Herring Noir/Sushi Noir Hardboiled Narrators in Dan Turèll and Haruki Murakami

This article discusses the parallel use of nameless narrators in the works of Dan Turèll and Haruki Murakami as variants on Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled detectives. The two authors, both openly influenced by Chandler, create reluctant homodiegetic figures who would rather be heterodiegetic non-participants in their own lives. Turèll employs a journalist instead of a detective in his crime novels; Murakami’s narrators are usually young men whose lives have been upended, often by a departure. The authors undermine conventional hardboiled notions by altering the standard crime-novel approach and subverting conventional depictions of ‘self.’ The article also focuses on reimagined urban environments and illustrates how re-envisioned landscapes surrounding these characters serve as surreal reflections of the characters’ mental states. Employing noir literary devices, Turèll nevertheless tests the limits of what constitutes a crime novel, while Murakami transcends stereotypical notions of the ‘postmodern’ novel. In these efforts, the two authors resist easy classification.