Influences
Murakami has often referred to his love of Western literature and particular admiration for hard-boiled pioneer Raymond Chandler. "Hard-Boiled Wonderland" owes much to American "hard-boiled" detective fiction, as well as to science fiction and cyberpunk, but the book does not belong in any of those categories.
The "end of the world" has much in common with The Castle by Franz Kafka. Both deal with newcomers to strange villages who are both intrigued and horrified by the behavior of the villagers. The image of losing one's shadow when approaching the end of the world is found in Knut Hamsun's 1898 novel Victoria. The same idea appeared earlier, in the 1814 story of "Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte" ("Peter Schlemihl's Remarkable Story") by Adelbert von Chamisso. The theme of the human brain storing encrypted data is found in William Gibson's short story Johnny Mnemonic, but in interviews Murakami says this was not an influence.
Read more about this topic: Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)
“The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)