Friday Column: Kazuo Ishiguro

I recently finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day. It's my third Ishiguro. Fortunately, I've spaced out my readings of him just enough so that each time I've been freshly amazed by that difficult-to-define quality that makes Ishiguro so unmistakably Ishiguro. He's one of the most original voices I've ever read, yet his voice is also so unobtrusive, so quiet.

How does he do it? Anyone who has read Ishiguro knows what I'm talking about, but for the uninitiated, some explanation is in order. An Ishiguro novel functions on missing information--information that both the reader and the narrator (and with Ishiguro it's inevitably a first-person narrator) are missing. We're both missing certain information--the information the reader lacks is different from the information the narrator lacks

Ishiguro's narrators tend to be ignorant of certain, fundamental facts about themselves: For instance, in Never Let Me Go the narrator is missing out on the fact that she's a clone, and then later on the role in society that she is destined to play. In The Remains of the Day the narrator is missing out on the fact that Miss Kenton loved him, and that his former boss used to be a lackey of the Nazis.

The interesting thing about Ishiguro is that we tend to know what the narrator doesn't. We know the narrator of Never Let me Go is a clone. We know Miss Kenton loves the narrator of The Remains of the Day. Ishiguro gives us enough hints that we can figure it out pretty quickly. He never tells us straight out, mind you, (because this is all in the first-person) but he gives us enough hints so that we catch on. It's an experience that is at once alienating and intimate: we're separated from the narrators because we can figure out what they do not understand, and yet by showing us how they fail to understand essential facts about their lives, Ishiguro takes us deep into how their minds function.

So then what information are we, the reader, missing? We don't know why the narrator of an Ishiguro novel doesn't understand what we can figure out. We read on because we are intrigued by these flawed people. We want to see why they are blind to certain facts about themselves, and we want to see what happens when they are eventually confronted with them. Inevitably, Ishiguro's narrators must face the facts that we figure out so early on, and in each of the Ishiguro books I've read this moment has been one of great power.

I can't think of another novelist working today that does this so well, that builds a novel not on what is said, but what is unsaid, that constructs the white parts of his universe by drawing only the black. From the first sentence, Ishiguro's narrators sound real. After ten pages, I feel I know them better than I know most characters after I've read an entire book. After twenty pages, I'm already speculating about what information a character is missing and I can see the outlines of how he'll eventually have to face it. Ishiguro can define the most elaborate, nuanced (the most English) situations without ever mentioning them explicitly. He can create a character by showing us what they don't know.

Every page of an Ishiguro novel is permeated with a certain kind of sensation. It is like looking at an unlocked door, knowing for certain that something is breathing and sweating on the other side of that door, and imagining toward the moment when you will open it. There is a pervasive feeling of dread, but also of obligation.

As an author, Ishiguro came into this world fully formed. Even in his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, he was already exhibiting this unique style. In subsequent years he has only refined it, turned it toward more and more nuanced topics, created his characters and their situations in more and more elaborate ways. In many novelists I would think this a bad thing. I would want for them to move on to new styles. But not Ishiguro. What he does so stands out in my mind that I see him as the only of his kind. He is singular. So then, produce as many of your books as possible because when you stop nothing like them will ever be made again.

In a way, Ishiguro's books are the epitome of the British novel, which is often derided for being small-scale and compared invidiously to its epic American cousin. Ishiguro's books bring us into the minds of completely average people. They are the mediocre, the ones who have failed to excel in life, and so therefore must face the consequences of not knowing themselves. Minute portraits of average people. It is the material of a writer's writer working for the love of literature, not the stuff of grand fiction. It is not Norman Mailer describing how Hitler became Hitler, Don DeLillo accounting for 50 years of Americana, David Foster Wallace summing up the feel of millennial postmodern empire.

And yet, Ishiguro is an unarguably important writer. He is a heavyweight who has racked up an impressive list of prizes, a Brit who is reviewed across the boards in America whenever he publishes a new novel. In my opinion, it is because he describes people attaining maturity. Sometimes they attain it too late: the title of The Remains of the Day refers to the wan consolation that the book's narrator--now that he has finally seen himself--still has some of his life left to him, but perhaps not the best parts. Never Let Me Go is somewhat more hopeful, ending with its narrator courageously standing before the abyss of adulthood, finally free from the misconceptions that have blinkered her, but so, so afraid.

It is a moment that any of us can relate to, and Ishiguro's books not only recall our passage into true self-responsibility but also the nostalgia of those days before we had to think for ourselves. They recreate the personal safety and the moral peril of a limited life, reminding us both why childhood was a special time and why it needs to come to an end.

The also remind us that even among the least introspective of us life will force a reckoning. Ishiguro's narrators don't consciously go looking for the truth, but nonetheless they find themselves in situations where the truth cannot help but come out. On some level, they know something is amiss, and they are trying to find it. As I read an Ishiguro book, I feel it too, that vague dread that we must deal with, even if ostensibly we try to avoid it. I don't know how he puts it on the page, but there it is, every time I read one of his novels. I've never had that feeling with another author, and perhaps most of all that is why Ishiguro occupies his own place in my mind.

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Comments

[LK]

Great post! Ishiguro is probably my favorite contemporary writer, for all of the reasons you cite. He has not disappointed yet (I have his first novel waiting in the wings, and from what you describe, that won't disappoint, either).

Thanks for articulating the difficult to articulate.

[R J Keefe]

Great column!

Of Cathy in "Never Let Me Go," I would say that she knows that she's a clone from the beginning, but does not understand what it means until she has served as a carer. But I congratulate you for finding common threads behind the wildly different exteriors of the three novels tha you've read. I think that what you've discovered works for the other novels as well, even the maddening but unforgettable "The Unconsoled."

[bdr]

Try When We Were Orphans next. I'd be curious what you think. It's my favorite, but rarely see it mentioned when reading about Ishiguro.

[bookbinds]

I enjoyed the post and completely agree that Ishiguro's novels brings us into the mind of the average person but what really makes him so masterful for me is that he uses the story and daily minutia of the everyman to reflect on larger questions of our mortality without seeming preachy.

[Scott]

RJ,

One other thing I noticed between "Remains" and "Never Let Me Go" is the caregiving theme (and all the personal restrictions imposed on the caregiver). I'm not sure what to make of it yet, but it is definitely there . . . I'm interested to see if it is present in more of his novels.

[Scott]

bookbinds,

I agree on the non-preachy aspect. In fact, I dislike it when people try to ascribe certain values to Ishiguro (practically every review I read on his last book argued that it was some warning about the perils of cloning). I think the strength of his books is that he lets different moral systems interact, but he doesn't root for one or the other. He just lets the interactions layer and develop before our eyes . . . and we decide what the meaning is.

[Barry]

I'm with LK in thinking that Cathy has known all along that she is a clone - after all, it is narrated from the perspective of someone about to cease being a carer and making the switch into being a donor giving an account of how she got to be here. If there is something missing, it relates to that vital question of whether clones are "human".

It would be interesting to see you, in a year or two, (since that seems to be the space you allow between Ishiguro novels) to read the Unconsoled, which seems to have a very pronounced lack of self-knowledge to be a central motif - but it is possibly this lack of knowledge which has allowed the central character to achieve a degree of fame, without troubled by any knowledge that he has, for instance, a family.

[Scott]

Barry,

I agree that by the end of the novel Kathy knows she's a clone--just as by the end of the novel Steven's recognizes his predicament and the artist of the floating world realizes the nature of his work. My argument isn't that they never realize (in fact, I think this is a very important moment in any Ishiguro book), but that for so long they deceive themselves.

[Anirudh]

This is an insightful piece but what you say might not hold true for 'The Unconsoled'. I haven't read that book but I've read about it and it seems very different from the other five and not just superficially.

[vic]

It's true, The Unconsoled is different from the others. But it is inasmuch different as it is similar. It's a very strange book, a sort of "Ishiguro meets Kafka". Its atmosphere also reminded me of Chirico's paintings.

[Levi Stahl]

I, too, wait to hear what you'll think of The Unconsoled. It's a deeply frustrating book, but at the same time compelling and unforgettable--the frustration, for me, was a lot like what I feel watching a Chaplin film as, time and again, the Little Tramp just misses succeeding in whatever he's attempting, creating an excruciating tension.

I absolutely loved all of Ishiguro's novels to that point, but the two since have deeply disappointed me. I thought When We Were Orphans, though it had some interesting parts, was a mess overall, and I seem to be one of the very few people who didn't find Never Let Me Go a success. It was the first time I'd felt that Ishiguro was using his techniques inappropriately--I felt as if the mind and person he was showing us was constrained not by her own incapacities and blindnesses but by Ishiguro's need for her to have those incapacities and blindnesses.

But despite those complaints, Ishiguro remains one of my favorites, and one of the authors whose new novels I most look forward to.