Novelist as a Vocation(13)

If we expand the discussion to include not just the Akutagawa Prize but the value of literary prizes everywhere, then we run up against a wall. That’s because there is no basis, again objectively speaking, for the true value of any prize, from the Oscars to the Nobel, except of course in those special cases where the criteria are based on a numerical assessment. If you start picking holes in how they make their decisions, there is no end to it. If you worship the award, however, there is no end to that, either.

This is what Raymond Chandler said about the Nobel Prize in one of his letters: “Do I wish to be a great writer?” he wrote. “Do I wish to win the Nobel Prize? Not if it takes much hard work. What the hell, they give the Nobel Prize to too many second-raters for me to get excited about it. Besides, I’d have to go to Sweden and dress up and make a speech. Is the Nobel Prize worth all that? Hell, no.”[1]

American novelist Nelson Algren (The Man with the Golden Arm, A Walk on the Wild Side) won the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal in 1974 thanks to the support of Kurt Vonnegut, but he blew off the awards ceremony and got drunk with a woman at a bar instead. Of course, his absence was intentional. When asked “What’d you do with the medal?” Algren answered: “I dunno, I threw it away or something.”[2]

These two writers may have been extreme exceptions. They wrote in unique styles and stood against the establishment throughout their lives. Yet the feeling they shared, or perhaps what they wished to express through their attitudes, was that there are more important things to a true writer than literary prizes. One of those things was the conviction that what they wrote had real meaning; another was that they were speaking to a community of readers—the number wasn’t really that important—who understood what that meaning was. Writers convinced of those two things have little use for prizes and awards. In the end, after all, honors are merely a formal social and literary ratification of an existing reality.

Still, many in the world pay attention solely to things that possess visible and concrete form. Literary quality is inherently formless, so prizes, medals, and such provide that concreteness. This “form” then induces people to look. What really rubbed Chandler and Algren the wrong way was the decidedly nonliterary quality of the awards and the overbearing arrogance exhibited by the authorities, whose attitude was “The prize is yours only if you come to receive it.”

I have a standard answer when interviewers ask me about literary prizes—this question invariably comes up, whether in Japan or abroad. “The most important thing,” I tell them, “is good readers. Nothing means as much as the people who dip into their pockets to buy my books—not prizes, or medals, or critical praise.” I repeat this answer over and over ad nauseam, yet it doesn’t seem to sink in. Most often it’s completely ignored.

When I stop to think about it, though, interviewers may simply find my answer boring. There may be something about it that sounds packaged for public consumption. I sometimes get that feeling, too. It certainly isn’t the kind of comment that sparks a journalist’s interest. Nevertheless, since the answer reflects what I see as the honest truth, I can’t really change it, however boring it may be. That’s why I end up saying the same thing time and again. Readers have no ulterior motives when they shell out twenty or thirty dollars for one of my books. “Let’s check this out” is (probably) what they’re thinking, pure and simple. Or they may be full of anticipation. I am eternally grateful to such readers. Compared to them…no, let’s just drop the comparisons.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it is literary works that last, not literary prizes. I doubt many can tell you who won the Akutagawa Prize two years ago, or the Nobel Prize winner three years back. Can you? Truly great works that have stood the test of time, on the other hand, are lodged in our memory forever. Was Ernest Hemingway a Nobel Prize winner? (He was.) How about Jorge Luis Borges? (Was he? Who gives a damn?) A literary prize can turn the spotlight on a particular work, but it can’t breathe life into it. It’s that simple.



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What has not winning the Akutagawa cost me? I have turned the question over in my mind, but can’t come up with anything. Have I gained something? No, that’s not true, either.

Still, perhaps I am fortunate not to have the title “Akutagawa Prize Winner” affixed to my name. Otherwise (and this is pure conjecture on my part), it might be suggested that it was somehow thanks to the prize that I have reached this point, which I would probably find upsetting. Life is more free and easy without such titles. Being only Haruki Murakami is just fine with me. And if I’m not bothered, what’s the big fuss?

I bear no animosity whatsoever toward the Akutagawa Prize (I feel the need to keep emphasizing this), but I must admit that I am proud to have written my novels and lived my life as an independent agent. It may be a trivial thing, but for me at least it carries some weight.

It’s a very rough estimate, but my guess is that about five percent of all people are active readers of literature. This narrow slice of the population forms the core of the total reading public. There is a lot of talk today about people becoming estranged from books and the written word, and I must admit I see that, too, but I imagine that five percent would find a way to read somehow or other even if the authorities ordered them to stop. They might not take refuge in the forest and commit books to memory as in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but I’m sure they would escape the crackdown and keep on reading somehow. Of course I would be among them.