Another book by Ishiguro

                                                          

When I found out that Kazuo Ishiguro got the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, I decided that I will read something of his as I thought I never even had heard his name before. I may have had not heard his name before, but I saw the film based on his novel – The Remains of the Day. This was the first of his book I have read to acquaint myself with Ishiguro writing. It seemed to me a lot deeper than the film itself, even though I liked the film. The next book was The Buried Giant and I moderately liked it, but I thought that it was a good book with wise and deep messages so I read the third one When We Were Orphans. This time I got hooked and decided to read all of his books except Never Let Me Go. The reason why I excluded this book was that of its subject.  Human clones being created for organ donation. I thought it will be too depressing and cruel subject to get involved with. But, I’ll see…

Since I decided to really get acquainted with the author, or rather his books, I thought that starting from the beginning would be quite appropriate. So, the next book to read was The Pale View of Hills, Ishiguro’s first book. I did not expect fireworks of writing, but surprisingly I found a lot to admire about the book. The author was young when he was writing it, but he already knew a lot about life and human nature. His writing is elegant in his first book as it is in all other books I have read so far. It is difficult to explain the adjective “elegant” in this case, but this word was coming with some intensity to my mind while reading, so I now feel compelled to mention it. I am impressed by the structure of the book. It is not a linear story, it meanders and goes back to the starting point and tells the story from a different, new perspectives. The story of three mothers and their daughters. Or so it seems, but it could be a story of one woman who is re-arranging her memories not being able to accept memories of some events in her life. The story the narrator, Etsuko, tells us about her friend Sachiko may be a version of her own story she is not able to face up to. The same message of a mother hurting her daughter is coming back few times as a guilt of our past dealings surfaces up in our consciousness at times. We have to push it away and we may never be able to own our shameful actions. This is what for me, this story is all about.

The action is set in Japan, in Nagasaki, but it is not about the atomic bomb or Japan, so the author tells us and I agree. Ishiguro is often called a Japanese writer by literary critics and this irritates me. He is not a Japanese writer in any sense, he is not even writing about Japan in any of his books. He was just born Japanese and he has oriental features. To me, he is a quintessential Englishman, maybe because The Remains of the Day was the first book I have read and this left the lasting impression of Englishness on me?

What I would call Japanese about his behavior (I have seen some interviews with Ishiguro) is his above average politeness and stoicism with which he takes comments and questions that are designed to unnerve him.

There is one thing that is perhaps based on his experience of being a child in the Japanese family. The children in his first two books that are set in Japan are irritatingly self-assured and often patronising towards their elders. This, I found out later, comes from Japanese treating children as demi-Gods with a lot of respect and reverence. This may be worthwhile finding out more about at some stage. For now, I just mark it as surprising and annoying in the first two books.

I find that all books of Ishiguro, I have read so far, make me ponder on some aspects of my life. The conclusions are not necessarily uplifting so I perhaps will take a break in reading this author and go to see some feel-good movies and read The Nix by Nathan Hill, the book my literary guru suggested I read. At a glance, it will be a massive change of mood.

Why Ishiguro was surprised about getting the Nobel Prize?

                                                           

I am not sure what the answer to this question should be as I just finished his third book When We Were Orphans and I am very, very impressed by the essence of the story, the language, and structure of the book. I find it relevant to my life and the extent of it is almost scary. The messages of the book are universal of course, but I feel like it was about my life and my experiences.

Surely, Kazuo Ishiguro must understand the weight of his own creative talent, even if many consider the 2017 Prize in Literature as controversial. Can such a great talent be so blind to his own greatness? Or is he possibly suspicious that he could not be understood? Or maybe just too modest?

I must say that I heard more negatives about his work than serious positives. One of my authorities declared that Ishiguro writes for women. Well, would it be so that men cannot see the deeper meaning? This is not my observation and most of the men would disagree with such statement. I suspect that this view (writer for women) may be shared by some and I think that this may be due to the very successful film based on The Remains of the Day. I liked the film very much and saw it more than once, but admittingly I did not fully get its deeper meaning after seeing the film. Was it lost in production or was it overshadowed by the brilliant performance of Hopkins and Thompson? I would agree that in the film there was something that women would particularly like. The old British ways attractive and surroundings elegant.

Having read three books of Ishiguro in the last month I am in awe of the writer’s talent. In self-defense (I did not want to get depressed) I decided that I will not read Never Let Me Go, but the three books I have read so far are profoundly sad anyhow. Still, I am glad that I have read them. I understood a few more things about myself and life. Maybe I have now a little more acceptance causing sadness, but it has been a high time to come to certain conclusions even if some innocence of thinking is gone.

The book can be considered a bildungsroman. I seem to have read lately many books belonging to this category and I value the lessons stemming from them. I would divide the book into three parts. The first part of the book is about the innocence of Christopher Banks, the hero of the book.

The second part is the transition from naivety to the point of seeing things we at first do not want and are not able to see. This is a very painful process for anyone. Ishiguro describes it by setting the action in horrific events of the Sino-Japanese war. We enter a nightmare of Christopher Banks. The events do not follow logical rules and are difficult to comprehend, but the emotional impact on the reader is profound. I believe that this was the intention of the Ishiguro and I consider it masterful.

There is hurt on both sides of the front line of fighting, nobody is right or wrong but everybody suffers. The most horrific scenes, for me, are a young girl nursing her dying dog and asking for help for her puppy. She is not getting it of course.  Maybe one could also take the front-line scenes as an expression of pacifism.

When the action moves back to reality, Christopher is able to hear explanations concerning the events of his childhood. The explanations follow logic again and the hero is able to comprehend and accept the difficult truth about losing his parents.

Not to write a spoiler I need to be a bit enigmatic about one story that caught my particular attention and made me ponder on it for a while. The story is about a couple where the man does not think himself worthy of the women he lives with. He feels inadequate and tries to live up to higher standards than his partner represents. This lasts for a while, but it is too much for the man and eventually, he runs away with another woman. The new woman does not set too high standards, so he does not feel challenged. I wonder how often we meet such situations in real life. I suspect that it is quite often.

This is another story of love that could have happened but, similar to one in The Remains of the Day, never did. The reasons for the romantic failure are similar in both of the books. The professional life of the men gets in the way of giving time to love a woman or even realise a possibility of happiness other than work. They both are passionate about their work, we would call them workaholics these days. The result of their priorities is the loss of personal happiness and the realisation of it comes too late.

I sometimes wonder if such things like happy relationships exist beyond the stages of initial infatuation. Hmm… But this is another subject.

Books we read

                                                      

I belong to a book club and, of course, I read books not of my choice. Actually, this was the whole point of joining the club. That and the possibility of discussing the books with like-minded people. But, it somehow does not work for me very well and I wonder why. I always have been individualistic and do not like to be directed in my actions. Maybe this is the reason why I look at the club books in a negative way? I think, however, that there is more to it than that. I, often, do not find the books relevant and I question the time spent on reading things I do not learn from, enjoy or even approve of. The book I am reading now is Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer. A young Australian writer and his first book. I must say that it is well written book and because it is well written its depressing impact is rather profound. Does it make the book worthwhile reading? I would say that the effect of reading the book may be even harmful for somebody of more sensitive feelings. Like me. I have been reading the book for a couple of weeks now, I could not take more than a couple of short chapters in one go. I felt dirty, sticky, ill, depressed and generally horrible. This power of the book makes it perhaps a good book. I am asking myself a question though, how relevant it is to me? What does it bring into my life in addition to depression? And I do not find a good answer. One could say that I should watch a comedy show or a film or read a funny book if I want to be entertained. But I not always want to be only entertained. I want the time I spent on reading to bring some new thoughts relevant to my life (to any life in fact), even some answers to existential questions or at least some insightful observations.

Dostoevsky is not a cheerful lecture, but I consider his books worth reading, even if one should read them with caution. My literature teacher at school was saying that two Dostoevsky's books read one after the other present a danger to one’s emotional life, more than two present a danger to the reader’s life. Jon Bauer wrote only one book so far and I think it is save to read this one book, but I wonder why I should put myself through the process of reading it. I think, I got the message the author wanted to pass. People are cruel, parents can profoundly hurt their children psyche, bad is inherent to our nature, what you soak in at your early years will show up in your later life, cancer is a very cruel illness, sex is good to get you out of the dumps, if only for a short moment, we’ll all die at the end.  This is what I got out from the book, this and a very unpleasant sticky feeling. This is a very brutal book in my opinion.

The life truths the book reveals have been known to me for a while, I find them pretty obvious and not particularly worth spending hours on reading the book and pondering on the intended messages.

One observation, however, caught my attention and this is the uncertainty of what we actually experience versus what belongs only to our feelings, predispositions and imagination. The hero, who is unnamed in the book, wonders if the drama created in his life was a result of actual neglect by his mother or his own blinding jealousy of her feelings towards foster children who lived with the family. Reflecting on it, I am not sure myself what the deciding factor was, because both aspects were there.  The mother was not attuned sufficiently to her son feelings and sometimes behaved in the way I would consider neglectful or even cruel. On the other hand, the eight-year-old boy was predisposed to see live as negative and scary. However, a loving, careful mother should have seen his sensitivities and act with more care. 

I am glad that I am trough with the book and I will try not to be too critical of the book choice in the forthcoming book club meeting. Especially, that the situation will change and soon the members of the group will be picking themselves the books to read.

I find The Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara by far the best book I have read the last year, but this is not the book I will be recommending for the group. My three candidates are Pamuk’s The Red-Haired Woman, Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend and the new Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. I started reading the last book only today, but I know and love the film made based on the novel. So, I have high hopes I will love the book as well.

The Portrait of a Lady and Donald Trump

The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James

This is the book I just finished today and am still digesting my impressions and tidying up my thoughts. The book made a very strong impression on me. I was transfixed by it. I did not have any problems with concentration turning page after page for many hours not noticing the passing time.

I must say that there were parts at the beginning of the book that irritated me. I found the dialogues of two young American ladies annoying. The girls, Isabel Archer and Henrietta Stackpole, are so confident that they have answers to most life issues while in fact having too little experience and knowledge as they are so young. At the same time ignorance makes the young err with confidence.

It was interesting that people with much more knowledge and experience were in awe of this ignorance expressed so confidently by the two charming dilatants. On reflection, the girls were beautiful and fresh. I can see that their energy was appealing to the old English aristocracy, so the attention and admiration of the men was directed to their external beauty and unusual boldness in expressing their views rather than their beautiful souls.

This was just the beginning of the book, and as I liked the descriptions of the beautiful old English houses and the gracious living of the old gentry I continued reading, and with passing pages, I got enchanted by the story, then intrigued and finally fascinated. I started to see that the book is still very current being concerned with the timeless subjects still important in the XXI century even if the book was written in 1880.

The story of Isabel Archer, who is loved by three good men and then falls for one who marries her for her money and through his cruelty breaks her spirit, happens all the time in current times as well. Has it happened to me? Maybe not, but I know that one can not recognise a real value of a person and chase glitter instead. Isabel’s choice was based on admiration of intelligence of her man and his seeming lack of interest in opinions of the society. She saw him strong and independent. It is again the story of projecting one’s own values on others and resulting disappointments. Isabel rejecting her two suitors to protect her independence lands up under control of a devious and unscrupulous man. Here my feministic streak woke up again. The times of Henry James were the times when the order of societies put men on top of a social pyramid. Isabel accepted that as a fact of life and was obedient once she married Osmond. Her life shows the transition from buoyant independence and self-reliance through puzzling realisation of sad life truth to final sad acceptance of fate and resignation.

The story is mainly told through dialogues and the thought process of the book characters. It is not exactly a stream of consciousness type of book, but it inspired other writers to write in such a manner. Virginia Woolf, one of my literary fascinations, was one of the disciples of Henry James.

I said that my feministic streak awakened while reading The Portrait of a Lady. We live in the times when equality of women is severely threatened by the new political winds.  Conservatives of many countries come to power and demand that the social order with men of top is returned. Mr Trump is one powerful example of that. Yesterday was his inauguration in Washington, and it was also the time to conduct women marches organised against through the world. There was also such a rally in Sydney, and I decided that it is time for me to get involved. I went to The Sydney Hyde Park to see what was going on. There were crowds of women of all ages; groups of friends and the single ladies. I walked around and listened to the speeches. Those I found uninspiring and missing the point. The old story of Australia belonging to the Aborigines, while important to some, diverted the attention from current women issues and new threats coming from America and its new president. I also heard the emotional speech of a Muslim woman who called herself an Australian. Yes, I agree, she is an Australian as well as I am. Was it important to talk about it on the day? Not so sure. I have to make a disclaimer here - I have not listened to all the speeches so my views may not reflect the whole situation.

I did not take part in the march and elected to go and see The Nudes exhibition in The New South Wales Gallery. Lunch was good and the exhibition disappointing. One Modigliani and The Kiss of Rodin made it worthwhile for me. 

Such is Life

I just finished my February book club reading – Ann Patchett’s – Commonwealth. It is again a book I would not have read if it was not for the fact that I have joined the local library club and followed the recommendation to read it. If I wanted to be critical of the book I would sum it up – This is a book telling us that divorcing is a bad thing, has the destroying impact on families, but let’s face it – such is life! Of course, the book has its enthusiasts who think it is wonderful and beautifully and cleverly written. While I warmed up to the book towards the end of it and I agree that it is cleverly written, I definitely do not think that it is beautifully written. The language, in my opinion, is basic. Maybe it is OK, maybe it needs to be that way telling this particular story, but for me, there is nothing beautiful about the book’s language. Sometimes I think that I am a literary snob, expecting fireworks of admiration for authors of books I read. Perfectionism has always been for me the area needing some inner work. The books I particularly enjoy are the books I can identify with and in which I can find some explanations of my own life dilemmas. This particular book did not strike such a cord with me. The issues that drive the action of Commonwealth do not apply to my own life, so the book could not have the effect on me that other books have. Maybe I can associate with the issue of selfishness. The story highlights the self-centered approach of a couple of parents who want to live their bliss when the earlier marriages lost their lustre. The easy way to solve some of the marriage problems is to marry somebody else and then somebody else again. This I can identify with, and my life experience shows similar approach. If I were deciding now who to marry, I would go about it in a different way than I did in the past. If I really wanted to live with one person till death do us part, that is. I had my share of selfishness both as a giver and the receiver. Hmm… Such is life.

I can also identify with the loneliness of children portrayed in the book. Their parents were too busy with own personal comforts and preoccupation with each other to pay attention to the children who left alone got into activities negatively influencing their future lives. In my case, the parents were not that egoistic, but they were also too busy working. They did not have time to pay attention to me. So, I read, studied harder than necessary and in desperation to get my mother attention I often got sick. This worked well, and I grew up believing that I was a weakling. I was not.

Now, that I took the time to think and write about my impressions of the book, I am able to find more points that can associate with. One of them is the beauty of my mother and its impact on my life. Commonwealth is also about a beautiful and somehow selfish woman who is not a major character in the book. She is self-indulgent and egoistic. Her self-centered ways profoundly and negatively influence lives of ten people. As I just found out the author’s mother is a very beautiful woman. So beautiful that her daughter gave up on considering herself pretty and decided to focus on being clever, successful and a good person. This worked very well for her. Come to think about it, I was in the similar situation and focused on being clever, successful and a good person. Maybe it worked for me as well even if I am not internationally famous. Would my life have been better if I knew I was very attractive and used it to organise my life around it? Not sure, but it would have been a different life. Would I have been a better person? Probably not. It is interesting that even if Ann Patchett in the interview talks about her mother as being the loving person, one gets an opposite impression reading the book (which is supposed to be heavily autobiographical). The last pages portraying the mother as a warm and loving person do not seem convincing to me, they look like an attempt to change the readers’ impression caused by the full story. I can perhaps understand the duality of feelings of a daughter who sees her mother as a female competitor and at the same time wants to preserve in her memory the image of a loving and giving mother.

Ann Pritchard in the interview said about a book she considers a good one, but she did not enjoy reading it. She summed it up: It was not my thing.

My final comment on the book is – I have read it, and it is fine, but it is not my thing

New reading experience - Talk Talk

 

I always wanted to belong to a book club, and now my dream became a reality. One afternoon last week, I got a telephone call from the local library telling me that I now belong to such a club. The first book to read and discuss is Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle. I never heard the name of the author, but excited ran to the library to finalise the deal and get the book. Four days later, I finished the book, and my feeling now is that of disappointment. In a way, I have expected that the choice of books may not be interesting for me and the first book confirmed my expectations. One may wonder why I wanted to belong to such a club knowing that my taste in books may not be an average reader’s taste. Well, this is still about books and about discussing them with like-minded people. I still have hopes that the meeting with the fellow reviewers will be a good, interesting experience. I will meet new people, and I like that.  So I am looking forward to this evening in a couple of week’s time.

Now, about the book. It read well up to a point when I realized that this is all there is, just an easy read. I will forget the book very quickly; it will not leave any residue in me. At least I think so. The book is about stealing the identity of innocent people and breaking into their credit cards accounts. This may be a warning for me as I have been rather trusting not to say careless with my cards. Not that I lose them, but I use them too freely perhaps. This will change now, and I will use PayPal more often instead. This is a practical plus of reading the book, but such effect was, most likely, not intended. 

The story is told in two separate streams that at the end of the book merge. The victim of the identity theft is a deaf girl. She spends the whole weekend in jail after being stopped by police while speeding a bit. During the documents, check police discover that her records show many crimes and she is treated like a criminal, imprisoned till Monday as it is Friday afternoon. Being deaf makes it a particularly difficult and bizarre experience. The reader gets for a while into the Kafkaesque world to move later into a chasing the thief story. And this is what the book is all about. The story is about chasing the identity thief through the whole USA. From California to New York. Dana, the victim, together with her supportive boyfriend Bridger is looking for Dana, the crook.  They have  little information by which to start the chase, but there are many lucky coincidences on the way to help them unnerve the thief and upset his life in the process. So this is the story. Moderately interesting and moderately credible. If the book was written with some sense of humour, I would not be put off that much, but the writing style is very average and, some poetic descriptions of landscapes are rather misplaced. Little plugs of poetry seem to only slow down the action and not add anything to the book. Reading it was a waste of time for me.

One pleasurable aspect of the book was reading the parts describing food preparation by the bad Dana. He is a real foodie and knows his drinks as well. Reading about his cooking I felt like getting up and going to my new kitchen to prepare something interesting to eat. I even did it at one stage, but not having gourmet ingredients at home it was only a bake of  spinach covered with sauerkraut,  feta cheese and beaten eggs. When I write about it , it sounds revolting but, in fact it was quite nice.

During my days I spend time, sometimes even too much, on watching silly TV serials or bad movies that are now freely available on YouTube. I wonder why I do not have any problems with this type of waste of time, but reading Talk Talk makes me feel that I will not like to repeat the experience too often. Even if it is the price for belonging to the book club. Maybe it is because books have some magic value for me and I have particular expectations of learning from them either new facts, new better ways of living my life or being a better person? I guess that my reverence for literature seems to exclude reading “so what” type of books.

Would I recommend the book? Sorry – No.

Kindness revisited

                                                   

Kindness has been one of my core values for quite a while. It means to me affection, warmth, gentleness, care and concern for others. I love to be an object of others expressing kindness towards me and I like the idea of being kind to others. I believe I am. Lately, I included myself into the “others” and try to be kind towards myself as well. Not so simple for me.

So when I saw the book by Adam Phillips, On Kindness, I thought that I would like to have it. It indeed started with just having it, but not reading it for a long time. The book landed up on my table together with two other unread books by the author – Missing Out and Unforbidden Pleasures. I became aware of Adam Phillips reading one of Ramana’s posts where he writes about the book Missing Out. The post starts with a long excerpt from the book. It caught my attention and woke up a desire to examine not only the book by my life as well. I bought the book, started to read and then realized that it requires being studied and not just read. I put it away. I just realized that the whole year has passed and I only have skimmed the book. I intended to read/study it and when, on two other occasions, I saw his other books in shops, I bought them. They have been waiting till the last week when I eventually read On Kindness. Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst. His writing is elegant and vocabulary impressive. I like it. He writes about things that one needs to ponder on and reflect while reading. It is a “deep and meaningful” kind of a book. I like it even if for a while it confused me and even put me off kindness.

The book covers a short history of kindness and arguments against practicing it, its negative points and even its harmful nature. After some thoughts provoking arguments which are designed to be provocative, he re-defines kindness to be “the strongest indicator of people’s well-being, their pleasure of existence”. He says that when we experience love for life, we want to extend to others our being and our enjoyment.  He calls it “authentic kindness”. It includes seeing people as they are and not as we would like them to be. We often put people on pedestals and then expect them to live up to our desires and expectations. I have been guilty of that many times in my past. (Oh, oh! sorry friends J) Authentic kindness requires that we see people as they are, with warts and all and still accept them and maybe even love them. We can do it only when we have acceptance of our imperfect selves. Only then we can be authentically kind.

The opposite to “authentic kindness” is “magic kindness”. Adam Phillips gives an example of a child who is dependant on his parents and as a consequence needs to be lovable enough for them to look after him. Kindness and sweetness are magic and an insurance policy of a dependent child. The child also wants to protect his parents from getting harmed or unhappy so they can continue to meet his needs. This is a manipulation, and it has to be romanticized to be palatable. These arguments made me think that I should be off kindness and fast.

Another point that shook me up was that “too much kindness is a saboteur of development, of fully formed independence”.  I have recently seen an example of a grown up woman who dedicates her life to her mother. She does not work; she is not in a relationship. She lives to support her mother. This is an example of a “magic kindness”. She has not grown up yet and still needs her mother to fulfill her emotional needs; she has not been able to separate from her mother.  For many years I felt guilty that I left my parents and moved far away leaving them without my practical support. It was a kind of absolution to read that “it is only if the parents consent to be treated callously, that is without concern for their own needs, that the child can be the entrepreneur of her own growth”.  My parents gave me their consent and, yes, my actions were callous. It is clearer now that this was as it was supposed to be and that there is no need to feel guilty. I still wish I could have comforted them in difficult times, but I understand that this kindness would have stopped me to live as I thought best for my development and identity. This is the brutality of and the authentic kindness, but it is the kindness I am ready to embrase.