Murakami räägib sellest, kuidas temast sai kirjanik ja kuidas ta kirjanikuna töötab. Mõnus, lihtne ja kiire lugemine. Osa sisust kattus teosega "What I talk when I talk about running".
James Joyce put it most succinetly when he said, "Imagination is memory." I tend to agree with him. In fact, I think he was spot-on. What we call the imagination consists of fragments of memory that lack any clear connection with one another. This may sound like contradiction in terms, but when we bring such fragments together our intuition is sparked, and we sense what the future may hold in store (Murakami 2022: 78).
When I was writing this book there was also a sense of it being therapeutic. All creative activity is, to some extent, done partly with the intention to rectify or fix yourself. In other words, by relativizing yourself, by adapting your soul to a form that's different from what it is now, you can resolve - or sublimate - the contradictions, rifts, and distortions that inevitably crop up in the process of being alive. And if things go well, this effect can be shared with readers. Though I wasn't specifically conscious of it at the time, I think I was instinctively seeking that king of self-cleansing action. Which is why, in as very unselfconscious way, I started wanting to write novels in the first place.
