One of the things you sacrifice as a small publisher is reading purely for pleasure. Either that, or your wife and kids go neglected. I've kept on pretty good terms with Yuko and the kids but feel like a turd when I think of how little I read for myself. I enjoy working with words every day — it gives me a craftsman's high — but I find that I rarely pick up a piece of literature just for fun, and when I do, it sits unfinished on the bedside table for weeks.

Which is all just a round-about way of saying I finally had the pleasure of reading the first issue of the new literary journal A Public Space. Craig has already written about issue #1 here, so let me jump to the Focus section, which dedicated nearly 50 pages to modern Japanese lit. Imagine any other American magazine doing this — almost 50 pages on Japanese literature! And not all of it Haruki Murakami, either. While the king of Japanese fiction is interviewed by our friend Roland Kelts, there are other writers and translators amplifying the discussion and several translated stories appearing in English for the first time. I hear that each issue will focus on a different country, which is a brilliant idea.

Murakami, Masayuki Shibata and others talk about the US in these pages, and it was refreshing and surprising to listen to them. At one point, Roland asks Shibata which book depicts the dark side of the American dream especially well, and Shibata answers Trout Fishing in America. I bet you could ask 100 — no, 1,000 — American literature scholars the same question and never get that answer. And yet, it makes sense. Brautigan's book was all about "demystifying the myths of America," as Shibata puts it.

And here's another exchange between Murakami and Kelts that I loved: