Once I thought it was a great novel, but it hasn't held up well over time

As noted previously I've been spending part of this time of shelter in place re-reading novels that I haven't read for +10 years and that, at first reading, I thought were great books. So far so good: Light in August, Suite Francaise, and The Known World all stand up well over the years, as great or even greater than I'd felt about them at first reading. The streak ends here, as Haruki Murakami's early novel A Wild Sheep Chase (1989, a few years later in English tr.) on (re)reading seems like a novel of its time but not really for all time. On the plus side, it's much like a noir detective novel in the Hammett/Spillane/Parker tradition, with the first-person narrator a social isolate, and existential anti-hero (reminding me of Mersault at times), a heavy drinker and smoker, impervious to or oblivious about threats to his life and safety, recently divorced, a habitual loner. These are familiar tropes to American readers, but it was, at least 1990, a novelty to see this type of character in a contemporary Tokyo setting. The Sheep Chase also has a mystical/surreal quality that drives the plot, making it in this way quite different from the noir crime novel. The story line begins as the unnamed narrator - co-owner of a small ad agency/communications shop (not a detective) - comes home to his studio apt. as his wife is walking out on the marriage; shortly thereafter he meets a mysterious young woman (with notably beautiful ears!) and begins a new relationship. He gets a strange call - she warns him it will have to do w sheep (how does she know?) - which ultimately leads to his being summoned by 'the Boss," a reclusive right-wing billionaire and more or less ordered to find in northern Japan the unusual (unique?) sheep that appeared in a stock photo he used in a brochure for a client - and so the chase begins. Years ago this seem quirky and innovative, and I thought it would make a good film (maybe it still would), but coming back to the story these devices seem pretty  much absurd and manipulative and I couldn't help but feel that HM was writing and improvisatory novel, making things up as he moved along - because an author can do that. Part of my disappointment, of course, comes from reading many subsequent HM novels and stories, so what seemed fresh in Sheep Chase - his first in English I'm pretty sure - now seems familiar and even mannered. All that said, for a reader in the right frame of mind, interested in a surreal send-up of the noir crime novel, Sheep Chase can be fun - and it brought HM to an international readership - but it doesn't hold up as a great novel of its time.