The Books: “The Remains of the Day” (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

RemainsOfDay.jpgExcerpt from The Remains of the Day – by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro blows me away. I’ve only read this one and Never Let Me Go (you have to read it, if you haven’t!! I posted about it here.) I don’t know much about Ishiguro, nothing beyond his bio paragraphs at the ends of his books. The word that comes up for me, though, when I think of his writing is “ventriloquist”. He inhabits these other people – both of the books of his I read are first person. And you cannot get more different than Stevens in Remains of the Day and Kath in Never Let Me Go. A perfect butler, and a seemingly normal love-crazed obsessive teenage girl. And yet both are utterly convincing. Ishiguro is INSIDE these people, and he changes his entire way of writing, his style – to suit the narrator. It’s extraordinary. It really is. Wonderful writer, wonderful imagination. I adored Remains of the Day – I read it before I saw the movie (which I think is terrific, too) – and the book haunted me. There is a similarity with Never Let Me Go which is: we start to see the whole picture before the narrator does. Because isn’t that the way it is in real life? Often those around us can see our lives more clearly than we inside of them. It becomes clear pretty early on that Stevens, the perfect butler, is actually serving NOT the perfect master, but Lord Darlington, a kind of Oswald Mosley type … a perfect English gentleman, but with a rotting evil core (this only unfolds through the course of the book) . Stevens says early in the book: “professional prestige lay most significantly in the moral worth of one’s employer.” So dark dark days are ahead. It is also apparent, since we know the end, that the world Stevens lives in – the world he has dedicated his life to – is dying. It’s not going to last. It’s already over. Thanks for the service, Stevens – you, and your kind, will no longer be needed. But Stevens (what a great character) is slow to learn these things, because, of course, he is living them. Who wants to admit your entire life is a sham? The title of the book says it all. It is the remains of the day. A new morning will come. But there will be no place for people like Stevens in it. And, on top of all of this, is the unspoken passion and love that Stevens has for Mrs. Benn. The book is a tragedy. Nothing works out for the best. Not really. People lose, and they lose big. But Stevens’ voice is so proper, so stiff at times – that it is hard to really tell what might be happening underneath that exterior. Ishiguro is so so so good that way. So at the end when Stevens and Mrs. Benn meet up in Weymouth, and they sit on the beach and talk – and Stevens says (and it’s so perfectly put, and so … un-histrionic – that you might even miss it): “Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed – why should I not admit it? – at that moment, my heart was breaking” – it packs an even larger punch than something said more openly, or more rawly. Because it’s Stevens. And you know what it would cost for him to say something like that. You know how bad it must be if he is even admitting that it is going on inside him. Even in that little passage, he has to sneak up on his own experience. He begins with the tepid “a certain degree of sorrow” – and then, breathtakingly, he opens the door in the next sentence: “why should I not admit it? – at that moment, my heart was breaking.” I read that entire last chapter with tears streaming down my face. It’s a perfect example of: if you, the artist, do not cry – then your audience will. If you, the artist, try to hold it back – then you will have to mop your audience up off the floor. My heart broke with Stevens. How does one calmly realize that one has wasted one’s life? How does one face it?

Ishiguro is a marvel. The voice of this book is so specific, so clear and true … you would have sworn that Ishiguro himself had been a butler, or that his father had been one. But no. It is just his imagination, his world of creativity – allowing him to step so completely into somebody else’s shoes. A ventiloquist. Or maybe it would be apt to say he puts on a mask. And like all classic mask work: you take on the personality of the mask, you change your entire outlook to fit the mask … and what comes out is not your voice, but another’s. Ishiguro is untouchable in this respect.


Excerpt from The Remains of the Day – by Kazuo Ishiguro

I believe I can best highlight the difference between the generations by expressing myself figuratively. Butlers of my father’s generation, I would say, tended to see the world in terms of a ladder – the houses of royalty, dukes and the lords from the oldest families placed at the top, those of ‘new money’ lower down and so on, until one reached a point below which the hierarchy was determined simply by wealth – or the lack of it. Any butler with ambition simply did his best to climb as high up this ladder as possible, and by and large, the higher he went, the greater was his professional prestige. Such are, of course, precisely the values embodied in the Hayes Society’s idea of a ‘distinguished household’, and the fact that it was confidently making such pronouncements as late as 1929 shows clearly why the demise of that society was inevitable, if not long overdue. For by that time, such thinking was quite out of step with that of the finest men emerging to the forefront of our profession. For our generation, I believe, it is accurate to say, viewed the world not as a ladder, but more as a wheel. Perhaps I might explain this further.

It is my impression that our generation was the first to recognize something which had passed the notice of all earlier generations: namely that the great decisions of the world are not, in fact, arrived at simply in the public chambers, or else during a handful of days given over to an international conference under the full gaze of the public and the press. Rather, debates are conducted, and crucial decisions arrived at, in the privacy and calm of the great houses of this country. What occurs under the public gaze with so much pomp and ceremony is often the conclusion, or mere ratification, of what has taken place over weeks or months within the walls of such houses. To us, then, the world was a wheel, revolving with these great houses at the hub, their mighty decisions emanating out to all else, rich and poor, who revolved around them. It was the aspiration of all those of us with professional ambition to work our way as close to this hub as we were each of us capable. For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practised one’s skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great gentlemen of our times in whose hands civilization had been entrusted.

Of course, I am now speaking in broad generalizations and I would readily admit there were all too many persons of our generation who had no patience for such finer considerations. Conversely, I am sure there were many of my father’s generation who recognized instinctively this “moral” dimension to their work. But by and large, I believe these generalizations to be accurate, and indeed, such “idealistic” motivations as I have described have played a large part in my own career. I myself moved quite rapidly from employer to employer during my early career – being aware that these situations were incapable of bringing me lasting satisfaction – before being rewarded at last with the opportunity to serve Lord Darlington.

It is curious that I have never until today thought of the matter in these terms; indeed, that through all those many hours we spent discussing the nature of ‘greatness’ by the fire of our servants’ hall, the likes of Mr. Graham and I never considered this whole dimension to the question. And while I would not retract anything I have previously stated regarding the quality of ‘dignity’, I must admit there is something to the argument that whatever the degree to which a butler has attained such a quality, if he has failed to find an appropriate outlet for his accomplishments he can hardly expect his fellows to consider him ‘great’. Certainly, it is observable that figures like Mr. Marshall and Mr. Lane have served only gentlemen of indisputable moral stature – Lord Wakeling, Lord Camberley, Sir Leonard Gray – and one cannot help get the impression that they simply would not have offered their talents to gentlemen of lesser calibre. Indeed, the more one considers it, the more obvious it seems: assocation with a truly distinguished household is a prerequisite of ‘greatness’. A ‘great’ butler can only be, surely, one who can point to his years of service and say that he has applied his talents to serving a great gentleman – and through the latter, to serving humanity.

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought through thoroughly. I have also, no doubt, been prompted to think along such lines by the small event that occurred an hour or so ago – which has, I admit, unsettled me somewhat.

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3 Responses to The Books: “The Remains of the Day” (Kazuo Ishiguro)

  1. d. says:

    it really is one of the most powerfully written books i’ve ever read. it consumes and transports the reader. ventriloquist – perfect.

  2. red says:

    Yup. The rot at the center of that world that Stevens has been in service to … shivers!

    Brilliant book and character study!

  3. Diego Fernández says:

    I was searching for an excerpt on The Remains of the Day and I came across your excellent blog. I once read a review in my country (I´m chilean)where its author stated the similarities between the japanese and british feudal system, establishing a parallel between a samurai and a butler. That may have helped Ishiguro understand somehow the complexities of a live devouted to service.

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