When Haruki Murakami was asked if he wanted the Nobel Prize,
he answered, “No. I don’t want
prizes. That means you’re finished.”
Last week I wrote about why he hasn’t been awarded the Nobel
Prize. Maybe another reason is his combative
attitude towards literary critics, and the people who award prizes.
He has suffered a lot of criticism from famous Japanese
writers and critics, such as Kenzaburo Oe.
They often complain that Murakami’s style isn’t Japanese enough.
I think you can find Murakami’s answer to these critics in
one of his early short stories. In “The
rise and fall of Sharpie Cakes”, the main character enters a competition to
make a new kind of cake for a company called “Sharpie Cakes”. But the judges want the cake to be
similar to a long tradition of cakes going back to the eighth century. The main character tries to make a new cake
which will be popular with young people, and submits it to the
competition.
Does the Sharpie Cake company represent the long tradition
of Japanese literature? And the cakes
his character makes are really Murakami’s novels and stories? Then the judges of the competition, the
“Sharpie Crows, are really the Japanese literary critics?
If that is true, then here is what Murakami thinks of his
literary critics.
An edited extract from “The rise and fall of Sharpie Cakes”,
by Haruki Murakami:
I followed the president of Sharpie Cakes down the hall,
up an elevator to the sixth floor, and then down the hall to an iron door. He opened the heavy door.
“The Sharpie Crows live in here. They are a special family of birds. For centuries they have eaten nothing but
Sharpie Cakes to stay alive.”
There were over 100 crows in the room. They were far larger than ordinary
crows. And they had no eyes, I realised. Where there eyes should have been, there was
a layer of white fat. Their bodies were swollen
and fat. When they saw us come in, the
birds started crying. They seemed to be
crying, “Sharpies! Sharpies!”
From a box on his hand the president scattered Sharpie Cakes
on the floor. All the birds rushed over
to eat the cakes. In their rush to get
to the cakes, they pecked at each others’ feet and eyes. No wonder they had lost their eyes!
Next, the president threw them a different kind of cake. As soon as the birds realised that the cakes
were not true Sharpie Cakes, they spat them out and cried angrily.
“You see,” said the president. They will only eat true Sharpie Cakes.
“Sharpies!
Sharpies! Sharpies!”
“Now let’s try it with your new cakes,” said the president. “If they eat them, you win. If not, you lose.”
The president threw my new cakes on the floor. Some of the birds ate my cakes. Others didn’t, and cried, “Sharpies! Sharpies!”
Others, unable to reach my cakes, started attacking the
birds that were eating. Blood flew
everywhere. One crow attacked the
stomach of another crow which had eaten my cake and ripped it out of its stomach.
This was all happening over some ridiculous sweets!
I left in disgust. I
hated to leave the 2 million yen prize money.
But I was not going to live the rest of my long life connected with
these damn crows! From now on I would
make and eat the sweets that I wanted.
Vocabulary:
combative – aggressive; ready to fight
a judge – of a competition, someone who decides the winner
to submit something – of a competition, to give your work to
the organisers to be considered
a hall – a corridor; a narrow passage
swollen – expanded beyond normal size
to peck – of a bird, to sharply hit with the beak (a bird’s
mouth)
No comments:
Post a Comment