Kiran Desai’s Booker prize winning effort is the most detailed novel I have read in quite sometime. It is apparent that Desai has spent much effort behind this novel. Each sentence, each chapter is an amazing compilation of minute details that takes a huge amount of cognizant effort to capture. The grit and the hard work behind the writing is admirable and it succeeds too in as much as detailing can be considered to be an essential element of a novel. This is an amazing piece of work when examined from my chosen prism of the three isms. In itself the novel is a bundle of contradictions, in the broader sense however there is perhaps no such modern novel that bears so succinctly and so distinctively the birthmarks of the social class of the author.
Form wise, the detailing is just impossible to ignore. The scene shifts from the cloudy hills of Kalimpong to the ghettos of America alternate with rapid frequency most of the time, not letting the reader to get trapped in either of the two settings through which the novel transpires and this is quite necessary in so stilted settings, it is just sometimes that the American Ghetto seems to linger on a bit too long but not long enough to actually damage something comprehensible. Emotions are handled with an iron baton, displaying only the cream, to let the reader conjure up the milk floating underneath. Form wise it might be considered to be quite taxing, but Desai is writing not just for effects but for reflection and as in any serious work a bit of gloominess is the price the reader ought to be prepared to pay to discover events worth thinking about.
It is the realism that presents the stark contrast which at once forms the most brilliant as well as the most absurd portions of the novel.
The scenes of the American life of the poor Indian immigrant are terrific, the picture of the old tumbled down house set somewhere among the always half asleep hills of Kalimpong represents in itself a time wrap for its characters, as intended to be offered by the author. The police treatment of the poor cook and his acceptance of it are viciously realistic. In themselves, it is in scenes like these that the work’s realistic essence lies. To me they represent realism as it should be, no holds barred, brutal and pinching.
On the other hand lies the absolute reverse of this authentic and proud realism. Sai, a seventeen year old girl is far too mature for her age. It can hardly be a credible situation where she lectures Gyan about the meaning of life. Utterly ridiculous too seem to be the scenes where the pair fall fall in love. Whoever heard of falling in love by mutual touching of ears, eyes, hands and god knows what other sensory organs. Miss Desai herself must be no stranger to love and yet, however romantic and mushy love might be, still it can never reduce itself to the innocence of five year old kids probing and scratching each other. And whatever gave her the ludicrous idea of putting a powder puff inside a blouse? At times it seems that only Desai can surpass her own self in invoking such ridiculous propositions, each inherently more ridiculous than the previous.
There is always an inherent danger when an artist tries to write about events where she has never ever been personally present. Perhaps Desai writes about events that were tragic and disturbing based on hearsay from people she knows who lived through the said times and if that be the case then it is a serious folly, for then the artist is sacrificing truth to opinions and dimensions. She portrays the Gorkhaland movement as a movement of caustic teenagers and youth bullies who have no clue about what they are involved in. For her it is a tragic misadventure carried on the shoulders of arrogant youths inflamed by shrewd and corrupt politicians. She never bothers to delve deep into the reasons for the same and yet that does not prevent her from passing implicit judgments about the same. one wishes she had actually met people who have lost their sons to the movement, one wishes she had heard about the rationale and basis for the movement, one wishes she had tried to understand the moral philosophy of the youth who gave their lives to the movement. What an oversimplification for her, the entire Gorkhaland movement is! A few youths, as malleable as metal in a hot furnace are let loose by their villainous leaders, who then saunter about the beautiful land of Kalimpong, terrorizing and bullying the peaceful people there! That’s all there is it to, for her. How filthy and how repugnant such analysis is, particularly for a capable artist like Miss Desai. This is a heavy let down in the novel, this oversimplified and caricature like portrait of the entire Gorkhaland movement. It is here that the novel looses something that no other virtue in it can quite rebuild, and to think that Sai, a girl who sleeps walks through the movement without ever realizing its essence as it unfolds before her very eyes, as it stains her every breath, gives meaningful advice about life to someone! But Miss Desai does not stop here, no! She must go further. One of her characters actually meets a senior leader of the movement, who is reduced to the level of a lusty, uncouth as low as they come human being. Has Desai ever met any of the leaders of the movement, particularly during the period which she is writing about? Most definitely not and yet she has no qualms in painting the leaders of the movement at that time in such turgid colors with her pen. What can the meaning of this be?
The answer of course lies in her class origins. The kind of people whose opinions she considers as facts, without bothering to investigate in any manner the event she is trying to capture, are the bourgeoisie of the Indian society. Hence they are quite willing to enjoy the bliss of the hills, totally incurious about the lives of the poor Gorkhas who are expected to serve them without daring to ask for the right to lead a better life and when they do so, their movement must represent all that is arrogant, unworthy and preposterous. In America the same bourgeoisie are subservient to the white bourgeoisie there. There are no takers for these brown sahibs in that distant land and hence this search to expose the underbelly of the white American society through the life led by illegal immigrants in American Ghettos. What a contradiction this is! When Desai chooses, the reader is expected to sympathize with the poor immigrants in America and when she decrees, the reader is expected to forget the downtrodden of their native place merely because her classes of people are the lords over here. There is no such glaring example of class hypocrisy in modern Indian English literature.
I am no expert about the Gorkhaland movement; however a movement for which people gave their lives deserves a better investigation than what Desai has undertaken here. Over the years the booker has gone to several undeserving recipients, but none surely, to such an under researched and such a hypocritical work. This is serious miscarriage of justice and Desai should really consider herself lucky to have won the booker. Maybe she went on a visit to the sleepy hills of Kalimpong, attended to by a Gorkha servant and considered the precise auspicious moment, advised by a retired high ranking government official about when to start this work of hers. In this derisory work of her, even this does not seem to be over the top.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Youth : J.M.Coetzee
‘Youth’ is Coetzee’s semi autobiographical novel drawing heavily from the author’s personal experiences as a young man in England. This is a novel of search, a search for a place the protagonist can call home, a search for the realization of his true artistic abilities, sandwiched between the daily grinds of life. That the work should be dark and pessimistic is no surprise, Coetzee’s generation in South Africa has lived through a time of immense tribulation, both physical and moral and it is interesting to note how the author himself tries to tackle this situation.
To the form of this work, surely no modern reader can raise an objection. Among all living authors today, and that is quite some statement to make, no one else, without a single exception, can hold the reader’s attention as it rambles through Byron and Henry James. This exceptional quality comes from Coetzee’s skills as a craftsman and also that other rare quality which is missing in most writers, the setting down on paper, of thoughts, exactly and with no ambiguousness whatsoever.
It however, is a different tale altogether if we examine this work from a realistic point of view. What is it in South Africa that compels the author to leave for England? Of course everybody knows what happened in South Africa and there are references too, but these references are sprinkled about, like insufficient garnish on a main course. England, then is the place where the young man thinks he can find himself, why England? Because it is, according to the young man, the place where his idols lived and wrote, London! Sorry, Mr. Coetzee, that’s a bit too hard to buy. The real reason is something else, something that even Mr. Coetzee himself would not agree with perhaps, but nevertheless, an interesting postulate. The whole answer to this question and also the reason for the lack of appeal of his work is Mr. Coetzee’s selective realism. Mr. Coetzee is a realist in so far as he is the member of the white middle class in South Africa. For this class his realism is precise and incisive but the events that Mr. Coetzee’s class lived through can not be analyzed by selective white middle class realism. It is almost as if the novel cries out, ‘Look, we made them suffer, but are we too not suffering now?’ The answer of course is yes, but are they suffering the same destitution and acrimony for as long a period as the ones that they made suffer? The answer is, no, no, no and a thousand times no. Mr. Coetzee chooses to ignore the realism of that class which has suffered for ages and such suffering, which nothing can ever compensate for. That is the reason the young man wants to go to England, it is a white man’s city, that’s it. Even in his descriptions of England, Mr. Coetzee leaves out the realism of the lower classes. It is inconceivable that the young man had not come across such realism and even more so in South Africa than in England. The plain truth is this, the young man was fleeing, fleeing away because the dominance that his class once held was no longer there, and while fleeing he is so much ridden with the guilt of what his class has made the indigenous people suffer, that he wishes to close his eyes and find solace in the sufferings that his class now has to go through as a result of the same. All that pain and all that misery is depicted from the point of view of Mr. Coetzee’s class and that is what leaves this work one sided and unfinished.
What is the end result of this novel? A stylistically brilliant piece of work, formally terrific, naturally class conscious and realistically desperately one sided and inadequate. A situation of perennial hopelessness, to which the protagonist submits with as meek a resignation as Robespierre before the guillotine and over which one would like to believe, the protagonist had no control, which however is not the truth. It is the fleeing from a situation that the protagonist is not prepared to face, it is the abandonment of participation to render justice to the victims of one’s own class’ atrocities, the benefits of which were doubtless enjoyed by the author himself and therefore in the participation of which he had a moral right to be involved in, that gives this work its anguishing climax.
What a pity this is! For when he chooses to be and in those rare instances where Mr. Coetzee allows himself the permission to assess the situation from the other class’ point of view, he does it admiringly well. Even a work like ‘Disgrace’ can not hide this white man’s lament and seemingly penance like quality without an exposition of the other class’ situation. From any other artist, perhaps this is a bit too much to ask for, but we are talking of Coetzee here. He is a brilliant artist, he really is. One just wishes he is not so much blinded by the position of his own class. Mr. Coetzee must realize that he is writing about a situation that is extremely rare in the annals of human history; such a situation makes great demands from the true artist and certainly from an artist like Mr. Coetzee. He is more than capable enough, is he wiling enough though?
To the form of this work, surely no modern reader can raise an objection. Among all living authors today, and that is quite some statement to make, no one else, without a single exception, can hold the reader’s attention as it rambles through Byron and Henry James. This exceptional quality comes from Coetzee’s skills as a craftsman and also that other rare quality which is missing in most writers, the setting down on paper, of thoughts, exactly and with no ambiguousness whatsoever.
It however, is a different tale altogether if we examine this work from a realistic point of view. What is it in South Africa that compels the author to leave for England? Of course everybody knows what happened in South Africa and there are references too, but these references are sprinkled about, like insufficient garnish on a main course. England, then is the place where the young man thinks he can find himself, why England? Because it is, according to the young man, the place where his idols lived and wrote, London! Sorry, Mr. Coetzee, that’s a bit too hard to buy. The real reason is something else, something that even Mr. Coetzee himself would not agree with perhaps, but nevertheless, an interesting postulate. The whole answer to this question and also the reason for the lack of appeal of his work is Mr. Coetzee’s selective realism. Mr. Coetzee is a realist in so far as he is the member of the white middle class in South Africa. For this class his realism is precise and incisive but the events that Mr. Coetzee’s class lived through can not be analyzed by selective white middle class realism. It is almost as if the novel cries out, ‘Look, we made them suffer, but are we too not suffering now?’ The answer of course is yes, but are they suffering the same destitution and acrimony for as long a period as the ones that they made suffer? The answer is, no, no, no and a thousand times no. Mr. Coetzee chooses to ignore the realism of that class which has suffered for ages and such suffering, which nothing can ever compensate for. That is the reason the young man wants to go to England, it is a white man’s city, that’s it. Even in his descriptions of England, Mr. Coetzee leaves out the realism of the lower classes. It is inconceivable that the young man had not come across such realism and even more so in South Africa than in England. The plain truth is this, the young man was fleeing, fleeing away because the dominance that his class once held was no longer there, and while fleeing he is so much ridden with the guilt of what his class has made the indigenous people suffer, that he wishes to close his eyes and find solace in the sufferings that his class now has to go through as a result of the same. All that pain and all that misery is depicted from the point of view of Mr. Coetzee’s class and that is what leaves this work one sided and unfinished.
What is the end result of this novel? A stylistically brilliant piece of work, formally terrific, naturally class conscious and realistically desperately one sided and inadequate. A situation of perennial hopelessness, to which the protagonist submits with as meek a resignation as Robespierre before the guillotine and over which one would like to believe, the protagonist had no control, which however is not the truth. It is the fleeing from a situation that the protagonist is not prepared to face, it is the abandonment of participation to render justice to the victims of one’s own class’ atrocities, the benefits of which were doubtless enjoyed by the author himself and therefore in the participation of which he had a moral right to be involved in, that gives this work its anguishing climax.
What a pity this is! For when he chooses to be and in those rare instances where Mr. Coetzee allows himself the permission to assess the situation from the other class’ point of view, he does it admiringly well. Even a work like ‘Disgrace’ can not hide this white man’s lament and seemingly penance like quality without an exposition of the other class’ situation. From any other artist, perhaps this is a bit too much to ask for, but we are talking of Coetzee here. He is a brilliant artist, he really is. One just wishes he is not so much blinded by the position of his own class. Mr. Coetzee must realize that he is writing about a situation that is extremely rare in the annals of human history; such a situation makes great demands from the true artist and certainly from an artist like Mr. Coetzee. He is more than capable enough, is he wiling enough though?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Death of a salesman: Arthur Miller
Every once in a while, occasionally and not very often, there comes to the fore, a piece of work that becomes, almost at once as it is released, that rarity in literature which bears no comparison, not only to any other contemporary work, but also to any piece of work ever published in the annals of world literature. That is true art and all true art have one thing in common, they are all true. Truth is that concern which is always dark, always probing and always above all criticisms that are hurled at it. There can be no doubt that ‘Death of a salesman’ is one such piece of work. It makes you want to cherish that as human beings we have developed a medium of expression called literature which can produce such exhilarating pieces of offerings that go a long way in justifying our existence as a civilization. For my part I can not deny, that to me ‘Death of a salesman’ seems to be one of the greatest works ever penned by the hands of man and most certainly one of the greatest plays ever to have been produced in America.
Miller achieves remarkable consistency of form through the use of his ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. Miller breaks and breaks successfully the physical rules of the stage through the use of permeable walls for flashbacks. The play moves around, like a shade of cloud in the sky, keeping this unique unity of reality and dreams and ultimately develops a form of its own, independent of both the conventional and the surreal. There is something inherently dialectical in the form of this play but ultimately it is this dialectical nature in the form of the play that becomes its most differential and crucial element. Mr. Miller is not a sentimental playwright and flashbacks, which have most often through poor cinema become associated with overflowing and gooey emotions are converted into the fountain of truth in the hands of Mr. Miller. All that is physically true in this play is an act put on by the characters to preserve their idyll notions and all that is surreal is truth, the real life with all its tragedy and starkness. Such is the form of this remarkable play.
Naturally, this play is an expression of scorn against the great American dream as an ideology of life. The dialogues are sharp and rattling, like pieces of glass which shatter down on its hapless victims. Sample for example Miller’s violent caricature of man, who as he says is not a piece of orange which we can throw away once we have eaten up his insides. With little more than five main characters Miller delivers a convincingly natural portrait of an ordinary man swept away by the lure of the great dream. His characters, whatever be their faults, are no more or no less natural than they can realistically ever be.
There is no central idea in the play, it offers no great thesis and no miraculous solution, but then again such is not the aim of the play. The sole aim of the play is to reveal the hollowness of the great American dream, which Miller does with aplomb. ‘Death of a salesman’ has often had to bear, quite unfairly in my opinion, criticism from the normal school of playwrights. The play does not need content in the way of a great personal philosophy. It is enough that the play achieves what it sets out to do, namely to expose the middle class hypocrisy of America. That is its content. It is not just portrayal of the existence of a rotten dream that makes this play a success, but rather the portrayal of the rottenness in such a fashion so as to destroy it at that very identical time.
Realistically, of course this play is an unqualified success. The class dilemmas of the middle class is accurately grasped and painted by Miller. All the hopes, all the disappointments and all the bitterness that can give rise only to tragedy is the strongest realistical achievement of this play. The wandering confusion of its central characters manifested very interestingly by Happy’s refusal to understand the failure of the dream even after experiencing its bitter consequences is typical of the bourgeoisie middle class’ fascination and desire to leave all its insecurities and miseries behind without failing to realize the impossibility of doing so, chained as it is between desperate survival and the mirage of the ruling class’ doctrine.
What makes this work stand out is the self class parodying by Miller. How he achieves that, only he knows, for this is one aspect where even the most artistically gifted have faltered. No one has ever made characters from the same class parody and eventually destroy the central social position of its own class, like Mr. Miller has done here. Even a playwright like Bernard Shaw had to make the protagonists out of the proletarian classes to articulate this central idea .Not even Coetzee, definitely the most truthful of authors and one of the most respected voices of social conscience in the later half of the millennium has ever come close to achieving this. Even he has tried, but failed to replicate what Mr. Miller has achieved here, constrained unconsciously as he is by his own class position. Such an achievement, even while most definitely counting skill as one of its many parameters springs from a strong social and moral conscience. Mr. Miller was the possessor of a proud moral conscience, preferring to be blacklisted rather than name names to the HUAC while under investigation, and it perhaps owes much to this strong unwilting conscience in unison with the rare artistic skills of a truly dazzling playwright which enabled Mr. Miller to produce a work of this enormity.
Today, more than five decades after it was first published, this work still towers above all of modern play without exception, one of the lighthouses of art showing the way for serious connoisseurs and artists amongst the fierce and untamed waves of mediocrity.
Miller achieves remarkable consistency of form through the use of his ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. Miller breaks and breaks successfully the physical rules of the stage through the use of permeable walls for flashbacks. The play moves around, like a shade of cloud in the sky, keeping this unique unity of reality and dreams and ultimately develops a form of its own, independent of both the conventional and the surreal. There is something inherently dialectical in the form of this play but ultimately it is this dialectical nature in the form of the play that becomes its most differential and crucial element. Mr. Miller is not a sentimental playwright and flashbacks, which have most often through poor cinema become associated with overflowing and gooey emotions are converted into the fountain of truth in the hands of Mr. Miller. All that is physically true in this play is an act put on by the characters to preserve their idyll notions and all that is surreal is truth, the real life with all its tragedy and starkness. Such is the form of this remarkable play.
Naturally, this play is an expression of scorn against the great American dream as an ideology of life. The dialogues are sharp and rattling, like pieces of glass which shatter down on its hapless victims. Sample for example Miller’s violent caricature of man, who as he says is not a piece of orange which we can throw away once we have eaten up his insides. With little more than five main characters Miller delivers a convincingly natural portrait of an ordinary man swept away by the lure of the great dream. His characters, whatever be their faults, are no more or no less natural than they can realistically ever be.
There is no central idea in the play, it offers no great thesis and no miraculous solution, but then again such is not the aim of the play. The sole aim of the play is to reveal the hollowness of the great American dream, which Miller does with aplomb. ‘Death of a salesman’ has often had to bear, quite unfairly in my opinion, criticism from the normal school of playwrights. The play does not need content in the way of a great personal philosophy. It is enough that the play achieves what it sets out to do, namely to expose the middle class hypocrisy of America. That is its content. It is not just portrayal of the existence of a rotten dream that makes this play a success, but rather the portrayal of the rottenness in such a fashion so as to destroy it at that very identical time.
Realistically, of course this play is an unqualified success. The class dilemmas of the middle class is accurately grasped and painted by Miller. All the hopes, all the disappointments and all the bitterness that can give rise only to tragedy is the strongest realistical achievement of this play. The wandering confusion of its central characters manifested very interestingly by Happy’s refusal to understand the failure of the dream even after experiencing its bitter consequences is typical of the bourgeoisie middle class’ fascination and desire to leave all its insecurities and miseries behind without failing to realize the impossibility of doing so, chained as it is between desperate survival and the mirage of the ruling class’ doctrine.
What makes this work stand out is the self class parodying by Miller. How he achieves that, only he knows, for this is one aspect where even the most artistically gifted have faltered. No one has ever made characters from the same class parody and eventually destroy the central social position of its own class, like Mr. Miller has done here. Even a playwright like Bernard Shaw had to make the protagonists out of the proletarian classes to articulate this central idea .Not even Coetzee, definitely the most truthful of authors and one of the most respected voices of social conscience in the later half of the millennium has ever come close to achieving this. Even he has tried, but failed to replicate what Mr. Miller has achieved here, constrained unconsciously as he is by his own class position. Such an achievement, even while most definitely counting skill as one of its many parameters springs from a strong social and moral conscience. Mr. Miller was the possessor of a proud moral conscience, preferring to be blacklisted rather than name names to the HUAC while under investigation, and it perhaps owes much to this strong unwilting conscience in unison with the rare artistic skills of a truly dazzling playwright which enabled Mr. Miller to produce a work of this enormity.
Today, more than five decades after it was first published, this work still towers above all of modern play without exception, one of the lighthouses of art showing the way for serious connoisseurs and artists amongst the fierce and untamed waves of mediocrity.
Never Let Me Go: Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel does not fall in any category. Neither is it magical realism nor is it science fiction. It is perhaps a combination of the two, for the situation and possibility that Ishiguro conjures up is hauntingly possible. Is it then an attempt to reconcile the moral side of man with his technical side? At one level it is, and yet at another, it is also an indication of the current state of affairs, the conflict between the possible and the morally allowable.
All writers are essentially writing about the morals of their times, and Ishiguro is no exception. When writing about the morals of an age the writer must fill chiefly two conditions, firstly, he must be subtle and yet secondly, and no less importantly, he must also manage to convey aptly, the concern he wants the society to address. On that scale it must be admitted, that this work falls short of the standards that Ishiguro had set for himself in ‘The Remains of the day’. The conscious reader is able to guess, after the first few chapters itself, the theme that Ishiguro is trying to build further in the novel, that however is not the difference between this work of his and ‘The Remains of the day’.
There is something lacking in the gradual progression of the theme to its eventual climax, which is there in ‘The Remains of the day’. There is no chapter of showdown in Ishiguro’s earlier booker winning effort as it is here, in this novel. One can not understand why the main protagonists have to be told in such emotional terms, of their eventual fate. It is something that is already conveyed numerous times through Ishiguro’s imagined description of the life they lead. When an author is at the height of his craft, there always is a nagging worry in his mind, will my readers be able to grasp what I am trying to portray exactly as I want it to be done? Perhaps it is this nagging worry that leads Ishiguro to include that chapter of showdown, where the protagonists are told by their guardians in rather emotional terms, their fate, irrevocable and absolute as it is. This underestimation of readers is a trait that is both dangerous and wholly unnecessary. There are few other authors in world literature who can match Ishiguro’s subtle build up and undercurrents. The whole novel would loose nothing, and in fact gain much if that particular chapter is omitted. This however can be over looked, for I believe that Mr. Ishiguro has reached that level of the consciousness of his responsibility as an artist, and an artist’s true responsibility is the ceaseless removal of all that is nefarious and lacking in the age that he lives in, at which he gets over zealous and tries too hard to drive home his point, failing to realize that his own play of words in the rest of his work has already achieved his purpose. That, however is a sin born out of altruism on the part of a mature artist and there is nothing sinister or self-flattering about it. This I believe is the main difference between this work and his booker award winning effort.
In an imagined piece of work such as this, there is not much that can be subjected to criticism from a realist point of view. Formally, of course Ishiguro is as brilliant as he can ever hope to be except for the slip he makes, which has been pointed out earlier. Ishiguro has always been a strong naturalist and indeed from that perspective there is not much lacking in this novel, given its scope. Indeed, it must be said that Ishiguro succeeds most as a naturalist in this novel. The whole central idea of this novel is so possible that the present day reader can expect Ishiguro’s vision to be realized in the course of this life time. One only hopes that things would not be dark as Ishiguro paints them out to be on his imaginary canvass, if for nothing else then for the sake of the efforts of the author.
Mr. Ishiguro is now in the best years of his life as an artist and it is hard to imagine someone else in Britain and maybe perhaps even the rest of the world, who could have produced a work on such a theme. This work reveals the restless soul of an artist who is bewildered, amazed and at the same time scared at the ever growing technological capabilities of the human race. Coming as it does from an artist like Mr. Ishiguro, it does raise a myriad of questions, questions that are tough to answer, but which need the most serious of introspections. Where will all this progress take us? Will it really make our lives easier and if so, then at what costs? Is the ultimate aim of life merely this, to make it easier and dominate over nature so much that we change the laws of nature itself? Is this desirable? Ishiguro forces the reader to address these pertinent, philosophical and practical questions.
(I will be most interested about the reactions of other readers, please mail me at Sukirti.sen@gmail.com )
All writers are essentially writing about the morals of their times, and Ishiguro is no exception. When writing about the morals of an age the writer must fill chiefly two conditions, firstly, he must be subtle and yet secondly, and no less importantly, he must also manage to convey aptly, the concern he wants the society to address. On that scale it must be admitted, that this work falls short of the standards that Ishiguro had set for himself in ‘The Remains of the day’. The conscious reader is able to guess, after the first few chapters itself, the theme that Ishiguro is trying to build further in the novel, that however is not the difference between this work of his and ‘The Remains of the day’.
There is something lacking in the gradual progression of the theme to its eventual climax, which is there in ‘The Remains of the day’. There is no chapter of showdown in Ishiguro’s earlier booker winning effort as it is here, in this novel. One can not understand why the main protagonists have to be told in such emotional terms, of their eventual fate. It is something that is already conveyed numerous times through Ishiguro’s imagined description of the life they lead. When an author is at the height of his craft, there always is a nagging worry in his mind, will my readers be able to grasp what I am trying to portray exactly as I want it to be done? Perhaps it is this nagging worry that leads Ishiguro to include that chapter of showdown, where the protagonists are told by their guardians in rather emotional terms, their fate, irrevocable and absolute as it is. This underestimation of readers is a trait that is both dangerous and wholly unnecessary. There are few other authors in world literature who can match Ishiguro’s subtle build up and undercurrents. The whole novel would loose nothing, and in fact gain much if that particular chapter is omitted. This however can be over looked, for I believe that Mr. Ishiguro has reached that level of the consciousness of his responsibility as an artist, and an artist’s true responsibility is the ceaseless removal of all that is nefarious and lacking in the age that he lives in, at which he gets over zealous and tries too hard to drive home his point, failing to realize that his own play of words in the rest of his work has already achieved his purpose. That, however is a sin born out of altruism on the part of a mature artist and there is nothing sinister or self-flattering about it. This I believe is the main difference between this work and his booker award winning effort.
In an imagined piece of work such as this, there is not much that can be subjected to criticism from a realist point of view. Formally, of course Ishiguro is as brilliant as he can ever hope to be except for the slip he makes, which has been pointed out earlier. Ishiguro has always been a strong naturalist and indeed from that perspective there is not much lacking in this novel, given its scope. Indeed, it must be said that Ishiguro succeeds most as a naturalist in this novel. The whole central idea of this novel is so possible that the present day reader can expect Ishiguro’s vision to be realized in the course of this life time. One only hopes that things would not be dark as Ishiguro paints them out to be on his imaginary canvass, if for nothing else then for the sake of the efforts of the author.
Mr. Ishiguro is now in the best years of his life as an artist and it is hard to imagine someone else in Britain and maybe perhaps even the rest of the world, who could have produced a work on such a theme. This work reveals the restless soul of an artist who is bewildered, amazed and at the same time scared at the ever growing technological capabilities of the human race. Coming as it does from an artist like Mr. Ishiguro, it does raise a myriad of questions, questions that are tough to answer, but which need the most serious of introspections. Where will all this progress take us? Will it really make our lives easier and if so, then at what costs? Is the ultimate aim of life merely this, to make it easier and dominate over nature so much that we change the laws of nature itself? Is this desirable? Ishiguro forces the reader to address these pertinent, philosophical and practical questions.
(I will be most interested about the reactions of other readers, please mail me at Sukirti.sen@gmail.com )
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