1. Suter discusses how Murakami’s protagonists act as the translator between the world of the novel and the reader. What are some of the strategies boku uses in A Wild Sheep’s Chase to make sense of the strange things happening around him? How does that play into and utilize the wider Hard Boiled genre, and the detective fiction Murakami often pulls from?
2. Why do you think that Murakami writes his protagonists as only boku, with no names or identifiers? Do you agree with Karatani’s interpretation that this implies, “names, like clothes that can be easily taken off, are superficial accessories, without any real connection to the person”?
3. According to the text, Murakami has a certain idea of what a writer is like, and what they must do. Writers “put order into the chaos of the contemporary world,” give voice to the voiceless victims, construct stories out of patterns of human behavior, and generally act as interpreters between a story and the reader (112). Where do you see evidence of this belief in Murakami’s writing? Do you agree with this interpretation of the significance of writers/novelists?
4. What Murakami mean by claiming that writers have “responsibility” over their own stories? What kind of responsibilities do writers have for the things they create?
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