Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

I wanted to read this partially b/c I'm so ignorant about Japanese literature. I've listened to alotof Japanese music, witnessed at least a few Japanese films, & read ONE Japanese author (that I can remember at the moment, at least). So what do I choose? A Japanese author who barely references Japanese culture at all! Instead there're references to US culture, Russian culture, etc.. John Ford westerns!

What makes this particularly 'weird' for me is that I've only recently become reinterested in Ford & have actually checked out 2 of the movies that Murakami refers to. Maybe that's not so weird, plenty of people have seen these movies. But then Murakami also references Duke Ellington (who I heard live in the early 1970s), Turgenev (who I've read) - that sort of thing. Sure, these are all fairly mainstream 'western' references but reading them in a Japanese author makes me imagine the writer holed up in some apartment or house somewhere absorbing international culture like a sponge.. like me.

ANYWAY, when I 1st started reading this, it was too much like Kafka or Blanchot - or, more recently, Auster or Lethem. The structure is the classic pulp thing of having alternating threads in alternating chapters that start out so different that one wonders how they cd possibly be connected - & then gradually connecting them. & he[?:]'s good at it - b/c these 2 threads are sortof sci-fi/pulp-cyber-mystery intercut w/ fantasy. Those 2 might seem to be the same to many people but to me they're quite different.

So it grew on me. & grew. & stayed weird w/ how personal it was for me. references to reading Camus' "L'Etranger" in high school. Did Murakami read THAT in high school? Like I did? People always compared me to the main character. Small world. Of course, whenever I think of small world I think of BIG IMPERIALISM & the homogenization of culture. But, still, the relationship between the US, eg, & Japan isn't just so simple as the US bombing Japan into oblivion at the end of so-called WWII & the Japanese being duly obsequious afterward. After all, Japan was probably an even more arrogant imperialist culture at the time than the US was. Let's not forget the "Rape of Nanking", shall we? There's a reason why the Philippines embraced the US & hated the Japanese (if that's true). Whatever, I stray.

I liked this. The writing (or the translation, perhaps?) isn't exactly Nabokov but it whips right along like the pulp that obviously inspired it. &, SHIT!, there's even a part on pp284-285 THAT SAYS SOMETHING THAT I SAID IN MY 1ST BOOK PUBLISHED IN 1977. & that blew my mind. Of course, Murakami has never heard of me or read that book.. STILL, it was weird reading that section - it was almost as if I wrote it. YES, this was a good, fun read for me. I'll read more by Murakami. But I'm still looking for a Japanese author that teaches me more about Japanese culture. I'm still ignorant.