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:
“Whoever influences the child’s life ought to try to give him a positive view of himself and of his world. The child’s future happiness and his ability to cope with life and relate to others will depend on it.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”
—Hope Edelman (20th century)
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)