Novelist as a Vocation(23)

First and foremost, though, is what’s packed away in your garage. Magic can’t work if your garage is empty. You’ve got to stash away a lot of junk to use if and when E.T. comes calling!



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The first time I sat down to write a novel, nothing came to mind—I was completely stumped. I hadn’t been through a war like my parents, or endured the postwar chaos and hunger of the generation directly above me. I had no experience of revolution (I had experienced a kind of ersatz revolution but didn’t want to write about that), nor had I undergone any form of brutal abuse or discrimination that I could remember. Instead I had grown up in a typical middle-class home in a peaceful suburban community, where I suffered no particular want, and although my life had been far from perfect, neither was it steeped in misfortune (in relative terms I was fortunate). In other words, I had spent a mundane and nondescript youth. My grades weren’t the greatest, but they weren’t the worst, either. There was nothing, in short, that I felt absolutely compelled to write about. I possessed some measure of desire to express myself, but had no intrinsic topic at hand. As a result, until I turned twenty-nine I never considered writing a novel of my own. I lacked material, I thought, as well as the talent to create something without it. I was someone who could only read novels. And read them I did, piles and piles of them, never supposing for a moment that I could write one.

I believe that the younger generation today faces quite similar circumstances. In fact, they may have even fewer issues that beg to be written about than we did. What, then, to do under such circumstances?

The way I see it, the “E.T. method” is their sole option. Their only recourse is to throw open their garage doors, drag out whatever they have stored away to that point—even if it looks like no more than a pile of useless junk—and slave away until the magic takes hold. No other approach can help us contact distant planets. We can only try our best with what we have at hand. If you do give it your best shot, though, success can be yours. You can realize the glorious feeling of practicing magic. For writing a novel is in the end forging a link with people on other planets. For real!



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When I began my first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, I knew I had no choice but to write about having nothing to write about. That I would somehow have to turn having nothing to write about into a weapon if I was going to move forward as a novelist. Otherwise I would be powerless to stand against the generation of writers who had preceded me. This, I think, is an example of what writing with what you have at hand implies.

Adopting this approach requires new language and a new style. You have to fashion a vehicle that no one has driven before. Since you won’t—can’t—handle heavy topics like war, revolution, and famine, you must deal with lighter material, which in turn impels you to develop a lighter vehicle that is agile and mobile.

After a great deal of trial and error—I will save the details of this process for another occasion—I was able to cobble together an appropriate Japanese style to use in my work. It was far from perfect, with holes scattered here and there, but I figured it was my first novel, so I had to accept it as it was. I could fix the mistakes the next time around—if there was a next time.

Two principles guided me. The first was to omit all explanations. Instead, I would toss a variety of fragments—episodes, images, scenes, phrases—into that container called the novel and then try to join them together in a three-dimensional way. Second, I would try to make those connections in a space set entirely apart from conventional logic and literary clichés. This was my basic scheme.

More than anything else, music helped move this process forward. I wrote as if I were performing a piece of music. Jazz was my main inspiration. As you know, the most important aspect of a jazz performance is rhythm. You have to sustain a solid rhythm from start to finish—when you fail, people stop listening. The next most important element is the chords, or harmony if you like. Beautiful chords, muddy chords, secondary chords, chords with the tonic removed. Bud Powell’s chords, Thelonious Monk’s chords, Bill Evans’s chords, Herbie Hancock’s chords. There are so many kinds. Though everyone is using a piano with the same eighty-eight keys, the sound varies to an amazing degree depending on who’s playing. This says something important about novel writing as well. The possibilities are limitless—or virtually limitless—even if we use the same limited material. The fact that a piano has only eighty-eight keys hardly means that nothing new can be done with it.

Finally there is the matter of free improvisation, which lies at the root of jazz music. Once the rhythm and chord progression (or harmonic structure) have been established, the musician is able to weave notes freely into the composition.

I can’t play a musical instrument. Or at least I can’t play one well enough to expect people to listen to me. Yet I have the strong desire to perform music. From the beginning, therefore, my intention was to write as if I were playing an instrument. I still feel like that today. I sit tapping away at the keyboard searching for the right rhythm, the most suitable chords and tones. This is, and has always been, the most important element in my literature.



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In my opinion (and this is based on my experience), having nothing you feel compelled to write about may make it harder to get started, but once the engine kicks in and the vehicle starts rolling, the writing is actually easier. This is because the flip side of having nothing you must write is being able to write freely about anything. Your material may be lightweight, but if you can grasp how to link the pieces together so that magic results, you can go on to write as many novels as you wish. You will be astounded how the mastery of that technique can lead to the creation of works with both weight and depth—as long as, that is, you retain a healthy amount of writerly ambition.