http://www.chindu.net/reports-on-research/why-haruki-murakami-lies/ Chindu Sreedharan reports on life, etc Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:44:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.chindu.net/reports-on-research/why-haruki-murakami-lies/comment-page-1/#comment-198 Jim Pope Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:36:52 +0000 http://www.chindu.net/?p=707#comment-198 Very interesting, but I think Murakami doesn't properly articulate the nature of his craft: writing fiction is not the same as lying. Fiction is not truth or falsity. A lie is a lie because of an intention to pass the statement made as truth - a lie must involve an act of deception or. But no novelist pretends his fictional world is THE world, thus it can't be a lie. Novelists don't lie unless they claim that their stories are true.(journalists might lie though...). A fictional world is, by definition, invented: it conforms to its own rules, has its own special characteristics and parameters, even perhaps its own physical laws. Every fictional world is an alternative to this one. No one reading a novel thinks they are reading a documentary account of THE world, only an account of A world. I agree with Murakami's final paragraph, regarding his reason for writing. But in order to fulfil that aim he doesn't tell lies, he constructs alternative worlds in order to probe the one we live in. Very interesting, but I think Murakami doesn’t properly articulate the nature of his craft: writing fiction is not the same as lying. Fiction is not truth or falsity. A lie is a lie because of an intention to pass the statement made as truth – a lie must involve an act of deception or. But no novelist pretends his fictional world is THE world, thus it can’t be a lie. Novelists don’t lie unless they claim that their stories are true.(journalists might lie though…). A fictional world is, by definition, invented: it conforms to its own rules, has its own special characteristics and parameters, even perhaps its own physical laws. Every fictional world is an alternative to this one. No one reading a novel thinks they are reading a documentary account of THE world, only an account of A world. I agree with Murakami’s final paragraph, regarding his reason for writing. But in order to fulfil that aim he doesn’t tell lies, he constructs alternative worlds in order to probe the one we live in.

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