Murakami's the Man, Yo!

There's lotsa' talk among, ahem--"intelligent people"-- about the possibility of Murakami getting the Nobel prize for literature this year. It's in the discussion for this Gawker post anyway...

I've read a few of Murakami's works, and dyaang, I am impressed. He makes writing seem soo easy, the apparent ease of his writing, and the flow are like make it seem almost reachable. Which it is absolutely not. I mean, I admire Rushdie, but I know I am not going to be able to write like him if I were given three human lives. With Murakami, it's just the opposite. Though I am certain it's even more difficult than writing like Rushdie. I mean, Murakami's being taken as a possibility for a Nobel, and Rushdie's not(okay, there's a lot more to that than solely their writing, but still) and he's still so approachable.

The coolest thing about the guy is he started writing at age 29. Before that, he was just the normal guy--engineer or something--had a family, did a regular job and all. Then he went to a baseball match, and after seeing the hitter hit a ball, he had an insight, so he went home and started writing a novel, which later gained him international recognition and might possibly get him the biggest literary award on earth. He's written quite a few works after that, and some of them are apparently better, but seriously--that dude had NO idea he would be a writer until he was 29. That's kinda strange, once you consider people who spend their entire lives learning the art of writing, taking course after course after course on the same, and ultimately achieving nothing much. And then there's him, Haruki Murakami, THE GUY!

PS: I am reading What I Talk About When I talk About Running , Murakami's autobiography, right now, and I have Dance, Dance, Dance at hand. Heard a lot about Kafka on the Shore, but books with names of pop icons in their names scare me.

PPS: New Yorker has lots of Murakami's short (relatively, that is) stories. Anyone with an account there MUST read his stories. The first work I read was The folklore of our times(subscription required), and I fell in love with the man since then.