Haruki Murakami’s new novel, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” is also a return to earlier works: a novella he published in Japan, in 1980, when he was thirty-one, and the novel “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” published five years later, which was, in part, an attempt to rethink that novella. In the early days of the Covid pandemic, feeling that, after forty more years of writing fiction, he finally had the dexterity and the time to return to this idea—of a high-walled town where clocks have no hands, people have banished their shadows, and a man works in a library “reading” old dreams—Murakami embarked on a larger portrait both of this surreal, almost mythical world and of the so-called real world. The result is a narrative full of twists and shifts, with an ending that purposely leaves us with questions to consider, among them, Which is the real world and which the shadow realm? Which is a physical landscape and which is psychological? How many lives does one person lead? How powerful can the imagination be?

We discussed “The City and Its Uncertain Walls” and other things, via e-mail, in October. Murakami’s answers, which, like the novel, were translated, from the Japanese, by Philip Gabriel, have been lightly edited for clarity.

Hi, Haruki. Congratulations on your new novel, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” which, as you write in the afterword, began in 1980 as a novella that was published in a Japanese literary magazine. What inspired the original novella?

It was a long time ago and I can’t really recall, but probably the world described there is a kind of enduring, essential landscape for me. I think I had the conviction then that it was a world I had to write about. The thing is, though, back then I lacked the writing skills I needed to do it justice.

After publishing the novella, you felt unhappy with it, and you didn’t allow it to be published in book form or translated into other languages. What made you want to go back to it forty years later?

I wasn’t satisfied with the original novella I wrote. And that dissatisfaction stuck in my throat like a small fish bone, a sort of loose end for me as a writer. Somehow I wanted to resurrect that world in a more striking form—that was my long-held desire.

Meanwhile, though, I became busy with all kinds of other projects I wanted to do and couldn’t get started on rewriting it. And some forty years passed (in the blink of an eye, it seemed). I’m in my seventies now, and I thought I really needed to get going on this rewriting of the novella, since I might not have all that much time left. I also had a strong, personal sense of wanting to fulfill my responsibility as a novelist.

Some of the elements in “The City and Its Uncertain Walls” also appeared in your novel “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.” Was that book a first attempt at rewriting the original novella?

Exactly. That novel was my first attempt at a rewrite. “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” was a notable work as far as my writing career was concerned, and quite a few readers say it’s their favorite of my books, but when I look back now I feel that the timing was off, that it was too soon then to do a rewrite of the earlier novella. I was still young, and my storytelling stance tended to be a bit impulsive. As the years went by, I understood that I wanted to make it a calmer, quieter type of story.

In “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” there are two spaces in which the narrator spends time: one that we would call the real world, and another place, a town where no one has a shadow, unicorns flock, and the town walls mutate in order to keep people in. We can intuit metaphorical explanations for the town: it could be an embodiment of the narrator’s imagination or a kind of limbo between the corporeal world and the spirit world; it could be that we all exist in both places, without knowing it, and so on. Do you, as its creator, have specific ideas about the town’s identity and what it represents?

The town surrounded by walls was also a metaphor for the worldwide pandemic lockdown. How is it possible for both extreme isolation and warm feelings of empathy to coexist? That became one of the major themes of this novel.

In the book, the narrator first hears about this other place, as a seventeen-year-old, from the girl he’s in love with. She feels that her “real” self is there, and that the girl the narrator knows is just a shadow. But the life that the narrator eventually leads in the walled town seems far more of a shadow life—gray, unchanging, dimly lit. Why would shadows inhabit the “real world” and the people they belong to inhabit a dark space outside of time?

Where do our real selves exist? Where does their meaning lie? What kind of place is the real world, anyway? Do we have any choices there? These are fundamental questions, and major themes of my novels.

“The City and Its Uncertain Walls” reaches its end, but, as in much of your work, its fundamental mysteries are not solved or explained. Do you like to leave the reader with questions?

Basically, I think an outstanding novel will always aim to present compelling questions—but not give a clear-cut, easy-to-follow conclusion. I’d like my readers to have something to ponder after they’ve finished my books. To have them think, for instance, What endings would be possible here? I drop hints inside each story in order to leave readers thinking. What I’d like is for them to pick up on these hints and each arrive at their own, unique ending. Countless readers have written to me to say, I’ve enjoyed rereading the same book of yours so many times. As an author, nothing could please me more.

If you, like your narrator, had to decide which of the two worlds you would want to stay in—the larger world we all know, or the city within those high walls—what would your choice be?

That question itself is the most important theme of this novel. Which would you choose? And do we even have a choice to begin with?

There are some classic stories about shadows that separate from their original humans. In Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Shadow,” a man’s shadow separates from him, then enslaves and eventually kills him. Were you inspired by any other narratives?

I first read Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Shadow” only after I wrote the original novella, so that wasn’t the inspiration for it, though it is a fascinating story. The work I personally like that deals with shadows and doppelgängers is Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson.”

Did going back to a work you wrote more than forty years ago make you see the ways in which you’ve changed as a writer since then? Do you think you’ve changed?

I’ve changed quite a lot as a writer over these past forty years. When I was young, there were many times I’d want to write about something only to realize, sadly, that I wasn’t proficient enough to do so. As I’ve gained more experience, though, I’ve learned a lot, and with my skill set now as a writer I feel I can handle almost anything I want to write about. And, of course, that makes me very happy as a writer.

Have I likewise changed a lot as a person? That’s a tough question, and the more I think about it the less I can say conclusively. Rewriting this work has certainly got me thinking more deeply, though, about that question.

You recently translated Truman Capote into Japanese. Do you feel that the translating you do has an effect on your own writing?

Of course. The work of translating has taught me many things as a writer. Translation is extreme close reading, and is useful training to help you refine your own writing style. It’s also important, and meaningful, to try to walk in someone else’s shoes. And to continue to show respect to so many outstanding writers.

Are there ways in which you’d still like to change?

There’s no particular thing that makes me think, This is what I’d like to change. It’s probably best for these changes to occur on their own as I write. I suppose you could put it the other way around and say that the reason I keep on writing novels, without growing tired of it, is to spur these changes in me to take place naturally.

The past few years have been marked by wars around the world: between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, civil wars in Yemen, Sudan, Myanmar. There are currently more armed conflicts than there have been since the Second World War. Does this affect your approach to writing in any way? Do you feel a need to address global conflicts through fiction?

I feel like the pandemic was a turning point, and the world is in retreat now, being dragged back into the past. I might even go so far as to suggest that it’s becoming more medievalized. Globalism is in flight in a big way, with social media, once so promising, now reaching a dead end. The image of a town surrounded by high walls may reflect that situation, of things being blocked, and obstructed.

Perhaps in this era we live in, older stories may reveal a kind of unexpected resonance. I’m really hopeful about that possibility.

Are you working on a new book?

I keep my plans secret. ♦

Lord of the Flies, the story of a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves, is considered to be one of the greatest works of literary history, taught to schoolchildren around the world.

But the novel by Sir William Golding didn’t always begin with the schoolboys crash-landing on the island. Instead, an original version of the manuscript, which was written in a school exercise book with the cover torn off, describes how they had been evacuated out, in the midst of a nuclear war, and their plane shot down in an aerial battle.

The alternative version of the dark societal tale will now go on display to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the book being published.

Golding’s manuscripts, notebooks and letters will also be shown in the exhibition at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Old Library, University of Exeter later this month.

The original manuscript will not be on public view, due to its fragility, the university said. Golding’s daughter, Judy Carver, said: “The Golding family are grateful to the University of Exeter for their care of the manuscripts and typescripts on loan to the university.

“They also welcome this opportunity for these materials to be viewed by a wider audience. They appreciate the careful work that has brought the exhibition contents to public view.”

Golding, who died in 1993 at his home in Cornwall, was a Nobel prize-winning author. But he had difficulties getting Lord of the Flies taken up by publishers.

It was spotted by a junior editor at publishers Faber and Faber after a string of rejections, and after some changes became an overnight sensation in 1954.

The exhibit will also contain letters to the editor who helped him make Lord of the Flies a success, along with correspondence from Golding on his other novels and works.

Caroline Walter, the interim head of heritage collections at the University of Exeter, said: “This is an exciting opportunity to unite archival material from two distinct collections in Exeter, allowing visitors to delve into the rich literary heritage of the south-west and illuminating Golding’s creative journey.”

Golding went on to write The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and Free Fall along with Rites of Passage, which won him the Booker Prize.

There were film adaptations of his first novel in 1963 and 1990, and a new version is to be shown on TV for the first time by the BBC.

Written by His Dark Materials’ Jack Thorne, the drama is being filmed in Malaysia with a young cast and will remain faithful to the original story of savagery and dark human nature.

The exhibition will be on display from 24 September to 15 December.

Display panels featuring information about Golding’s papers will be on show across Exeter from 2 September to 31 October and there will be free public events in the city this autumn.

June 13, 2024
• Research Highlight

A tablet-based screening tool that analyzes children’s behavior in response to specific video clips shows promise for enhancing early autism screening, according to a study supported in part by the National Institute of Mental Health. While early autism screening typically depends on parent questionnaires, data suggest the accuracy of these assessments may vary across settings and populations. Objective measurement tools, including digital technologies, could help improve screening in real-world settings and reduce disparities in early screening and identification.

What did the researchers do?

In the study, researchers Geraldine Dawson, Ph.D. , Guillermo Sapiro, Ph.D. , and colleagues at the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development  tested a tablet-based app called SenseToKnow. The app uses the tablet’s camera to capture a variety of child behaviors, including gaze patterns, facial expressions, head movements, blink rate, and whether the child responded to their name. According to the researchers, this multimodal approach allows them to capture the range of behavioral variations that children with autism may show.

During routine health care visits, toddlers watched specially designed video clips while the device recorded their behaviors and quantified them using computer vision, a type of artificial intelligence. The app then used machine learning to analyze the behavioral data, providing a diagnostic classification and a prediction confidence score indicating the reliability of that classification. The app also produced a quality score that indicated whether the app was administered correctly.

Study participants included 475 toddlers, ages 17 to 36 months. Of these toddlers, 49 later received an autism diagnosis and 98 later received a diagnosis of developmental delay and/or language delay without autism.

What did the researchers find?

Overall, the app showed high accuracy for classifying children with autism compared to neurotypical children, and even higher accuracy when the analyses included only the results that had high prediction confidence scores. Classification accuracy remained high when the analyses included data from children with developmental delay and/or language delay.

The app correctly classified nine children with autism who were not correctly identified using a standard early autism screening tool, the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT-Revised with Follow-Up). Classification accuracy increased further when the researchers combined the app analyses with input from the M-CHAT screening tool.

Importantly, classification accuracy was consistent regardless of the child’s sex, race, ethnicity, and age. According to the researchers, these initial findings suggest that objective digital screening tools may help reduce existing disparities in early autism screening, although more work is needed to establish the app’s performance across diverse groups.

What do the results mean?

Advantages of the SenseToKnow app include its usability in real-world settings and the fact that it provides actionable information. For example, a low quality score indicates the app wasn’t administered correctly and may need to be re-administered. On the other hand, a high prediction confidence score lends weight to the classification results and can help identify toddlers who are likely to benefit from further screening and evaluation.

Dawson and colleagues are now evaluating SenseToKnow in a variety of contexts. In another NIMH-funded study, the researchers are examining accuracy when parents administer the app at home on their own devices. They are also exploring whether the app can be used to detect early behavioral signs of autism in infants as young as 6-9 months.

The researchers emphasize that they do not intend for SenseToKnow to be the only data source for diagnosis. Rather, they envision autism screening as a multi-part process that includes parent-report questionnaires, objective digital screening tools, and other data sources such as electronic health records. They also note that screening is one part of a broader clinical pathway that includes provider training, careful implementation, and built-in links to services, supports, and interventions.

“We conclude that quantitative, objective, and scalable digital phenotyping offers promise in increasing the accuracy of autism screening and reducing disparities in access to diagnosis and intervention, complementing existing autism screening questionnaires,” Dawson and colleagues write.

Reference

Perochon, S., Di Martino, J.M., Carpenter, K.L.H. et al. (2023). Early detection of autism using digital behavioral phenotyping. Nature Medicine, 29, 2489–2497. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02574-3 

Funding

MH121329 , MH120093 , HD093074