"VOCATION” IS A WORD I ASSOCIATE WITH the trades—a consequence, I think, of attending American public schools in the 1980s. There, “vocation” was deployed as a euphemism for skilled labor. The implication, as I understood it, was that to be a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, was a calling, perhaps divine. The work that was my fate—noodling about in front of a computer—was decidedly less sanctified.
I thought about this distinction—between work as a sacred endeavor and just another job—as I began Haruki Murakami’s new book, Novelist as a Vocation. Does the job of novelist require some special quality, an invitation from God, or is it like most work, a set of skills that can be learned? But as I read the book, I realized that the title is a…
