So I switched my biographical subject at the last minute. I was going to write about Jubb, I was totally enamored of the idea: a lot of good stories there, a lot of apparent contradictions to explore.

Multiple living sources. Firsthand knowledge.

In fact, I wrote about one of his b-day invitations, you know, the ones he sends to forty or fifty people, for an assignment this term. But that didn't go over too well, and I decided not to risk my grade trying to convince my class of my former roommate's biographic importance.

(He's coming this weekend, incidentally. Very exciting.)

So now I'm writing about Haruki Murakami, who's in the running to be one of my favorite writers. I've read four or five of his novels, but it's his short stories that really grab me; I think it's because they don't give me time to get bored with his bland protagonists.

Anyways, here's a successful bit of biography, my less ambitious version of the true story of a meeting between Murakami and a man who certainly is one of my favorite writers — Raymond Carver. Enjoy:

Like the younger readers who made him famous, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has never made much of the distinction between high and low culture; he�s translated Stephen King and John Irving, Fitzgerald and Capote — anything he likes, really. There�s a charm to his haphazard interests — for years he would read only hard-boiled detective fiction — but one gets the disturbing sense that his exposure to a given writer is merely a matter of chance.

In 1982 Murakami stumbled upon �So Much Water So Close to Home,� a Raymond Carver story published five years earlier. Murakami was impressed, but he probably doubted that someone few Japanese had ever heard of was worth translating. It took the appearance of �Where I�m Calling From� in the March 12th New Yorker to convince Murakami of the minimalist�s potential. He began collecting and translating Carver�s works, and as Jay Rubin notes, the response in Japan was �overwhelming.�

Two years later Murakami and Carver met for the first time at Sky House, a secluded place on the Olympic Peninsula that belonged to Carver�s wife, Tess Gallagher. The summer of 1984 was near the height of Carver�s career, and he�d fled to the isolated community of Port Angeles to get out of the public eye and continue writing. Murakami, on the other hand, though a rising star in Japan since the publication of Wild Sheep Chase in 1982, was still unknown in America, and as Gallagher tells it, he presented himself to Carver as nothing more than an enthusiastic translator. (Which he was: Rubin reports that Murakami eventually translated all of Carver�s work, including unpublished manuscripts and letters.) Excepting a short visit to Hawaii a few years earlier, this was Murakami�s first visit to America, and it�s telling that Sky House was the first place he went.

There seems to have been some anxiety on both sides leading up to the meeting. Murakami idolized Carver, and the author likely had reservations about his rusty speaking-English � Gallagher reports that he was often silent, though �obviously very moved to be in Ray�s presence.� For his part, Carver was immersed in a writing project and even a few hours seemed like a sacrifice. He had also only recently quit drinking. As Murakami recalls:

In the waning of that quiet afternoon, I remember with what distaste he was sipping black tea. Holding the teacup in his hand, he looked as though he was doing the wrong thing in the wrong place. Sometimes he would get up from his seat and go outside to smoke.

The two authors became friends that day, however, sitting on the deck in the cool summer air. They had few pretentions between them � Carver would have been wearing one of his fisherman�s shirts, and Murakami, who rarely wears suits, probably came wearing jeans, some T-shirt he liked, worn sneakers and a plastic watch. Lunch was simple: crackers and smoked salmon to go with the tea. They talked about Carver�s stories, and bits of Carver�s childhood, and the birds that kept hitting the window. Canada was visible across Puget Sound, and while Carver smoked a cigarette, Murakami, who�d resolved to live a healthier life years earlier, sat and watched a ferryboat on its way to Victoria.

After their brief meeting Carver wrote a poem, �The Projectile,� touching on the events of that day, and dedicated it to Murakami. The two kept up a correspondence and Carver planned a trip to Japan in 1987, prompting Murakami to commission a queen-sized bed for his guest room � but the American�s failing health forced him to cancel.

Raymond died of lung cancer in 1988, which Murakami likened to �the slow fall of a giant tree,� and their first meeting was in the end their last. In 1993 Murakami contributed to a composite biography of Carver, writing that he �was without question the most valuable teacher I ever had and also the greatest literary comrade.�

Hat tip to Jay Rubin's Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, which supplied many of the details here. (Apologies if I've plagiarized anything by accident.) The litblog Rake's Progress also has a good post on the incident.