2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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created_at: '2017-10-08T16:38:29.000Z'
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title: Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
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url: http://bombmagazine.org/article/1269/kazuo-ishiguro
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author: lermontov
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points: 74
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 19
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1507480709
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_lermontov
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- story_15428846
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objectID: '15428846'
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2018-06-08 12:05:27 +00:00
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year: 1989
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2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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Kazuo Ishiguro sprang to international prominence with the publication
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of his second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, which won the 1986
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Whitbread Book of the Year prize and was shortlisted for the Booker. It
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is about a Japanese painter who, having once enjoyed great popular
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success, finds himself the victim of a revisionist post-war culture,
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shunned and despised for the incorrect political choices he made in the
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’30s. The Remains of the Day, out this fall from Knopf, works a
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similar theme, though this time our narrator is a very English butler
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called Stevens, who reflects upon the long years of service he gave to a
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nobleman prominent in British politics in the 1930s.
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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Stevens is a glorious creation, stiff on the outside, touchingly blind
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and pathetic within. He agonizes over the question of what makes a
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“great” butler, what is dignity, and how to acquire the ability to
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banter. It’s a mark of Ishiguro’s technical assurance and delicacy of
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touch that he can softly laugh at his character while at the same time
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suggesting the deep sadness of his frigid emotional nature. There is,
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too, at the heart of the novel a quiet examination of British
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anti-Semitism in the ’30s. Swift talked to Ishiguro in London.
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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Graham Swift You were born in Japan and came to England when you were
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five … How Japanese would you say you are?
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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Kazuo Ishiguro I’m not entirely like English people because I’ve been
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brought up by Japanese parents in a Japanese-speaking home. My parents
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didn’t realize that we were going to stay in this country for so long,
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they felt responsible for keeping me in touch with Japanese values. I do
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have a distinct background. I think differently, my perspectives are
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slightly different.
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GS Would you say that the rest of you is English? Do you feel
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particularly English?
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KI People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else.
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Temperament, personality, or outlook don’t divide quite like that. The
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bits don’t separate clearly. You end up a funny homogeneous mixture.
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This is something that will become more common in the latter part of the
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century—people with mixed cultural backgrounds, and mixed racial
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backgrounds. That’s the way the world is going.
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GS You are one of a number of English writers, your contemporaries, who
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are precisely that: they were born outside England. Do you identify with
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them? I’m thinking of people like Timothy Mo, Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri …
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KI There is a big difference between someone in my position and someone
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who has come from one of the countries that belonged to the British
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Empire. There is a very special and very potent relationship between
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someone brought up in India, with a very powerful notion of Britain as
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the mother country, and the source of modernity and culture and
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education.
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GS The experience of empire from the other end. Yet it’s true that in
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two of your novels, which you could loosely call Japanese novels, A Pale
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View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, you have dealt with
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the ruins of empire, Japanese empire. These are post-war novels. Your
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latest novel, The Remains of the Day, is set in the ’50s, in postwar
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England. It seems to be as concerned as An Artist of the Floating
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World with mistaken allegiances and ideals of an imperial period:
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pre-war Britain in the ’30s, Japan in the ’30s. There is a similarity
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there.
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KI I chose these settings for a particular reason: they are potent for
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my themes. I tend to be attracted to pre-war and post-war settings
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because I’m interested in this business of values and ideals being
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tested, and people having to face up to the notion that their ideals
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weren’t quite what they thought they were before the test came. In all
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three books the Second World War is present.
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GS The Remains of the Day, has for its central character, a butler. One
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tends to think of butlers in literary association with detective novels
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or comedy, stage farces, but your butler is a very serious figure
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indeed. How did you alight on this character?
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KI The butler is a good metaphor for the relationship of very ordinary,
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small people to power. Most of us aren’t given governments to run or
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coup d’etats to lead. We have to offer up the little services we have
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perfected to various people: to causes, to employers, to organizations
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and hope for the best—that we approve of the way it gets used. This is a
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condition that I want to write about. It struck me that the figure of
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the butler, the man who serves, someone who is so close and yet so very
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far from the hub of power would be a useful person to write through. And
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there’s the other reason that you’ve hinted at … It’s precisely because
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the butler has become such a mythical figure in British culture. I’ve
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always found that bizarre and amusing. This has got something to do with
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the fact that I come from a Japanese background. There are certain
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things that are very exotic to me about Englishness.
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GS Although, you could say that the butler is a figure who leads, by
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necessity, a very stylized existence. Dignity is enormously important to
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this character. There is a resemblance with Japan—that feeling of
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dignity, service, life as a kind of performance. There is a strong echo
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of An Artist of the Floating World. The central character of that novel,
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Masuji Ono, is also concerned with dignity. Yet Stevens is a much less
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self-knowing and more pathetic character. He seems to have this terrible
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blindness about his own experience. The only thing which redeems him is
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the enormous importance he attaches to dignity. Do you think of dignity
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as a virtue?
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KI I’m not quite sure what dignity is, you see. This is part of the
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debate in The Remains of the Day. Stevens is obsessed with this thing
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that he calls dignity. He thinks dignity has to do with not showing your
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feelings, in fact he thinks dignity has to do with not having feelings.
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GS It’s to do with the suppression of feelings.
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KI Yes, being something less than human. He somehow thinks that turning
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yourself into some animal that will carry out the duties you’ve been
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given to such an extent that you don’t have feelings, or anything that
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undermines your professional self, is dignity. People are prone to
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equate having feelings with weakness. The book debates that notion of
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dignity—not having emotions against another concept of dignity. The
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dignity given to human beings when they have a certain amount of control
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over their lives. The dignity that democracy gives to ordinary people.
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In the end, no one can argue that Stevens has been very dignified in one
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sense: he starts to question whether there isn’t something profoundly
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undignified about a condition he has rather unthinkingly given all his
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loyalty to. A cause in which he has no control over the moral value of
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how his talents are spent.
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GS And that cause proves to be, however honorably it began, a mistaken
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one.
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KI Yes.
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GS There is of course a whole other area, even more extreme and even
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more poignant. Stevens seems to have suppressed completely the
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possibility he once had of a love affair with the former housekeeper,
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Miss Kenton. He is now taking a rare holiday, to visit her. He hasn’t
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seen her for a long time. He’s going back to this crucial moment in the
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past. Yet, nothing he says actually constitutes an admission of his
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feelings over the matter. The novel succeeds in a very difficult area.
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That’s to say, you have a character who is articulate and intelligent to
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a degree, and yet he doesn’t seem to have any power of self-analysis or
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self-recognition. That’s very hard to get away with. Did you find it
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difficult to do?
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KI He ends up saying the sorts of things he does because somewhere deep
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down he knows which things he has to avoid. He is intelligent enough, in
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the true sense of the word, to perceive the danger areas, and this
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controls how his narrative goes. The book is written in the language of
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self-deception. Why he says certain things, why he brings up certain
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topics at certain moments, is not random. It’s controlled by the things
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that he doesn’t say. That’s what motivates the narrative. He is in this
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painful condition where at some level he does know what’s happening, but
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he hasn’t quite brought it to the front. And he has a certain amount of
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skill in trying to persuade himself that it’s not there. He’s articulate
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and intelligent enough to do quite a good self-deception job.
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GS You talk about the language of self-deception. That is a language
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that is developed with all your main narrator figures. It particularly
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revolves around the fallibility of memory. Your characters seem to
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forget and remember at their own convenience or they remember things in
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the wrong context or they remember one event elided with another. What
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is involved is a process of conscious or unconscious evasion. How
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knowing would you say this is?
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KI Knowing on their part?
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GS Yes.
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KI At some level they have to know what they have to avoid and that
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determines the routes they take through memory, and through the past.
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There’s no coincidence that they’re usually worrying over the past.
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They’re worrying because they sense there isn’t something quite right
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there. But of course memory is this terribly treacherous terrain, the
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very ambiguities of memory go to feed self-deception. And so quite
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often, we have situations where the license of the person to keep
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inventing versions of what happened in the past is rapidly beginning to
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run out. The results of one’s life, the accountability of one’s life is
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beginning to catch up.
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GS After Stevens has visited Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper, he
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goes to sit by the sea and cries. This is a kind of facing up to
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himself, a kind of coming clean, but perhaps also a moment of another
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kind of dignity. There is a dignity that goes with the recognition of
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loss and failure. A dignity way beyond Stevens’s scheme of things, and
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yet he acquires it.
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KI Yes.
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GS Painfully.
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KI It’s the dignity of being human, of being honest. I suppose, with
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Stevens and with the painter, Ono, in the last book, that would be the
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appeal I would make on their behalf. Yes, they’re often pompous and
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despicable. They have contributed to rather ugly causes. If there is any
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plea on their behalf, it is that they have some sense of dignity as
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human beings, that ultimately there is something heroic about coming to
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terms with very painful truths about yourself.
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GS You seem to have quite a complicated view of dignity. There is a kind
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of dignity in the process of writing itself. One could say that your own
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style has its dignity. I wonder how much you think that for the artist
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or the writer there is a perennial problem, which is not unlike
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Stevens’s. There is an inherent dignity; grace in art itself; yet,
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when it becomes involved in big affairs, politics and so on, this can be
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both an extension of the sphere of art and very ensnaring. Ono, in An
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Artist of the Floating World, has been an artist in a very pure sense.
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The ‘floating world’ is all about beauty and transience, pure art. It’s
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when he puts his talent in the service of politics, that everything goes
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wrong in his life. Was he wrong to have done that? Is it bad for art to
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be put in the service of politics? Is it right that art should concern
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itself with social and political things?
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KI It’s right that artists always have to ask themselves these
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questions, all the time. A writer, and artists in general, occupy a very
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particular and crucial role in society. The question isn’t, “should they
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or should they not?” It’s always, “to what extent?” What is appropriate
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in any given context? I think this changes with time, depending upon
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what country you’re in, or which sector of society you occupy. It’s a
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question that artists and writers have to ask every day of their lives.
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Obviously, it isn’t good enough to just ponder and sit on the fence
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forever. There has to come a point when you say, “No matter the
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imperfections of a particular cause, it has to be supported because the
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alternatives are disastrous.” The difficulty is judging when. There is
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something about the act of writing novels in particular, which makes it
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appropriate to actually defer the moment of commitment to quite a late
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point. The nature of what a novel is means that it’s very unequipped for
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front line campaigning. If you take issue with certain legislation
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that’s being debated, you’re better off writing letters to the press,
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writing articles in the media. The strength of the novel is that it gets
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read at a deeper level; it gets read over a long stretch of time by
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generations with a future. There is something about the form of a novel
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that makes it appropriate to political debate at a more fundamental,
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deeper, more universal level. I’ve been involved in certain campaigns
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about homelessness but I’ve never brought any of that into my novel
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writing.
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GS Are you writing another novel?
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KI I’m trying to get going. I’ve got books out of the library. It takes
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me a long, long time to start writing the actual drafts. The actual
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writing of the words, I can do in under a year, but the background work
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takes a long time. Getting myself familiar with the territory I’m going
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to enter. I have to more or less know what my themes are, what the
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emphasis will be in the book, I have to know about the characters….
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GS Before you even put pen to paper.
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KI Yes, I’m a very cautious writer in that sense. I can’t do the
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business of shoving a blank piece of paper in the typewriter and having
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a brain-storming session to see what comes out. I have to have a very
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clear map next to me.
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GS Do you find that in practice you actually adhere to your plan?
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KI Yes. More and more. Less so for my first novel. One of the lessons I
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tried to teach myself between my first and second novel was thematic
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discipline. However attractive a certain plot development, or idea may
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be that you stumble across in the process of writing, if it’s not going
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to serve the overall architecture, you must leave it, and keep pursuing
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what you wish to pursue. I had the experience in my first novel of
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having certain things upstage the subjects I really wanted to explore.
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But now I’m beginning to crave the brilliant messiness that certain
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writers can achieve through, I suspect, not sticking to their map.
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GS From following their noses.
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KI I have these two god-like figures in my reading experience: Chekhov
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and Dostoevsky. So far, in my writing career, I’ve aspired more to the
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Chekhov: the spare and the precise, the carefully, controlled tone. But
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I do sometimes envy the utter mess, the chaos of Dostoevsky. He does
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reach some things that you can’t reach in any other way than by doing
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that.
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GS You can’t reach it by a plan.
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KI Yes, there is something in that messiness itself that has great
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value. Life is messy. I sometimes wonder, should books be so neat,
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well-formed? Is it praise to say that book is beautifully structured? Is
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it a criticism to say that bits of the book don’t hang together?
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GS I think it’s a matter of how it stays or doesn’t stay with the
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reader.
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KI I feel like a change. There’s another side of my writing self that I
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need to explore: the messy, chaotic, undisciplined side. The undignified
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side.
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