[via Gen -- thanks!]
One of my very favorite authors, Haruki Murakami, received the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society over the weekend — his short speech is thoughtful and noteworthy and worth reading the whole of, but here’s the piece that spoke to me and caused me to think again about his work:
“If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.
Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals.
I have only one purpose in writing novels, that is to draw out the unique divinity of the individual. To gratify uniqueness. To keep the system from tangling us. So – I write stories of life, love. Make people laugh and cry.”
It’s the first really direct reference to themes that Vonnegut wrote so much about. I hadn’t made that connection before; in just a couple of minutes it’s changed completely the way I think about Murakami’s body of work.
Haruki Murakami is my favorite writer (at lease among the living now authors), I’m pleased to find out that people throughout the world like and appreciate him too.
Alex
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel is one of Haruki Murakami i like. Congratulation for Haruki Murakami