You know what I really don't get about The Unconsoled? The title. I didn't get it the first time I read it and I didn't get it this time I read it. Though I definitely liked the book about a thousand times more than I did this time through than I did the first time I read it. So maybe if I read it again in another 15 years I'll understand a thousand times more things than I did this time through, and maybe I'll get the title, that time? Maybe? Or not.
Which is all my way of saying I want to say more but I'm still not sure what to say. I'm pondering the mental illness theory, mentioned in a comment here, a theory which I think has something going for it, but which doesn't quite click for me. Or at least not in a reductive "Oh that makes everything make sense" way, which, well, I think I want very much not to find that kind of theory to explain the book. I think the book actively wants to tease the reader with the potential existence of such a theory, a theory that doesn't actually after all exist. I suspect it's sort of more fun that way. Lynchian, but not. (Did I mention I liked Inland Empire? Did I mention that dreamlike reality is pretty much the only way I'm seeing things this week? Right? Okay.)
But anyway, the mentally ill thing, I think...I think if the narrator is mentally ill, or suffers a mental illness, then it's sort of like Ishiguro is trying to write an Everyman sort of story. Like, if Mr Ryder is mentally ill, then so are we all. This is a very unbaked thought of mine. I think my thoughts are swimming somewhere in the realm of the idea that the line between external psychology and external reality is not just non-existent but actually, like...take that line and turn it into a pipe, between those two realms. One in which the two are forced to flow into and out of each other. Or...
Or...
I'm going to go think some more. Also I'm going to read some more of The Diviners by Rick Moody which I just started last night because you know, sometimes, you just need some Rick Moody, right? It's like, PBR, or something. Sometimes you just need to get down and dirty with the heightened significance of signifiers. Oh and I mean dirty.
4 comments:
Isn't it odd that a novel can be so enjoyable yet also entirely baffling?
My reading of TU is similar to yours -- that it's an Everyman story. But, I believe it's important to remember that Ryder's a man at the height of his career and in a position of influence.
Also, I love how there seem to be distinct moments Ishiguro's winking at the reader. This is the most difficult of his books that I've read, yet also the most rewarding, the one where I feel Ishiguro is being most playful and intimate. Don't you think that the only way this book works is if the reader really trusts Ishiguro?
More on Ishiguro/TU, please!
Oh, I just read this poem by William Bronk again when I was working on my website! It's relevant! And it's poetry! Heh.
THE PRETEXT
The inescapable sense of dreams is how
easily one becomes another, one place,
for example, is soon another place and there,
the people are sometimes the same. More often though,
they shift identities. Another time,
the I is you. Walking, I marvel how,
artificers, we rig stability
of person, place and time, pretend it is.
M Ng:
First off--thank you for the comment! Now, to your points...
"Isn't it odd that a novel can be so enjoyable yet also entirely baffling?"
Yes! Yes yes yes! I don't understand how that works. I'm not sure I want to understand how that works, either, of course...
"But, I believe it's important to remember that Ryder's a man at the height of his career and in a position of influence."
Good point. Which raises my next question: is he really? How much of the "reality" of the novel he presents us is actually a psychological framework he's constructing to shore up his own belief in his (potentially not so real) status? I'm thinking of Stephan as being a sort of...psychologically created display of both his own desire to be great, and the public (parental) recognition that he isn't great. Something along those lines. (Certainly not shooting down the idea that he really is all we are led to believe he is--but a lot of my thinking about the novel makes me wonder how much of it is not what it is.)
"Don't you think that the only way this book works is if the reader really trusts Ishiguro?"
Oh, certainly. Like, when I read it in high school, I did not trust him. I did not trust him from the very beginning, from the first long-winded Gustav speech. I was physically annoyed by the fact that Mr Ryder never questions the fact that the world he's in is not the way the world should be. When you get hung up on a point like that, it's easy to stop liking the book very quickly, I think. Well, I guess I know, because, I did.
I'm definitely glad I came back to it with a fresh (trusting, or at least, far more willing to give myself up to the novel and its unique flow) perspective.
Fusis: That's an awesome find, right there. (Not just for Ishiguro but for David Lynch. Oh, David Lynch! You whacky duality-obsessed monkey!)
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