Asahi Shimbun's ongoing Chasing Haruki Murakami-series offers a steady flow of all sorts of Murakami-related pieces.
Among the recent ones of particular interest is Michael Emmerich: Fans around the world reading Haruki Murakami in parallel worlds, as Emmerich -- who recently led a seminar on Murakami -- weighs in on the author and his reception, finding, for a variety of reasons: "the Murakami who appears in English to be a totally different writer from Murakami in Japanese".
He points to the differences in the three main Murakami translators' approaches -- with Emmerich noting that Jay Rubin "hesitantly cut nearly 25,000 words" from his translation of the first two parts of the three-part 1Q84 (Philip Gabriel translated the third part). This is the sort of stuff that brings tears -- of rage and sadness -- to my eyes; 25,000 words, that's easily sixty or seventy pages, and it's unfathomable to me how a work by one of the leading contemporary writers could be treated in this way. (It might also help explain why I liked 1Q84 -- the first two volumes of which I first read in the German translation -- more than those who only read the English translation (though as I recall, few complained about it being too short ...).)
Still: interesting to see how everything from the order in which books are published to the cover-designs can have an impact. And interesting that Emmerich thinks of Murakami's chances in making it internationally:
He points to the differences in the three main Murakami translators' approaches -- with Emmerich noting that Jay Rubin "hesitantly cut nearly 25,000 words" from his translation of the first two parts of the three-part 1Q84 (Philip Gabriel translated the third part). This is the sort of stuff that brings tears -- of rage and sadness -- to my eyes; 25,000 words, that's easily sixty or seventy pages, and it's unfathomable to me how a work by one of the leading contemporary writers could be treated in this way. (It might also help explain why I liked 1Q84 -- the first two volumes of which I first read in the German translation -- more than those who only read the English translation (though as I recall, few complained about it being too short ...).)
Still: interesting to see how everything from the order in which books are published to the cover-designs can have an impact. And interesting that Emmerich thinks of Murakami's chances in making it internationally:
If he were to start with 1Q84, firstly he probably wouldn't be published at all, because it's too long. And if he were to start there instead of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, then the trajectory of his career would be totally different