The Hard-Boiled Wonderland is very much like present-day Tokyo, although it has been enhanced by futuristic technology and conspiracies surrounding the development and use of that technology. The narrative of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is divided into two parts, the Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, with each providing the setting for every other chapter. What is an individual’s relation to a global government and economy that he cannot even begin to understand or affect in any way? What is a individual’s relation to the endless cycle of consumption imposed by these superstructures? What is an individual’s relation to a reality that is increasingly virtual and, within that reality, what sort of responsibility does he owe to society? What sort of responsibility does he owe to himself? Surrounding these issues is an extended meditation on the nature and power of fantasy, both in its utopian and dystopian dimensions, that is woven into the very structure of the text. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is one of my favorite novels, ever, not simply because it’s very, very fun to read, but also because it’s intensely engaged with several social and philosophical issues that have become increasingly relevant since it was first published in 1985. In either case, I am confounded by the intensely negative evaluation of his work as politically disengaged, sexist, or, most damningly, just not very well-written or enjoyable in general. Are powerful female characters in books like Gerald’s Game, Rose Madder, and Dolores Claiborne to be automatically labeled as sexist creations simply because Stephen King is male?Īnother writer that I feel often comes under unfair criticism is Murakami Haruki, who is ridiculed by one faction of thinkers (like Miyoshi Masao and Ōe Kenzaburō) for being too accessible and not literary enough while at the same time attacked by another faction (of mainly French and American scholars) for being a stereotypical representative of the male-dominated literary establishment. This way of thinking is flawed for several reasons (one of the most obvious being that if gender is performative, then the act of writing gender is exponentially so), and I object to it because it unthinking dismisses the work of several of my favorite authors as unworthy of attention. I suppose I have been reacting, in part, to a school of thought that seems to hold that anything written by a man is inherently sexist, whereas anything written by a woman must be feminist. Upon re-reading my reviews of Lala Pipo and Audition, I realized that sexism in narratives penned by male authors has been one of my major preoccupations during the past few months. Publication Year: 1993 (America) 1985 (Japan) Title: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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