More Murakami

Interview in LAT with Murakami. I particularly like this:

Murakami acknowledges that "Kafka" is not an easy plot to follow. But he says readers generally liked it. "Some readers are very smart and they understood almost everything," he says. "Some got it almost all wrong. But as a whole they accepted my story and had a good time reading the book. "That's a great thing," he says. "To be understood is not the issue."

It's not so much that the plot is labyrinthine or even convoluted. Murakami's reader just needs to open his/herself to the unfolding of the story and trust that he's is taking you on a journey that will ultimately be worthwhile. That, and not plot, is the job of a novelist. Which is why a book like his Wind-Up Bird Chronicles or Rushdie's Midnight Children is so incredibly rewarding. You are all over the map, but you keep coming back to a few central rest stops and each time you appreciate and understand them a little better. I think Kafka's journey to the center of the forest, and his journey to the center of the prophecy, parallels this, the quest of the reader.