However, the fact that the story is narrated from Nick’s viewpoint means the novel takes on certain realistic limits. It’s difficult for the story to reflect things that happen outside of where Nick can perceive them. Fitzgerald employed all sorts of methods, mobilizing every novelistic technique there is to skillfully overcome those limitations. Those are fascinating in and of themselves, but even those technical devices have their own limitations. And in fact, Fitzgerald never again wrote a novel structured like The Great Gatsby.
J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, too, is very artfully written, an outstanding first-person novel, but he likewise never wrote a novel in this style again. My guess is that both authors were afraid that the constraints of that structure might make them wind up writing essentially the same novel all over again. And I think that decision of theirs was probably the correct one.
With series novels, like Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe novels, the “narrowness” of these limitations can be employed to—conversely—effectively lend a kind of intimate predictability （my early “Rat” stories perhaps had a touch of this）。 But with stand-alone novels, in many cases the restrictive wall that the first-person narration constructs makes it increasingly stifling for the writer. Which is exactly why I tried, from many angles, to shake up the first-person narrative in order to carve out new territory, but with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle I realized I’d reached the limits of what I could do with it.
In Kafka on the Shore I introduced third-person narrative in half of the story, and I found a real relief in writing the story that paralleled Kafka’s, the story of the odd old man Nakata and Hoshino, the somewhat uncouth young truck driver. In writing this section, at the same time I was dividing myself so that I could project myself onto others. More precisely, I could entrust others with my divided self. And as a result, the various possible combinations increased substantially. And the narrative could intricately divide and expand in all sorts of directions.
I can hear people saying, “If that’s the case, then you should have switched to third person long ago—then you would have improved much faster,” but actually I couldn’t work things out that simply. The thing is, personality-wise I’m not that adaptable, and changing my novelistic standpoint involves making a major structural change to my novels. In order to support this transformation, I needed to acquire some solid novelistic techniques and fundamental physical stamina. Which is why I did it gradually, seeing how it went, making this change only in stages. When it comes to the body, I had to slowly alter my frame and muscles to fit my workout goals. And it takes time and effort to reshape your body.
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At any rate, by the early 2000s, I’d mastered a new vehicle, third-person narrative, and could step into uncharted territory in my novels. I felt liberated, as if a wall that had been there had suddenly disappeared.
It goes without saying that characters are a critical element in novels. The novelist has to put characters in his novel that have a sense of reality, yet are interesting and speak and act in ways that are a bit unpredictable, and make them a central, or close to central, part of it. A novel with predictable characters who only say and do predictable things isn’t going to attract many readers. Naturally there will be people who say that novels in which ordinary characters do ordinary things are the really outstanding ones, but for me （and this is, after all, just my personal preference）， I can’t get interested in those kinds of books.
But beyond being real, interesting, and somewhat unpredictable, I think what’s more important is the question of how far the novel’s characters advance the story. Of course it’s the writer who creates the characters; but characters who are—in a real sense—alive will eventually break free of the writer’s control and begin to act independently. I’m not the only one who feels this—many fiction writers acknowledge it. In fact, unless that phenomenon occurs, writing the novel becomes a strained, painful, and trying process. When a novel is on the right track, characters take on a life of their own, the story moves forward by itself, and a very happy situation evolves whereby the novelist just ends up writing down what he sees happening in front of him. And in some cases the character takes the novelist by the hand and leads him or her to an unexpected destination.
To give an example, I’ll cite one from a recent novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, in which there’s a very attractive woman character, Sara Kimoto. Truthfully, I started writing this novel intending it to be a short story. I expected it to be only about sixty pages in length in Japanese manuscript pages.