"Novels that are read over and over again" Interview with Keiichiro Hirano

Once you've read it all the way through, it will remain a "read book" and gather dust on your bookshelf for years to come.

Novels are often treated this way, but I sometimes wonder why this is the case.

In other genres, such as music, it is common for people to grow fonder of a song the more they listen to it. In art, too, masterpieces are on permanent display at museums such as the Louvre in Paris, and by visiting and viewing them repeatedly, one's understanding of the work deepens.

I feel that it is important to write novels in such a way that they will be read repeatedly and become objects of affection.

While this cannot be said for all novels, there are of course many novels that remain interesting even after rereading or even a third time.

So what kind of work can become an object of affection? I would like to point out three elements that I think would be good for it to have.

One of them is the writing style.

A work whose writing has a pleasing rhythm and uses words so that the reading itself is a pleasure will naturally make you want to read it over and over again, even if only in parts.

On the other hand, if I don't seem to get that experience, I'm not likely to feel like rereading it, no matter how good the things written are.

Of course, the primary purpose of writing is to convey information, and everyday communication is reduced to that.

However, while the writing of a novel does of course contain some information to be conveyed, that alone is not enough. The writing itself must have a certain flavor, beauty, and thought-provoking quality to stimulate the reader's imagination.

It's not that a contrived, beautiful style is good. A writer's style is what they express after deep thought.

The next important element is the scene.

When each scene in a novel is well written, it makes you want to read that scene again. Reading that scene makes you curious about what happens before and after, which makes you want to read further.

The subject matter will also be important.

There are surely always issues in the world that need deep thought. If these issues are properly addressed, the work will not become outdated over time and will continue to be read widely.

This calendar features a passage from each of my works, divided into weeks. It may be a fresh experience to revisit the words of the novel in a different way than when you read it before. You may also notice a resonance with the work.

I left it up to the editorial team to decide which sentences to extract,

"Will readers pay attention to this?"

I was also surprised to find that...

Selecting such memorable sentences from novels may be an everyday occurrence on social media .

A novel needs to have some variation. It doesn't continue with the same tempo or tension, but has ups and downs, with parts where you need to build up images and words, and parts where you need to say what you need to say in a concise way.

I think that with this calendar, the designer chose the word ``this'' while keeping in mind the intonation of such sentences.

Sometimes the author's "key points" reach the readers as intended, but sometimes they think they've written something good but no one pays attention to it. Sometimes it's strange and makes you wonder, "Why does everyone care so much about that part?"

This time, a wide range of words have been collected from my previous works.

If you've been a novelist for a long time, you'll inevitably end up dealing with a subject that you can't cover in one book. That's why you might develop the same theme across multiple works, or pursue the same thing over a period of time.

So, as a writer, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to have people look at my creative work as a whole, rather than just focusing on one particular book.

▼You can purchase the calendar here.

https://corkstore.jp/collections/all/products/140008420000