Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the recipient of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Literature, is a fearless experimenter who nevertheless adheres to a kind of simplicity in his writing, says Adam Parkes \u201993 (PhD).<\/p>\n
A professor of English at the University of Georgia who focuses on modern British and Irish literature, Parkes is the author of Kazuo Ishiguro\u2019s<\/em> The Remains of the Day: A Reader\u2019s Guide<\/em> (Continuum, 2001).<\/p>\n He says Ishiguro, a Japanese-born British citizen, is known as a serious writer who has been able to reach wide audiences with novels that include The Remains of the Day<\/em> (1989), The Unconsoled<\/em> (1995), Never Let Me Go<\/em> (2005), and The Buried Giant<\/em> (2015).<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s well know for pursuing a relatively narrow furrow, stylistically,\u201d says Parkes. \u201cThere\u2019s a mastery of the understated.<\/p>\n \u201cBut he explores all kinds of territory that\u2019s under the surface of what he seems to be writing about. There\u2019s an incredible poetic range of suggestion and evocation in his language and in his use of narrative form that goes beyond the apparent simplicity and accessibility of his writing.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s writing self-consciously in the tradition of the English novel, in terms of Jane Austen through E.M. Forster\u2014the country-house novel. The Remains of the Day<\/em> is the obvious example there. But you can see him in other contexts, as well. There\u2019s the European context\u2014Kafka is an influence, and I think that\u2019s subtly true in a lot of his fiction, but it\u2019s clearly present in The Unconsoled<\/em>. It\u2019s his longest novel, big and rangy with a looser, baggier aspect to it. There\u2019s a Kafka-like aesthetic there. And there are connections you can make with other contemporary writers, especially in terms of contrasts, like Salman Rushdie, on one side, and Ian McEwan, on another.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a Japanese influence as well, even though Ishiguro has understandably and probably rightly tried to resist attempts to overstate that. But it seems to me that you don\u2019t benefit in your understanding of Ishiguro by trying to deny that there are connections\u2014the overt simplicity of the style, the kind of plotlessness of the narratives, which is one of those quiet risks he\u2019s taking with narrative form. I think you can make connections with all kind of traditions, past and present, and thinking about them enriches your sense of what he\u2019s doing on the page.<\/p>\n In the early novels, you could see him clearly restricting himself to working in the same sorts of lines and narrators, the same kind of reticent and understated voice that seems to be working around or evading big topics. When you get to the later fiction, like The Unconsoled<\/em> and then Never Let Me Go<\/em> and The Buried Giant<\/em>, he becomes more experimental. You get a reworking of certain aspects of science fiction and dystopian fiction in Never Let Me Go<\/em>, for example. And The Buried Giant<\/em>, which I don\u2019t think is a particularly successful novel overall, is an experiment in fantasy and mythological elements. It\u2019s set in post-Arthurian England. He\u2019s clearly taking risks\u2014but that\u2019s what\u2019s given his writing distinction all along.<\/p>\n For my money, the three great ones are The Unconsoled<\/em>, The Remains of the Day<\/em>, and Never Let Me Go<\/em>. They all have a different appeal. For someone new to his work, I would start with The Remains of the Day<\/em>. It\u2019s the best of the early novels. It has its comic elements, but it\u2019s a tragedy\u2014really, a sort of elegy.<\/p>\n Ishiguro\u2019s writing has real emotional power, as well as a simple, austere beauty. He takes ordinariness and pushes it to an extreme, to a point where he risks banality in the language of his narrators\u2014like the butler in The Remains of the Day<\/em>, or the narrator in Never Let Me Go<\/em>\u2014or the plotlessness in narrative structure. I admire how he\u2019s willing to go there and see where it takes you.<\/p>\n Not all experiments are going to work, necessarily. But it\u2019s important for a writer to try these things. They\u2019re not always going to come off. But the willingness to experiment and keep going is essential. It\u2019s what gives a writer\u2019s life vitality over the long haul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adam Parkes ’93 (PhD) explores the writing of Kazuo Ishiguro, recipient of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Literature, noting his fearless literary experimentation meshed with a simple austerity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":752,"featured_media":273562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29212],"tags":[20542,9576,2276,16072],"class_list":["post-273492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-voices-opinion","tag-department-of-english","tag-humanities","tag-literature","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat tradition would you place him in, as a novelist?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
How has his work changed over time?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What is your favorite of his books?<\/strong><\/h3>\n