Amanda Lewis in the LA Review of Books:
BRITISH ODDSMAKERS Ladbrokes gave 64-year-old Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami a 3-1 chance of winning the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Last year, they had it at 8-1. He didn’t get it this year, losing to Alice Munro, but he has a good shot in 2014 or 2015. If he wins, he’ll be the third Japanese writer to receive the prize, but he is nothing like the two men who came before him.
The first — Yasunari Kawabata, in 1968 — was cited by the Nobel Committee “for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind." The second — Kenzaburō Ōe, in 1994 — once wrote that, “The role of literature, insofar as man is obviously a historical being, is to create a model of a contemporary age which encompasses past and future, a model of the people living in that age as well.”
Murakami, however, does not write to capture “the essence of the Japanese mind,” and his characters are not meant to be “a model” of any era or group.
“I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories,” he said when accepting the Jerusalem Prize in 2009, rejecting the conventional notion of Japan as not only racially homogenous but also somehow intellectually and emotionally the same from mind to mind, from prefecture to prefecture.
In fact, from his debut in 1979 until the early 1990s, Murakami wrote bestselling Japanese novels that were almost aggressively un-Japanese. And the Tokyo literati, particularly Ōe, hated him. Hated that his magical tales dripped with brand names and references to American pop culture. Hated that he wrote his first novel out in English before rewriting it in his native language. Hated that he never wrote about war.
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这是我读过的，最好的一篇评介村上春树的文章。
任何有点深度的作家，都多多少少意识到，他们是历史的继承者，也是一个生活在当下的独特的人。
人的一个不能不面对的挑战，是意义：他必须对自己有个交代，他个人生命意义是什么。对这个问题的回应至少有两个层面：
1，头脑的，例如意识形态，文化认同，没有神秘经验的宗教信仰。
2，生活的，也就是，基本上他怎样过日子的，怎样度过他的每一天。
真正的回应当然是第二种。生活是无可回避的，每一个人必须以整个人，整的身心来生活，来过每一天。如果他们觉得生活无味而空虚，那就是说他们的回应失败了。如果他们活的有滋有味，丰富而美满。就知道他们的回应是成功的。这和社会地位没有关系，他可以是国家领袖，亿万富豪，也可以是阿富汗山区里的一个牧羊人。这也和生活的节奏没有关系，可以热闹紧张，也可以清静缓慢。
真正活的满意人不多，换言之，能真正回应生命的挑战的人不多。
大部分人只能做出第一种回应，或拥抱意识形态，宗教信仰，文化或族群身份（我是中国人、日本人、龙的传人、大和子民）。从中得到某种归属感、意义与安慰。为了使自己相信这就是生命的意义，这类的信仰着者往往带有某种狂热的味道。仿佛这信仰是他们在生存的汪洋紧紧拉住的一根救命的绳索。
当然，这不是说，那些已做出生活上回应的人就不必回应头脑的质问。通常，这样的回应是以一
种和他们生活质素的有机的方式整合的。所以，我们发现，各种宗教的得道者，不论他们是基督徒，回教徒，佛教徒，或道教徒，他们的基本教诲往往出奇的相似。
那一些在知识辨证比较逊色的，则回给出一些或零零碎碎的，逻辑不甚一致的答案。但是你知道，这些语言上的表达，对他们来说，已不是那么重要了。
村上年轻时，似乎不在意做日本人，他也不相信日本的历史与传统对他有什么影响。
40岁以后，他才了解到日本国民性，深植其灵魂深处，是躲不了的。
已经发现了自我的他，对大和魂深怀恐惧，他认为抹杀个人的集体主义，是暴力的源泉。他说日本人最基本的特质就是暴力。
他似乎意识到国民的文化认同，深受文化人叙述 （narrative )的影响。他写作的努力，似乎在为新一代的日本人发声，特别强调个人的独特性。不断的和大和魂拉扯。
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