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Don't let the
name fool you: Kazuo Ishiguro is as British a writer as they come. He may
have been born in Japan, but he grew up and attended school in England. So
that's that.
Ishiguro does however maintain a theme particular to many of his Japanese
contemporaries, and that is reconciliation with the past and, in the post-modern
sense, the unreliability of memory. His landmark book for example, The
Remains of the Day, is the story of a career butler let loose on holiday,
only to be held captive by the reality of his memories, and the fact that
he's fooled himself all this time. How does one make sense of that? Not the
reader, who find the stories at the very least partial if not questionable
to the fullest; and if we don't know what to believe, then the protagonist,
Stevens, lives his days as deluded as we do.
Ishiguro writes with the confidence that comes with education and, and the
heart of it all, an ear for the well-crafted sentence. He can intersperse
very large words with smaller ones, making the reader quite at ease with erudition
and vulgarity at the same time. Not many writers can do that but Ishiguro
can do this seamlessly. His sentences sounds as though they were written once
and, done just right the first time, he never had to look back. We should
all be so lucky.
His subject matter varies, from an old English estate to modern-day Shanghai,
so the theme common to his work is not a place nor time but how his characters
see the place and time. You can certainly find similarities here and there
in this observation or that; certain thoughts and ideas make their way, over
and over, into an author's work. And it's only natural. But Ishiguro manages
an originality every time, mostly due to the fact, I think, that he can manipulate
the English language so skillfully. He's like the master gardener who can
tame any plant, any plant at all, with a simple pair of pruning shears and
soft music playing overhead.
If you appreciate perfect usage of the language, as Ishiguro does, you will
also enjoy Julian Barnes, Martin Amis, plus Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson,
although the subject matter will be a bit lighter. But that's okay. You might
need a little break after an Ishiguro or two.
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