Currently reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Rereading actually, after a few years in between. Reading it again brings back images of Rumford, Rhode Island, although I don't think I was still living there when I read it. Maybe I toted a copy with me on a couple of shopping trips?
In any case, it was fascinating then and it's fascinating now. Perhaps in different ways. The thing to understand is that the title indicates the modes the book is working in. Half of it is hard-boiled, but in a strange way. The narrator winds up in tough situations, but is mostly just prickly. The other half takes place at the end of the world, but more in a sense of "the edge of the map" than in any kind of conventional eschatology.
The reason these two narratives are veering away from each other is disturbing in one sense. In another, each of us contain contrasting multitudes. Isn't that a good thing?
In any case, it was fascinating then and it's fascinating now. Perhaps in different ways. The thing to understand is that the title indicates the modes the book is working in. Half of it is hard-boiled, but in a strange way. The narrator winds up in tough situations, but is mostly just prickly. The other half takes place at the end of the world, but more in a sense of "the edge of the map" than in any kind of conventional eschatology.
The reason these two narratives are veering away from each other is disturbing in one sense. In another, each of us contain contrasting multitudes. Isn't that a good thing?
2 comments:
so grateful to whatever website it is/was on the internet that saw fit to put 'hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world' on their list of 'best cyberpunk novels'(which i guess, to some extent, it is), because it was that list that led to my discovery of the book, & its author, haruki murakami...
it remains my favorite of all his works, partially, i guess, for sentimental reasons, but also because it, for me, seems to capture perfectly what i love about his style the most: the completely unexpected, off-center humor that's never very far away, & the thick, almost tangible, 'quiet' that seems to come over me when reading him. even his non-fiction. there's this soothing, inherent 'stillness' that seems to emanate from his narration. the only other author that comes close to something similar, imo, would be raymond chandler. unsurprisingly, they're 2 of the authors i reread the most...
so, yeah, have fun, watch out for inklings, &, of course, keep your eye on your shadow :) ...
"Cyberpunk" is an interesting way to describe it. The narrator doesn't spend a lot of time at a computer terminal or wearing VR goggles, which is probably the most commonly understood aspect of the (sub)genre. But it does have that knife-edge quality. I congratulate whoever compiled the list on thinking outside the box.
There is a lot of humor in the book, sometimes muted and sometimes pretty broad. I also like that it's left indeterminate in some ways. Murakami doesn't beat the symbolism to death, although it's definitely there. It sort of feels like waking up from a dream and not knowing exactly what to say about it.
He's got to know about Peter Pan, right?
Post a Comment