“Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami (post 2): Science-fiction fantasy about protagonist with preexisting multiple personality.

In both the author’s Paris Review interview (see previous post) and the back cover of the novel, the nameless protagonist (search nameless and namelessness in this blog) of this novel is said to have a split mind due to brain surgery. And the character does, indeed, have such surgery.

But the novel also says that the protagonist, prior to surgery, already had multiple personality, possibly due to childhood trauma.

The Professor, who had done brain surgery on the protagonist and twenty-five other people, to make them into split-brained data processors, says to the protagonist (first-person narrator):

“All twenty-five of them died within a half-year of each other…And here you are, three years and three months later, still shuffling with no problems. This leads us t’believe that you possess some special oomph that the others didn’t”…

“So why didn’t I die?”

“…It seems you were operatin’ under multiple cognitive systems t’begin with. Not even you knew you were dividin’ your time between two identities…

“I find that very hard to believe,” I said.

“I can think of many possible causes,” the Professor assured me. “Childhood trauma…”

The protagonist acknowledges “this split personality of mine” (1, pp. 265-273).

In the Paris Review interview (see previous post), Murakami says that he feels “split” when he writes.

And as the Professor says, “Mental phenomena are the stuff writers make into novels” (1, p. 262).

1. Haruki Murakami. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World [1985]. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum. New York, Vintage International, 1991/1993.