Rick Nelson had a song late in his career called “Garden Party.” The lyrics included the following:
See, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself.
I know exactly how he feels. It’s impossible to please everyone, and all you end up doing is spinning your wheels and wearing yourself out. In that case it’s better to stand up for yourself and do what makes you happy, what you really want to do, the way you want to do it. Do that, and even if your reputation isn’t so great, if your books don’t sell well, you can tell yourself, “It’s okay. At least I enjoyed myself.” You’ll be convinced it was all worthwhile.
Thelonious Monk said something apropos of this: “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing—even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.”
Enjoying yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll produce an outstanding work of art. A process of rigorous self-examination is a crucial element. Also, as a professional, of course you need a minimum number of readers. But clear that hurdle and I think that your goal should be to enjoy yourself and write works that satisfy you. I mean, a life spent doing something you don’t find enjoyable can’t be much fun, right? I return again to our starting point: What’s wrong about feeling good?
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Still, if someone asks me straight up, “Do you mean to tell me you really write novels only thinking about yourself?” I’d have to respond that of course that’s not the case. As I’ve said before, as a professional writer I always have readers in mind as I write. Forgetting about the existence of readers—if you wanted to—is impossible, and is also not a healthy thing to do.
But saying I keep readers in mind isn’t the same as a company, when it’s developing a new product, surveying the market, analyzing consumers, and zeroing in on a target audience. What always comes to my mind is more an “imaginary reader.” That person doesn’t have an age, an occupation, or a gender. In reality he would, but those are interchangeable in my mind. In other words they’re not important elements. What is important, what is not interchangeable, is the fact that that person and I are connected. I don’t know the details of where and how we’re connected. Yet I get the distinct sense that deep down, in some dark recesses, my roots and that person’s roots are linked. It’s such a deep, dark place, not something you can casually drop by and see. Yet through the system of narrative, I feel that we are connected, the real sense that nourishment is passing back and forth.
Yet if that person and I were to pass each other in some back street, or be seated next to each other on a train, or lined up together at the same checkout counter in a supermarket, we wouldn’t （in most cases） notice that our roots are connected in that way. We’d just pass by each other, strangers, and go our separate ways without ever realizing it. Probably never to see each other again. But in reality, down deep in the ground, in a place that penetrates below the hard crust of everyday life, we are, novelistically, connected. Deep within our hearts we share a common narrative. That’s probably the type of reader I assume. And every day I write my novels with the hope that that reader will enjoy them a little, and feel something when he reads them.
Compared to that, the actual people around me in everyday life can be a lot of trouble. Every time I write a new book some people like it, and others don’t. Even if they don’t clearly express their opinions and thoughts, I can usually read it in their faces. It’s only to be expected. Everybody has preferences. I can work as hard as I want, but as Rick Nelson said, you can’t please everyone. Seeing everybody’s individual reactions is, for the writer, pretty exhausting. Those are the times I simply take a stand and say, “You got to please yourself.” I’m able to keep these two stances distinct, which is a skill I’ve learned over long years of writing. Maybe it’s the wisdom I need in order to live.
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One thing that makes me very happy is that people of many different age groups seem to be reading my novels. I often get letters to the effect that “all three generations in my home are reading your works, Mr. Murakami.” The grandmother is reading them （perhaps one of my “young readers” from years past）， the mother’s reading them, and so is her son and his younger sister…This kind of scenario seems pretty common. Hearing that really cheers me up. A copy of one book being passed around to several people in a family means that book really has a life of its own. Of course if each one bought their own copy, that would boost sales and make the publisher happy; but as the author of the book, honestly, I’m far happier if five people cherish the one copy.