Perhaps, with the success of the movie, Drive My Car, he will finally be honored with the last accolade withheld: Nobel Prize for Literature. Each year, thousands in his home country await with bated breath, expecting his rightful claim. He has won every other prize; pronounced as the writer who should be honored with the highest literary acclaim; but each year, the despair felt by Murakami watchers is palpable.
Will he get it next year? Abdulrazak Gurnah “stole” it this past year. Sigh.
And what will the thousands who gather each year, hoping that this will be the year — what will they say if again he is robbed, left unrecognized, unexplainably ignored, shunned aside, left empty-handed, perennially stripped of the dignity which would cast him with the eternals like Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Pearl Buck, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Camus, Steinbeck, Morrison… but where is Willa Cather, the quintessential writer who wrote about the heartland of America?
There have been many, many deserving authors who never won that most coveted of prizes, and that is merely a reflection of life itself — that we don’t always get what we believe we deserve, or of what others may deserve, and it is interesting how the thing we do not have is what we yearn for most.
For Federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who suffer from a disabling medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the Murakami Watch is probably a mere nuisance of an issue.
Health, in the end, is more important than whether or not any given author should or should not receive the pinnacle of literary prizes; and health is the one thing that, when lost, itself becomes the coveted item.
Contact a disability lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS, and while a Federal Disability Retirement annuity may not in and of itself give you back your health, it will give you the time to try and recuperate and regain that most coveted of prizes.
As for the Murakami Watch? Sit back and enjoy it from both sides of the spectrum: If you don’t like Murakami’s writings, relish the yearly denial; and if you love his writings, wait with bated breath for this year — and the next. At least you can enjoy the camaraderie of shared despair and loss.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill
Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
OPM Disability Retirement, Et Cetera… 