Shirting The Issues
Reader's Digest UK|January 2022
Legendary novelist Murakami has created an unconventional but fascinating memoir by way of his T-shirt drawer
Shirting The Issues
You know you’ve got some serious status as a writer when you can publish a lavishly illustrated book about your own T-shirts. Haruki Murakami began producing fiction in the late 1970s, but it was only with the 1987 book Norwegian Wood that he really hit the big time. A nostalgic tale of young love, it became a global bestseller and led to a level of adulation that few authors have ever had. In his native Japan, he was mobbed at airports. In America, his subsequent novels were given Harry Potter-style midnight launches in crowded bookstores. And with the appearance of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in the mid-Nineties, his star rose, if anything, even higher.

Indeed, one way of reading Murakami T is as a picture of what a successful writer’s life is like—which is to say pretty nice. Murakami hangs out in Hawaii, sees Bruce Springsteen in New York, watches iguanas in the Galapagos islands, buying (or being given) T-shirts wherever he goes.

The result is undeniably a somewhat eccentric book. But it’s also a very likeable one. Having divided his shirts by theme—bands, cars, drink, animals and so on— Murakami provides short, chatty essays about how he came to have them. He throws in various thoughts about whatever they depict, and ponders T-shirts more generally: which ones seem too boastful to wear (Porsche and BMW designs); and which, in his seventies, he now feels too old to be seen in (The Ramones). At one flattering point, he writes that a T-shirt produced by The Economist magazine has “a very stylish message, as you might expect of something British”. The overall effect is not unlike sharing a conversation with a genial bloke in a bar.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 2022 من Reader's Digest UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة January 2022 من Reader's Digest UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من READER'S DIGEST UK مشاهدة الكل
EVERY SECOND COUNTS: TIPS TO WIN THE RACE AGAINST TIME
Reader's Digest UK

EVERY SECOND COUNTS: TIPS TO WIN THE RACE AGAINST TIME

Do you want to save 1.5 seconds every day of your life? According to the dishwasher expert at the consumer organisation Choice, there’s no need to insert the dishwashing tablet into the compartment inside the door.

time-read
3 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
May Fiction
Reader's Digest UK

May Fiction

An escaped slave's perspective renews Huckleberry Finn and the seconds tick down to nuclear Armageddon in Miriam Sallon’s top literary picks this month

time-read
1 min  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
Wine Not
Reader's Digest UK

Wine Not

In a time of warning studies about alcohol consumption, Paola Westbeek looks at non-alcoholic wines, how they taste and if they pair with food

time-read
3 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
Train Booking Hacks
Reader's Digest UK

Train Booking Hacks

With the cost of train travel seemingly always rising, Andy Webb gives some tips to save on ticket prices

time-read
4 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
JOURNEY TO SALTEN, NORWAY, UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN
Reader's Digest UK

JOURNEY TO SALTEN, NORWAY, UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN

Here, far from the crowds, in opal clarity, from May to September, the sun knows no rest. As soon as it’s about to set, it rises again

time-read
8 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
My Britain: Cheltenham
Reader's Digest UK

My Britain: Cheltenham

A YEAR IN CHELTENHAM sees a jazz festival, a science festival, a classical music festival and a literature festival. Few towns with 120,000 residents can boast such a huge cultural output!

time-read
6 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
GET A GREEN(ER) THUMB
Reader's Digest UK

GET A GREEN(ER) THUMB

Whether you love digging in the dirt, planting seeds and reaping the bounty that bursts forth, or find the whole idea of gardening intimidating, this spring offers the promise of a fresh start.

time-read
6 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
Under The GRANDFLUENCE Suzi Grant
Reader's Digest UK

Under The GRANDFLUENCE Suzi Grant

After working in TV and radio as an author and nutritionist, Suzi Grant started a blog alternativeageing.net) and an Instagram account alternativeageing). She talks to Ian Chaddock about positive ageing”

time-read
3 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
Sam Quek: If I Ruled The World
Reader's Digest UK

Sam Quek: If I Ruled The World

Sam Quek MBE is an Olympic gold medalwinning hockey player, team captain on A Question of Sport and host of podcast series Amazing Starts Here

time-read
3 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024
Stand Tall, Ladies
Reader's Digest UK

Stand Tall, Ladies

Shorter men may be having their moment, but where are the tall women?

time-read
3 mins  |
Reader's Digest May 2024