June 14, 2005

Morgan Stanley chief executive Philip J Purcell's inability to manage firm well is bringing Purcell's career at Morgan to ignominous close; Purcell, in letter to employees announcing his retirement, says continuing personal attacks, which caused distraction at firm, led to his decision to retire; Purcell will step down as soon as board choose successor, but no later than 2006 annual meeting; chart; photo (Market Place column) (M)

If he has not achieved that status already, Haruki Murakami is on course to becoming the most widely read Japanese writer outside Japan, past or present. His novels (including ''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'') have long been popular in China and South Korea, as well as Germany and the Baltic states. ''Kafka on the Shore,'' his most recent novel, published in English by Alfred A. Knopf, made some best-seller lists in the United States earlier this year. That, and a film adaptation of his short story, ''Tony Takitani,'' which is to open on July 29 in the United States, may give him the popular visibility in America he has long coveted. (In Japan, paperback copies of ''Kafka'' are still prominently displayed in bookstores, next to his more recent novel, ''After Dark.''

A college student becomes so compulsive about cleaning his dorm room that his grades begin to slip. An executive living in New York has a mortal fear of snakes but lives in Manhattan and rarely goes outside the city where he might encounter one. A computer technician, deeply anxious around strangers, avoids social and company gatherings and is passed over for promotion. Are these people mentally ill?

Supreme Court gives pharmaceutical companies broad latitude to study and experiment with drugs covered by other companies' patents, decision that may help speed development of medical treatments; decision means drug companies can do much of laboratory, animal and human testing needed to win approval of drug even if drug would infringe on patent on another product; new drug could not be sold until patent on other drug expires; Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for unanimnous court, says existing exemption from patent infringement 'provides a wide berth for the use of patented drugs' in developing other pharmaceuticals; decision reverses federal appeals court ruling that exemption should be interpreted narrowly; E Joshua Rosenkranz, lawyer who argued for victorious side, says ruling gives drug companies head start on developing medicines to be ready to sell as soon as patents on other drugs expire; case pitted Integra LifeSciences against Merck of Germany, which had paid for scientist to test some compounds for potential use as drugs; Integra sued Merck in 1996; Integra plans to appeal; photo (M)

Specimen Days By Michael Cunningham 308 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25. The parallels between Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ''The Hours (1998), and his latest novel, ''Specimen Days,'' will be obvious to even the casual reader. Both novels are haunted by literary ghosts: Virginia Woolf in ''The Hours,'' Walt Whitman in ''Specimen Days.'' Both novels tell three separate stories linked by shared themes and motifs. And both novels feature characters who are essentially variations on -- Shirley MacLaine might say, reincarnations of -- one another.