Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love

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This is light diversionary reading but it may also make you realize what your own qualifications are for which T-shirts you'll actually wear as opposed to those you keep as souvenirs or memorabilia. Aside from his well known collection of jazz LPs, Murakami is also quite the collector of T-shirts, most of which he doesn't wear but instead stores away in file boxes. As you can imagine, many of these are ones that he is given as take-aways from book signings or readings and/or marathon runs (one of his other obsessions c.f. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running ). Many Murakami fans will know about his 10,000-vinyl-record collection, and his obsession with running, but few have heard about his T-shirt collection. ‘I’m not particularly interested in collecting things’, he writes in the Preface, ‘but there’s one sort of running motif in my life: despite my basic indifference, objects just seem to collect around me, of their own volition’ As always, it's Murakami's mixture of casual friendliness paired with a kind of sagely wisdom that charms in the extreme. His eye for the bizarre, or just downright random. Did you know, for example, that 'If you wear a T-shirt with an animal design, the chances are very good that a girl or woman will tell you, "Whoa - that's so cute!"' - In Murakami's novels, chance encounters and happenstance like this are the stuff that a whole novel's worth of action springs forth from, but even here, these bitesize essays give off the buzz of the everyday banal turned life-affirming wonder. Philip Gabriel - serving on translation duties here hot on the heels of his work on Murakami's recent short stories collection First Person Singular as well as a number of earlier works - does sound business again in capturing this easy breeziness in all its glory.

Originally run in Popeye Magazine, the articles have been collected and printed in book format with two additional follow-up interviews at the end. In Murakami T,the famously reclusive novelist shows us his T-shirts—from concert shirts to never-worn whiskey-themed Ts, and from beloved bookstore swag to the shirt that inspired the iconic short story “Tony Takitani.” These photographs are paired with short, frank essays that include Murakami’s musings on the joy of drinking Guinness in local pubs across Ireland, the pleasure of eating a burger upon arrival in the United States, and Hawaiian surf culture in the 1980s.

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I didn't expect much going into the book cause let's be real, the moment I heard its about his collection of t-shirts.... I'm here going ... okay? The essays and photos in Murakami T stem from Haruki Murakami’s collaboration with Japanese magazine, Popeye, and are translated into English for the first time here. I wonder if he'll ever write something about his stubs of pencils collection, I would love to read that too)

The international literary icon opens his eclectic closet: Here are photographs of Murakami’s extensive and personal T-shirt collection, accompanied by essays that reveal a side of the writer rarely seen by the public. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Runningand Men Without Women, Murakami’s distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world’s most acclaimed and well-loved writers. Murakami’s books have galvanised millions around the world and there is indeed a t-shirt he treasures the most, the one that inspired his beloved short-story ‘Tony Takitani’. He writes about how he encountered the t-shirt in ‘a thrift story in Maui’ and bought it ‘for about a dollar’. It turned out to be one of his best investments, as he asked himself ‘what kind of person could Tony Takitani be?’, let his imagination run wild and ended up writing a ‘short story with him as the protagonist, which was later made into a film’. Keep Calm and Read Murakami" story on T-shirts related to his books; of his book launch and about his publisher (love both the Dance Dance Dance and Norwegian Wood shirts)

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Welcome to the other side of Murakami's world; no fictional characters whatsoever, just Murakami and a closet of his personal T-shirts collection with a writing series spotlighting those collection-- short and light, uniquely told, bit quirky and so chilled! Murakami T: The T-shirts I Love, is part ode, part exhibit that reads with restrained affection for his accidental accumulations…The diaristic entries have the simplicity of a show-and-tell, with Murakami’s spare prose offering a material history of his closet…Haruki Murakami’s understated love letters to his T-shirts convey how we give life to our things and vice versa.”–Charlene K. Lau, The Atlantic

Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'. He can be located on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/harukimuraka... In 1978, Haruki Murakamiwas twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chaseand Hard-Boiled Wonderlandand the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. I’m not particularly interested in collecting things, but there’s one sort of running motif in my life: despite my basic indifference, objects just seem to collect around me, of their own volition’The international literary icon opens his eclectic closet and shares photos of his extensive unique personal T-shirt collection, accompanied by essays that reveal a side of the writer rarely seen by the public. For the multitudes whose appetite for details about Murakami’s wardrobe is not sated by Uniqlo’s interview, in November, Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love will be published. In it, the “famously reclusive novelist” (ahem) will show off his T-shirts, “including gems from the Springsteen on Broadway show in NYC, from the Beach Boys concert in Honolulu to the shirt that inspired the beloved short story, Tony Takitani,” says US publisher Knopf. “Accompanied by short, frank essays that have been translated into English for the first time, these photographs reveal much about Murakami’s multifaceted and wonderfully eccentric persona.” It feels so delightful to read his stories and how each T-shirt bringing a memorable fragment to his life-- a record hunting day, a thrift shop encounters, walking into an event, launching a book, running a marathon, meeting a friend, a beach visit, surfing or movies outing; these are all a story living in a piece of his T-shirt. Might be underwhelming to few and the collection pretty ordinary too, but being a fan to the novelist, this was such an endearing read to me. If you’re looking for the perfect gift for Murakami fans this Christmas, then look no further. Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love is a gorgeous, small-format, full-colour, photographic gift book, revealing Haruki Murakami’s favourite t-shirts collected on his international travels and giving fascinating autobiographical insight into the internationally acclaimed writer, through his accompanying essays.