By setting the actual past beside a past that might have been, exchanging certain elements of each with the other, and blurring the boundary line between the two, we can transform memory into something that is more collective. For us, it is a time that is over and done with, part of our known past. Was it difficult to throw yourself backward in time?įor Orwell, 1984 was the unknown future. You wrote about it from the perspective of the twenty-first century. The title of the novel is a nod of sorts to George Orwell’s “1984.” Orwell was writing about 1984 from the perspective of 1948. Formally speaking, this is the first full-length novel I have written from beginning to end in the third person. I don’t see this novel as a departure, but I do think it has been a major step in my career. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me. Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before.

Perhaps each of us has his or her own “town of cats” somewhere deep inside-or so I feel.ĭo you feel that the book is a departure, in any way, from your earlier novels? In any case, this episode performs a symbolic function in the novel in many different senses-the way a person wanders into a world from which he can never escape, the question of who it is that fills up the empty spaces, the inevitability with which night follows day. I think I probably read something like it a long time ago, but I don’t have a very precise recollection of whatever it was that I read. “Town of Cats” is a story that I made up. Is that what is happening to Tengo’s father, too, as he withdraws into his dementia? The German story “Town of Cats” that forms the center of this piece-is it based on an actual story or is it your invention? The hero of the story within the story becomes a kind of ghost in a world where he doesn’t belong. One of the novel’s themes is the deliberate blurring of the boundary line between the individual and the collective, the conscious and the unconscious. Like DNA, memory is both individual and collective. Just as the events of the novel are strongly influenced by things that happened before it started, Tengo is strongly influenced by several aspects of his history that happened before he was born. Tengo’s history is one of those elements, and the secret of his birth plays an important role in the story. “1Q84” is a long novel with a complex storyline that is crammed with many different novelistic elements.

Murakami 1984