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[I don't have anything insightful to say so I just wrote some stupid shit that popped into my head that may or may not make sense. Apologies in advance.]

• Chandler's Marlowe was given a name and Murakami's protagonist was not, but they both start and end their adventures nameless.
• The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase are both works of supernatural fiction. For one, they both end with a ghostly encounter.
• Both protagonists would be good at running tech startups.
• Both writers must have had some weird dreams.
• Both protagonists have god's phone number.
• [Insert other surface-level similarity here]

As others have already said, a lot of similar story b(l)eats, similar characters, similar pacing, similarly  blea(t)k undertones --- it woold not be surprising if Murakami took inspiration from Chandler's The Long Goodbye as he was writing A Wild Sheep Chase. Try swapping the titles around; I think they would still be fairly well representative of the stories they're attached to, although it might help one to squint a little bit. Does this constitute literary theft? I would think not, but I'm also inclined to believe that the question of what does and does not constitute originality and how much recognition or credit should be given to creators for their work is probably too messy a question to even bother with these days. The following is a quote I found on Reddit around two years ago in a discussion thread about originality in digital music that I think might apply to the discussion of intertextuality and originality in literature as well.

"I thought using [drum] loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I then thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I then thought that programming it was cheating, so I learned to play drums for real. I then thought using bought drums was cheating, so I learned to make my own. I then thought using premade skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I then thought that that was cheating too, so I grew my own goat from a baby goat. I also think that is cheating, but I’m not sure where to go from here. I haven’t made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all."

- An unnamed Reddit user, circa February 2019

 

Dylan