Tuesday was both Man Booker Prize day (read my account of the controversy, the Cape party and even a few words from Julian Barnes himself here) and the publication date of Books One and Two of Haruki Murakami's long awaited new novel, 1Q84.
So long awaited in fact, London saw bookshops staying open past midnight so his fans could buy copies hot off the press. I was working late myself on Monday evening, tied to my laptop until gone 11pm, so I missed the party being held at Foyles on Charing Cross Road, but I managed to make it down to Waterstones' flagship store on Piccadilly in time to catch the end of the 'Murakami Mastermind' quiz.
We enjoyed a glass of sake and some sushi as the answers were read out, then once the final scores had been double-checked by the quiz officiators (this was no mean prize at stake; a £750 boxed limited edition copy of the book itself), the winner was announced. To everyone's astonishment, not least his own, the lucky man explained that he hadn't planned to attend, he'd just been walking past the shop earlier that evening, initially enticed inside by the prospect of being able to get his hands on a copy of the book at midnight (he was a Murakami fan), and then discovering that there was a quiz he figured it made sense to while away the hours thus employed.
So, without any cramming, he pitted himself against the other teams (all of whom had at least two players) and ultimately emerged victorious. What was particularly heart-warming to see though was his genuine excitement at having won such a sought after book - "this one isn't for reading", he said, and bought one of the other copies before he left. All the competitors certainly seemed like serious Murakami fans and there was a distinctly focused feel in the air when I arrived. Though one fan's whoop of joy as the official sales day was announced broke the atmosphere somewhat, and he led the move (although one couldn't quite call it a stampede) towards the tills.
Foyles (which also stayed open for midnight sales) had apparently taken a slightly less formal approach to the evening. There was live jazz from the Henrik Jensen Quartet (Murakami once owned a jazz bar in Tokyo) and the novelists Stuart Evers and Evie Wyld each read from the new novel. And even the independent bookshop Big Green Bookshop in North London's Wood Green got in on the action by screening the film adaptation of Norwegian Wood and serving sushi in the run up to midnight.
As people have already noted, we haven't seen midnight openings like this since the days of Harry Potter, which makes perfect sense as what's driven each instance is the excitement and dedication of the author's fan base. In my post about the Vintage 21st Birthday Party and the BBC National Short Story Award a few weeks back, I somewhat jokingly wrote that literary events were "all the rage this season", but now I'm wondering if I spoke too soon. If recent events are anything to go by, Harvill Secker, Murakami's British publishers and, incidentally, also the imprint behind Erin Mogernstern's The Night Circus (the no-expense spared party I blogged about in my last post), have, whether through luck or design, managed to publish two of this autumn's biggest fan-capturing titles. And, more interestingly, they've turned the launch of each into a reader-focused, rather than the traditionally author-focused, event.