Back from the Murakami Festival in Oslo!
Had a great time. Came there on Friday, and saw the "legendary" Murakami-speech by Frode Grytten that opened the festival. Very funny and moving. After that, saw these things:
- Speech by the Norwegian Murakami-translator about "everything you didn't know about Haruki Murakami". Much of it was about the huge Japanese industry of companion-books, commentaries, analyzes and so on that has sprung up around Murakami's books.
- "What's the deal with Murakami?" Three authors (Johan Harstad, Victoria Durnak and Jens Johansson) talking about their own favourite Murakami-books and -moments. Interesting, but nothing new.
- Peter Cat-night with Håvard Wiik Trio. Basically a recreation of Murakami's old jazz club, with a jazz trio playing his favourite tunes, readings from his books, poetry about him and so on. Very cosy and relaxing.
- Midnight showing of the movie "Tony Takitani" based on one of Murakami's novellas. A beautiful film!
- "We talk about running". First an introduction about the history of running by historian, writer and runner Thor Gothaas. This was absolutely hilarious! Then, a debate with authors/journalists Vigdis Hjorth, Henrik Langeland, Andreas Hompland and Kjetil Rolness, and the long-distance runner Susanne Wigene. All of them are avid runners, and they mostly agreed that Murakami's own running-book isn't really that good.
- "Waiting for 1Q84". The Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Murakami-translators talked about his upcoming book 1Q84, and how they work on its translations. Few or no spoilers, thankfully.
There were tons of other events I didn't have the time to see, but I was there for the main event Monday evening, when Murakami showed up himself. He had actually been in Oslo for four or five weeks and travelled around with his wife. Walked in the mountains, tasted the local beers and so on. Had a short trip to Stockholm. And he'd stood up every morning at 04.00 to run around the castle park (he was stopped for autographs several times even at that hour). Now, this was a pretty rare event, since he almost never does public showings or interviews like this. Journalists from the two largest newspapers in Japan (and the world) were there, along with Japanese tv, and none of them had ever interviewed him or even seen him live! So expectations were high. So high that the 220 tickets for the room he was to appear in were sold out in a couple of minutes after the ticket sales started online on August 2nd. Actually, they were sold out within the first second, but the system couldn't handle the pressure and ended up giving valid tickets to around 400 people before stopping after a few minutes. And another 400 people for the simulcast in another room (this room also had only 200 tickets for sale originally). So instead of having to void half of the sold tickets, the arrangers decided to squeeze all 800 or so people into the two small rooms. I was one of the lucky ones, and got into the main room where Murakami appeared. It was PACKED, and we all had to stand.
He eventually appeared to a rockstar-worthy applause. Then he made a short speech, a little bewildered by the insanity of the situation, which he said reminded him of the Tokyo subway at rush hour. After that, he read the novella "The Rise and Fall of Sharp Cakes". He read a paragraph or two in Japanese, then the Norwegian actress Gisken Armand read the same passage in Norwegian, and so on. He read quite ordinarily, but she put her soul into it - so much that he had to stop a few times because he was doubled up with laughter by her performance
He laughed a lot, and seemed at ease with the crowd. Generally seemed like a nice, humble, funny guy. After a well-needed pause (for us in the audience), he was back for an interview conducted by Frode Grytten. None of them were very good at speakin English, so Murakami often misunderstood Grytten's questions, and sometimes didn't know what to say at all. But it went fairly well.
He talked about the first time he was in Norway back in 1991, when he had tried to find out what "Norwegian Wood" actually means. Was it a forest, or a kind of furniture, or a type of tree? He had no idea when he originally wrote the book. He also talked about a signing event he held in Barcelona a while back. The guards told him that he should kiss people when signing their books, so as the dutiful guy he is, he started kissing all the 1500 people in line. After a while he was told to stop it because it took too much time, but the line was so full of pretty Spanish girls that he continued anyway and kissed all of them. And he was asked quite a lot about his way of writing, how he comes up with his characters and so on, and he basically said that he has no plans whatsoever, and just writes whatever falls into his mind at that moment. He said he was shocked when he first wrote about the Sheep Man in The Wild Sheep Chase. Where did THAT guy come from? He had no idea. Oh, and he MIGHT write a fourth part of 1Q84.
At the end, he got some questions from people in the audience. Mostly silly ones, like what's his favourite pasta sauce (Genovese, or pesto) and what does he use for his hair ("Helsinki Solution").
Then it was over, and Murakami went back to his hotel to sleep. He sort of half promised to come back sometime, but then he would use the opera house so we could sit! It was great to see him. Looked very well, and had lots of humour. He's often said to be some kind of shy hermit, but he actually seemed very comfortable and confident, maybe even happy, which was nice. Only disappointment for me was that we didn't get to shake hands or get something signed. No pictures or video allowed either, and it was strongly enforced. Too bad. At least I know where his favourite pub in Oslo is if he ever comes back again.
