On Haruki Murakami's Literary Reception To F·S·Fitzgerald

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is the most popular and spectacular one of his generation. For 25 years nearly all of his novels have been best-sellers, which leads to the occurrence of "Haruki Murakami phenomenon". With the translation and introduction of his works, Haruki Murakamis fans are all over the world. He has already been the highlight of both Chinese literary researchers and readers. Nevertheless, the study of Murakami in China is limited to the exploring of the thoughts and art in his works. This paper focuses on Murakami's reception of Fitzgerald, mainly discussing the origin of his writing characteristics, seeking for a certain rules of literary reception ,so as to realize a litter breakthrough on the research of Haruki Murakami . It is a fact that Haruki Murakami is closely related to the contemporary American writers, among whom, F·S·Fitzgerald has a deep impact on him. He translated a large number of the Fitzgerald's works, from which he wanted to learn something about writing and he learned a lot indeed. So he called Fitzgerald "My Teacher, My College, my Literature Colleague". Comparing the two writers, we can find that they have many similarities in writing, e.g. emphasizing the narrative; using musical symbol and inject a sense of music into the text; presenting inward of modern people and the character of times. All of these reflect that Murakami have learned skills and absorbed ideas from Fitzgerald either consciously or unconsciously. What's more, he mingles western culture elements with the "Japaneseness", traditional color with post-modernism color. Therefore, he developed a distinct style of his own. Murakami's literary reception to Fitzgerald was seen in a specific historical and cultural context. There were not only homogeneities but also heterogeneities between Fitzgerald's texts and Japanese culture. They met Murakami's expectation, but at the same time broke his expectation as well. And the appropriate aesthetic difference is the main reason that he felt Fitzgerald perfect. Haruki Murakami's literature career started with learning the western writers especially American writers. But even at the beginning, his novel smelled of "Japanese". In this case we can see that any literary reception is a cultural selection. The cultural framework just like a filtering device, which plays an important role in the process of reception.