Novel 'The death of the Commander II': a very classic and very long Murakami
Stories Advancement of Haruki Murakami's 'First Person Singular': "Who doesn't have a fateful day from time to time?"
Despite the fact that every year it plays in the pools of the Nobel Prize for Literature, there are few writers so determined to downplay themselves as
Haruki Murakami
. The Japanese has
millions of readers around the world
and is the author of
bestsellers
translated into 50 languages such as
The Death of the Commander, Kafka on the shore
or the
1Q84
trilogy
. Also, much more personal non-fiction books such as
What I speak of when I speak of writing, What I speak of when I speak of running
or the recent
Music, only music
, all published in Spain by Tusquets. But he's always been closer to wanting to be
a pop icon.
than a prestigious writer. Without going any further, no other writer can boast that Uniqlo has dedicated a collection to him.
About to turn 73
, Murakami has just surprised his fans (and his
haters
, who have them too) by publishing
a book about his favorite t-shirts
which, of course, is much more than a book about t-shirts.
It's called
Murakami T: The T-shirts I Love
(Knopf) and it's the perfect excuse to talk about
style, the passage of time, literary inspiration, the value of things (something very different from price)
and, ultimately, what our material possessions (what we accumulate and become fond of) say about ourselves.
All this passed through the Murakami sieve, that mixture of lightness,
apparent simplicity
and pop minimalism.
A Shelby Cobra race car t-shirt.
In addition to vinyls, spent pencils and magazines, Murakami has a collection of about 200 T-shirts and when the Japanese magazine
Popeye
asked him to make a selection of his favorites and write about them, he found the idea great. His favorite is a canary yellow one with the words "
Tony Takitani
"
in blue letters
.
"I found it in a store in Maui and bought it for a dollar."
explains in the introduction. "I wondered: what kind of person could Tony Takitani be? I let my imagination run wild and ended up writing a story with him as the lead that was later turned into a movie. And the shirt only cost a dollar, can you believe it? ? I have made many investments in my life, but this was, without a doubt, the best of all. " Apparently, Murakami is a big buyer of cheap t-shirts in second-hand stores like the Salvation Army. Many of his fans have been delighted to learn that
the great literary star also rummages through buckets of everything for a dollar in search of treasures.
In the book there is everything: several
surf shirts from his time as a teacher in Hawaii
(Banana Yoshimoto, who was a student, gave him one) and music, from the Beach Boys to one of
the Ramones
that he no longer dares to wear in public because "there are certain limits when you have reached 70", he confesses.
Several have to do with the
American way of life
, of which Murakami is a strange devotee: there is the old
Coca-Cola
promotional T-shirt
and one with the threadbare S for Superman.
Reykjavik University T-shirt.
We knew that Murakami places a lot of importance on the ritual of drinking a very cold beer, so it is not surprising that he has selected one from Heineken, but knowing how much he takes care of himself (when he started running at 33 he stopped eating so much meat), it is surprising that one of the t-shirts is a promotional copy of Heinz with the slogan
I put ketchup on my ketchup
which, as he himself admits, at this point is almost a private joke among North Americans that we Europeans do not get.
The book also includes a t-shirt that was a gift from its Spanish publishers
.
"It was an element in the promotion of the book of stories Men without women, and in it we added to the slogan"
Keep Calm and read Murakami
"the profile of a cat, an animal that appears in numerous works by the author," they explain from Tusquets.
"Obviously, the shirt was made with the complicity of the author, and when they were ready we sent him several. Murakami liked it so much that he used it in public several times. And when he published his book on t-shirts in Japan, he included it, which we made them very happy ", they confess from the editorial.
A life, in short, told through t-shirts.
Haruki Murakami.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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