Raymond Carver & Haruki Murakami
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love & What I Talk About When I Talk About Running The shared story between two storywriters “Without a doubt, Raymond Carver was my greatest literary teacher and greatest companion.” -Haruki Murakami It was in 1983 when Haruki Murakami began translating Raymond Carver’s novels. Murakami’s translation of “Where I’m Calling From” received favourable reviews in Japan, so he headed to Port Angeles to inform Carver of this himself. As fate may have had it, the two became good friends. Carver was born in the small town of Clatskanie in Oregon, USA. He began smoking and drinking at the young age of ten, which was often the case with children raised in the rural Western United States at the time. He went on to show severe alcohol dependence during his mid-20s. But after many attempts and failures, he was able to stop drinking near his late 30s. He lived ten years free of alcohol dependence, a particular period which he terms as “gravy.” Ra...