Haruki Murakami is a great enough writer of both fiction and nonfiction that he’s being touted as a potential front-runner for the Nobel Prize in literature—but did you know that he’s also translated several American writers for Japanese publishers? He’s worked on books by authors as diverse as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, and Tim O’Brien… and now he’s done a Japanese-language edition of Jim Fusilli‘s exegesis on the classic Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, originally published as part of Continuum‘s “33-1/3” series of short books on the greatest albums in pop music history. This really isn’t quite so surprising: Murakami’s first big hit as a novelist was Norwegian Wood, which was named after a song on the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album; Pet Sounds was conceived by Brian Wilson as a response to Rubber Soul. It’s all connected!
If Murakami is moved to do another translation from 33-1/3, we vote for Andrew Hultkrans‘s take on the Forever Changes album, please. Or, when Daphne Carr‘s book about Pretty Hate Machine comes out, maybe Ryu Murakami (no relation) could translate that… the aptness of which should be apparent to anyone who made it through Audition with their eyes open.