City, my former hometown.  We talked about my gig hosting the Japan Cats doc, but also a lot of stuff I hadn't planned to discuss, like pandemic work, my forthcoming Blade Runner book, the novel, the other books, my Who T-shirt and interviews with Pete Townshend, the shows "Better Call Saul," "Westworld" and "Barry"—and my cat.  Darren's opening gambit disarmed me.  Vid's up at YouTube:

Still swinging for the fences: Murakami in conversation The Times Literary Supplement “You see, I’m like a cat”, he tells me, twice. “I know the best position, and I go there straight. And I do it on my own time. Many people don’t like that about me.” Despite Murakami’s discomfort in Japan, and the disdain he receives from Japanese literary critics ten or more years his junior, his legacy is everywhere in contemporary Japanese culture. He’s there in the unvarnished prose and surreal happenstance in the work of younger writers, including Sayaka Murata (whose bestselling Convenience Store Woman is an eerily Murakamiesque blend of the magical mundane punctuated by violence) Mieko Kawakami and Hideo Furukawa (who wrote what he calls “a remix” of an early Murakami story, entitled Slow Boat ), all of whom claim that his model as an independent, uncompromising artist forged their paths from the parochial forests of Japanese letters to the broader plains of world literature. The...

My latest interview with Madeleine Brand for "Press Play" on KCRW / NPR.