I’ve been a fan of Murakami for the past few years, and I’ve read just about all of his novels and short stories. That being said, Hard-Boiled Wonderland was actually one of my favorites because it feels so different from the others. There’s something completely un-Murakami about it, while at the same time the tone and style of the writing and translation couldn’t have been written by anyone else.

The structure of the novel is fairly interesting, alternating between two different narratives whose connections are – naturally – revealed much later. Reminded me of Memento in a way. Again, it makes for a very different feel more along the lines of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

There were some problems I had, but mainly it’s that the characters in Murakami novels are all so similar that it’s hard to tell them apart. Characters that I thought were from one novel are from a different one, and such. The ones in Hard-Boiled Wonderland are very much the same, with their knowledge of literature and jazz, their love of coffee and whiskey, and 1950s American movie references. Ah, well.

Hard Boiled Wonderland is still one of Murakami’s better novels, certainly up there with Wind-Up Bird and Norwegian Wood. It’ll keep you entertained and curious throughout, though a lot of people seem to be turned off by the addition of science fiction and fantasy elements. Don’t let that deter you – it’s worth a read.

I loved this book. It was one of the best science fiction novels i have read in a while. I loved the dual story line and how they meet in the end. I found myeslf faling into the world that he created, its just so crazy and so detailed that you can’t help but start to believe.

I’m going to agree with many others here— this is not my favourite Murakami (I don’t swing so much with the sci-fi-esque theme), and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as a starter book, but after having read many other Murakami novels first, Wonderland was a welcome addition to the collection. The story is surreal enough that I didn’t get bogged down in the sci-fi stuff, and the imagery is rich and deeply textured. I’m a Wind-Up fan myself, so I like my Murakami stories twisty and multi-layered. Wonderland delivers on both counts.

This is quickly becoming my favorite novel EVER. Here’s a passage:

“There’s no time to tautologies. That’s the difference between tautologies and dreams. Tautologies are instantaneous, everything is revealed at once. Eternity can actually be experienced. Once you set up a closed circuit, you just keep spinnin’ ‘round and ‘round in there. That’s the nature of tautologies. No interruptions like with dreams. It’s like the encyclopedia wand.”

“The encyclopedia wand?” I was evolving into an echo.
bq. “The encyclopedia wand’s a theoretical puzzle, like Zeno’s paradox. The idea is t’engrave the entire encyclopedia onto a single toothpick. Know how you do it?”

“You tell me.”

“You take your information, your encyclopedia text, and you transpose it into numerics. You assign everything a two-digit number, periods and commas included. 00 is a blank, A is 01, B is 02, and so on. Then after you’ve lined them all up, you put a decimal point before the whole lot. So now you’ve got a very long sub-decimal fraction. 0.173000631…Next, you engrave a mark at exactly that point along the toothpick. If 0.50000’s your exact middle on the toothpick, then 0.333’s got t’be a third of the way from the tip. You follow?”

“Sure.”

“That’s how you can fit data of any length in a single point on a toothpick. Only theoretically, of course. No existin’ technology can actually engrave so fine a point. But this should give you a perspective on what tautologies are like. Say time’s the length of your toothpick. The amount of information you can pack into it doesn’t have anything t’do with the length. Make the fraction as long as you want. It’ll be finite, but pretty near eternal. Though if you make it a repeatin’ decimal, why, then it is eternal. You understand what that means? The problem’s with the software, no relation to the hardware. It could be a toothpick or a two-hundred-meter timber or the equator – doesn’t matter. Your body dies, your consciousness passes away, but your thought is caught in the one tautological point an instant before, subdividin’ for an eternity. Think about the koan: An arrow is stopped in flight. Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. It’s makin’ a straight line for the brain. No dodgin’ it, not for anyone. People have t’die, the body has t’fall. Time is hurlin’ that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin’, thought goes on subdividin’ that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits.”

“In other words,” I said, “immortality.”

“There you are. Humans are immortal in their thought. Though strictly speakin’, not immortal, but endlessly, asymptotically close to immortal. That’s eternal life.” (284-285)

Very, very interesting idea.

book 13: hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world by haruki murakami

this book was excellent. taut. inventive, original. a little vanilla sky-ish, in a way, but written in 1991, so there’s no claim dispute on that one. murakami has an excellent way of making a world thats so crazy seem so believable… he writes characters with crazy tendencies and oddball lives sound so real.
excellent read.

9.6/10

“Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” is often heralded as Murakami’s most ambitious novel but I found “Hard-boiled” to be more nakedly philosophical and hyper surreal due to the science fictional element. All of the film references—John Ford? Who? ;)—added another layer of density for me. Nevertheless I eventually settled in about half-way through and ended it feeling particularly reflective and incredibly impressed. Murakami shows such a range in his works that, in my experience, is not often matched.

This journey through the subconsciousness is highly inventive and evocative. The book starts off in a jarring fashion, but too soon all begins to unfold. I would recommend it to each one of you. The last few chapters are intense, life-changing, and all-consumingly brilliant.

I don’t know if it was the translation or what, but I had a hard time getting through this. It also shifts between two radically different viewpoints and styles. Not my favorite Murakami book. I would suggest it if you were a fan.

This was a good read but I remember getting into his other books a little more.

This is a fantastic book. One of my favourites. I would recommend starting elsewhere if new to Murakami.

This is my first foray into Murakami. It is intriguing and a little off-kilter so far. I like the dry noir matter-of-factness, and the way the beginning sort of just drops you into the narrative at a mundane-seeming point. I also like how he sort of juxtaposes a soulless consumerist lifestyle intermixed with truly authentic cultural touchstones. You can never quite tell which is which, which is a condition I think we’re alll used to confronting on some level. It’s also a thought-provoking meditation on the nature consciousness and the possible consequences of our coming abilities to meddle with it.

Of all of Murakami’s books, this one has a special appeal. Here he deals heavily in metaphors. Part hard-boiled detective novel, part cyberfiction, part fantasy… pure Murakami. One of his most structured fugues into the human psyche.

rarely does a book directly influence my dreams, but the other day i had weird dreams about unicorns and stuff which is confusing and i lay blame at hard-boiled wonderland.

Excellent. Not quite as mindblowing as Snow Crash, Vurt, or Schismatrix, but definitely right up there (especially as it predates two of those).

My first foray into the worlds of Mr. Murakami’s fertile mind. Since I first read this book at least a decade ago, I have sought out the rest of his works that have been translated. Tonally perfect in creating a sense of uneasy love and horror, balanced with a mix of the mundane and fantastic. An eastern setting with a western sentiment.

Two stories intertwined, the narration chopping between a beautiful dreamlike fantasy world and a cryptoanalyst poking around grim Tokyo sewers and being hassled by hit-men. Isolation and the nature of reality. Well-crafted stuff.