The Quiet Art of Becoming: A Deep Dive into Haruki Murakami’s Novelist as a Vocation
How a baseball game, a stubborn dream, and a mind full of “automatic dwarves” built a literary world unlike any other.
There are writers who arrive with the noise of a brass band, pages flapping like banners in the wind.
And then there is Haruki Murakami who, like a quiet earthquake, changed the landscape beneath our feet before we even noticed the tremors.
In Novelist as a Vocation, Murakami offers a rare and unvarnished glimpse into the architecture and infrastructure of his creative life. A slender mosaic of essays, memories, and reflections, the book reads less like a manual and more like an intimate afternoon spent listening to an old friend tell you why he still believes, stubbornly, in the magic of stories.
1. A Gathering of Essays: A Structure That Breathes
Murakami’s Novelist as a Vocation is a collection of eleven essays, each a window into a different facet of the writer’s craft.
There are no blueprints here. No towering manifestos or silver-bullet solutions. Instead, the essays meander fluidly informal, and fiercely personal.
In one chapter, he speaks of the discipline that binds his mornings. In another, he talks about the “mental chest of drawers” where half-formed ideas wait like forgotten souvenirs.
The result is a book that feels alive, breathing in and out with the patient rhythm of someone who has spent decades listening carefully to the silence inside himself.
Explore a deeper review of Murakami’s structure at Australian Book Review
2. A Baseball Game and the Birth of a Novelist
One spring afternoon in 1978, sitting at a baseball game, Murakami was struck by a sudden and inexplicable thought: I think I can write a novel.
It is a story he tells often, almost sheepishly.
There was no grand vision. No thunderclap from the gods.
Only the pop of a bat hitting a ball, the soft murmur of the crowd, and a decision that would quietly change the fate of contemporary literature.
This embrace of the ordinary, the willingness to find magic in the mundane, is Murakami’s signature. He invites us to believe that life’s great turning points do not always come with fanfare. Sometimes, they slip into our lives as quietly as a shadow stretching across an empty street.
3. On Discipline, Routine, and Running Miles Within the Mind
Murakami is often asked how one writes a novel.
His answer is brutally simple: discipline.
Every morning, he sits down to write 1,600 words. No exceptions. No bargaining with the muse.
Writing, he insists, is like long-distance running. It is less about inspiration and more about stamina.
In a world addicted to overnight successes and viral moments, Murakami’s devotion to the slow and steady feels almost radical.
Here, art is not a sprint toward fame, but a pilgrimage toward the inner self.
Read more about Murakami’s analogy between running and writing at BookPage
4. Finding a Voice: Between Two Languages
Interestingly, Murakami first wrote his debut novel Hear the Wind Sing in English, a language he could barely wield and then translated it back into Japanese.
This odd maneuver, he believes, helped him strip away the ornamental excess of his early style, leaving behind the lean, rhythmic prose that would become his hallmark.
He describes his style like a piece of jazz, improvised yet controlled, fluid yet deliberate.
It is a reminder that sometimes, in order to find our true voice, we must first become foreigners in our own language.
5. The “Automatic Dwarves” of Creativity
Creativity, in Murakami’s world, is not a divine lightning bolt but the patient work of invisible “automatic dwarves” operating deep within his subconscious.
This whimsical image captures the spirit of Murakami’s approach: writing as both a mystery and a craft, a surrender to forces both within and beyond one’s control.
More on Murakami’s metaphorical world of dwarves and creativity at Live by the Shelf
6. The Solitude of the Writer’s Life
Murakami is candid about the loneliness that haunts the writing life.
A novelist must spend long hours in silence, building imaginary worlds while the real one moves indifferently outside the window.
He warns aspiring writers: if you cannot bear loneliness, the vocation will likely break you.
But for Murakami, loneliness is not merely a cross to bear. It is the soil from which authenticity grows.
7. On Ego, Criticism, and the Razor-Thin Skin of Artists
Writers, Murakami confesses, are “an egoistic breed,” prone to jealousy and wounded pride.
He shares his own struggles with criticism, recalling reviews that bruised his spirit even after he had achieved international fame.
In an age when writers are expected to develop rhinoceros skin, Murakami’s vulnerability is oddly reassuring.
He reminds us that to create something personal is to expose a soft, beating part of oneself to a world that may or may not, be kind.
A more critical exploration of Murakami’s sensitivity to criticism at Kirkus Reviews
8. The Unimportance of Awards, and the Importance of Self-Fulfillment
Murakami shrugs off literary prizes with a casualness that belies their prestige.
He values the act of writing itself far more than the wreaths of public acclaim.
In doing so, he offers a quiet but radical message: success is not external.
It is not the echo of applause but the inner music of satisfaction that matters most.
9. Conversational, Idiosyncratic, Human
Murakami’s style in Novelist as a Vocation is as deceptively simple as his novels.
Conversational, self-deprecating, quietly profound, it draws readers close without ever lapsing into pompousness.
The translation by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen deserves applause for capturing the delicate balance between Murakami’s clarity and his trademark whimsy.
10. A Book for the Patient Reader
Critics have been divided.
Some hail Novelist as a Vocation as a chest of wisdom, while others dismiss it as repetitive or thin.
But perhaps the book’s greatest gift is its honesty: it does not pretend to offer grand secrets.
It merely offers one man’s quiet testament to the strangeness, difficulty, and wonder of living a literary life.
11. The Quiet Defiance of Persistence
Novelist as a Vocation is not a guidebook.
It is more like a journal kept by a man who spent years planting invisible seeds beneath the soil, unsure whether anything would grow.It teaches no shortcuts. It promises no miracles.
It merely says: keep going. Even when the world looks away.
Even when the applause fades.
Even when the words come slowly, like rain reluctant to fall.Because somewhere inside you, the ‘automatic dwarves’ are working.
Because somewhere inside you, the story has already begun.