... respectfully, of course. I bought a copy at Barnes and Noble yesterday and I really like the whole issue so far. I've never seen Murakami talk about specifically what he learned as a fiction writer from Raymond Carver and John Irving, or how he first encountered American culture as a youth (Art Blakey and hamburgers!), or his changing feelings about The Great Gatsby (which he just translated), or Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the way his tastes and translations differ from those of Motoyuki Shibata, his good friend and translator (who is also interviewed here), or what's wrong with some American readers. It's not a lenghty interview, that's true, but it's to the point, which I prefer. Plus, the entire section on Japan, with new short stories by younger Japanese writers, some of whom have never been published in English, is pretty cool, I think. And I love the way the magazine looks and feels! It's light, airy, colorful. They've even got illustrations of the participants, instead of boring old photos.
Just my opinion, of course.
