I included this among my three Murakami selections for my inaugural December rereading month. Of the three I ended up choosing, this one seemed the most unlikely to make the cut as December approached. However, as the angle of the sun started dropping lower in the sky and the weather gradually became colder, I was reminded of how well Murakami portrayed the shadow-world he described in the even-numbered chapters of this book. The book, I realized, had made a significant impact on me. I decided to go back to it once more to see if there was more to it than just the lingering mood that haunted me in those late fall months.
Given all this, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed rereading the book. I knew I would get something out rereading the book - I just wasn’t expecting to like it so much. On the second go-around, though, I found there was much more to the shadow-world than its grim environment. As Hard-Boiled Wonderland takes the reader back and forth across two separate stories, the events of the shadow-world bring a context to the excitement of its counterpart narrative. Together, the subtly intertwined stories reinforce the book’s main themes – the way people tend to lock themselves into prisons of their own making, the importance of joy in confronting inevitable despair, and the balance of knowing when to live in harmony with the past and when to let it go.
One up: This book delivers a lot of little nuggets of wisdom. Some of these little insights resembled the kinds of remarks you would get on a fortune cookie – when someone goes to the trouble of building a wall, there is probably a good reason to get to the other side. Others offered the kind of casual philosophical insights college students tend to come up with in the wee hours of the night – where there is perfection in one place, the weak or powerless is carrying a burden elsewhere.
By far the most interesting was the analogy used in one scene to describe a concept invented solely for the plot of the story. To summarize quickly, the discussion was about how if data is represented by fractions, it becomes possible to store an infinite amount of data in a very small numerical area because the space between two fractions can be divided infinitely and, therefore, expanded without limit.
This felt almost like a passable analogy for how computer chips are able to store massive amounts of information on physically tiny pieces of equipment. If the data is represented by a number line from zero to one, the question of expanding storage capacity isn’t a matter of extending the number line but rather one of expanding the decimal places available within the existing number line.
One down: Not all of these nuggets were cheerful. One particularly bright section talked about how joy or love is an impossibility in a life lacking in sorrow or despair. Another explained how individuals lose their minds, piece by piece, each time they do something in accordance with how a larger unit – an organization, a town, or even a partner – demands something be done.
The one I thought about long after I finished reading was the definition of a poor town as a place where everyone must work. I’d always thought America’s strangest 'achievement' was reversing the historical truth about food – whereas the poor used to starve, America made it possible for them to become obese instead. But after considering this quip, perhaps there is an even stranger achievement to consider – whereas the poor used to work while the rich sat idle, these days it is those without work who are poor while the rich are the ones seeming to spend record amounts of time in the office.
Just saying: Longtime readers may recall how much I enjoyed Daily Rituals, a book that examined the creative routines of various artists. I cannot recall if Murakami was featured in the book but I’m a little more interested to see after a specific passage from Hard-Boiled Wonderland.
In this scene, the main character describes the strict schedule he uses to complete an unusually complicated mental task – one hour of work is followed by thirty minutes of rest. I had to wonder if this was based on the author’s own work pattern. It rang true to me as an effective way to work because it loosely matched up with my own work experience (fifty minutes at the desk, ten minutes away) (1).
Footnotes / the magic of the information super-highway
1. Twenty years ago, I would have just had to reread Daily Rituals…
I checked the Brain Pickings website and found that, indeed, Murakami was featured in the book. I did not get a good sense of his exact pattern, however, managing to only dig up this quote from the article linked to above:
When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.Maybe I'll just have to read Daily Rituals again.
What I do know is that there is obviously an optimal schedule for any kind of work. For me, writing is something that comes best early in the day (editor’s note: this is being written at 7:05pm). I’m not sure if this is a reality of my writing style or if this is a consequence of optimizing the rest of my schedule. I do know I find it easy to go for a run in the early evening so I have no need for a morning workout. In the old days, I always found it easier to take care of big work projects early on in the day yet never had a problem taking care of little administrative tasks towards the end of the even the most draining work day.
