When you have the vaguest feeling that Hesse’s Steppenwolf reminds you of Fowles’ The Magus
And of Murakami in general (minus the endless philosophizing and self pity – Murakami doesn’t do that)
And then you reach the Masqued Ball and realize that yeah, Fowles took parts of Steppenwolf to create The Magus
And then you remember an interview where Murakami cited Hesse as a major influence
And The Magus as another
And everything make sense
And the arcane comes together in a triangle of bizarreness that spans one hundred years of writing and two hemispheres by three singular authors
PS – Harry Haller aka the Steppenwolf is intriguing at times, even captivating, but he’s mostly annoying. I guess that’s the point of the character since he portrays a diseased frame of mind in a diseased world but it’s not easy to follow his existential misadventures, just like it wasn’t easy to follow the incorrigible Nicholas Urfe in The Magus
Murakami’s characters on the other hand are strangely inviting. The more aloof they are and the less they say, the easier they are to track.
For me anyway.
From the bays of a twilit Pearl Coast
