I have said that, in Emigrants, Max Sebald relied for content on the stories of real people, including an unnamed narrator who was similar to the real author, Max Sebald. However, although the stories were accounts of peoples’ lives, he added fictional elements to the narrative. I’m going to say that this creative process is similar to the process a painter uses in creating a painting. Recently, I visited the Frick Collection and reveled in the experience of standing close (not too close!) to Vermeers, Rembrandts, and Whistlers (among others.) (whiny voice: How pretentious.) Vermeer created lovely images, usually of people indoors, people who were engaged in something. You get the sense looking at these paintings that you’re seeing a story, that along with the painting’s title, you can make meaning of what the “people” in the painting are doing. So that, in Mistress and Maid, a well-dressed young woman is seated at a table, and an older woman, perhaps a servant by her attire, emerges from the shadows to hand the seated woman a letter. The imagination can run wild with this. It’s possibly a love letter, entrusted to the servant to deliver in secrecy. The painting picks out this moment, removing the sense of time, making it eternal. It organizes the figures in a certain way, shows them in a certain way, as far as the color of their clothes, the tones of their skin, their posture. The background of the painting is in deep shadow, so that the eye focuses on the foreground where there is a play of light. The faces of the woman and the servant are full of expression: expectant, surprised, excited. Were these “real” people observed by Vermeer? We don’t really know. They do not seem to be particular, named individuals whom Vermeer was hired to portray. Perhaps they were models showing a certain scene or transaction the artist found of interest. In Emigrants, Sebald employs a similar method, albeit in a different medium. His models were “real” people whose stories he embellished with various fictional instead of painterly techniques (more on this below), in order to create a work of art, not a biography or history. He chose a particular focus, picking out a “story” from the randomness of real life, a story centering on the experience of emigrants, of loss and despair. Here’s a further comparison with painting, best beloved. (Must we? And I'm not your best beloved). In the Frick in its current home at the Breuer in NYC, you can experience a room full of the finest in eighteenth century English portraiture, Reynolds, Romney, Beechey (yes, Beechey). These are mimetic images of particular people. If you knew these folks, you would recognize that the paintings were of them. They were famous and/or wealthy enough to commission the paintings. They’re beautifully done, and with the passage of time, have become more “art” than portrait—as we contemporary humans don’t always know who the subjects were. Then in the next room there are four paintings by Whistler that I think are much closer in spirit to Emigrants. They are of particular people, perhaps commissioned (I don’t know), but their titles are things like “Arrangement in Brown and Black,” and clearly focus less on the people depicted and more on the arrangement of color, the form, the look of the clothes and faces. They seem more posed—not in an artificial way, but artistic. They create a mood and show people who seem familiar, beautiful and provocative. Like Emigrants, best beloved. So what fictional techniques does Sebald use? One is a completely reliable, assured and intelligent narrator, who is able to draw on a wealth of literary and cultural knowledge to present the stories. When the narrator of Emigrants relates that he and “Clara” drove out from Norwich to rent an apartment, the reader has no reason to doubt its accuracy. However, some digging reveals that Sebald’s wife was not named Clara, and that the real house “they” rented was in a different town. “Real” people are not infallible; they distort the stories they describe, and are rarely (some say never) the narrator beasties encountered in fiction. There’s nothing wrong with this “fictionalization”—unless the author is writing biography and/or history—or gives no warning that she/he is making stuff up for the sake of a good story (for the sake of art). If one writes a text that is classified as “fiction” the reader assumes that some artistic license has been taken, even in the most realist of books. Real life is not story-like; real life has a lot of coincidence, and is not neatly contained by story-arcs and plots that resolve. Real life doesn’t really resolve. (Maybe that’s why fiction is so enjoyable). Repetition and mirroring is another “Sebaldian” fictional device. There is an eerie mirroring among the stories of Dr. Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth, Max Ferber and the narrator. In Max Ferber in particular, the narrator’s story blends with Ferber’s to such a degree it’s hard to distinguish them at times. The author of Emigrants has selected four stories that show something about his theme—the plight of the dispossessed, what the emigrant has lost. The style of Emigrants is another technique, beautiful and digressive prose that captures more of the associations and meanderings of human consciousness than the imposed order of historical writing. And the evocative photographs which often appear to show particular elements of the narrative. Thus, as the narrator describes reading the journal of Ambros Adelwarth, there is a photograph of an old journal. It might or might not be Ambros’ “real” journal. ‘Kay. A great experience to read. Next week, a new book, Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. Till then, my friends. #TheEmigrants #W.G.Sebald

The last section in Emigrants is entitled Max Ferber. Here, our narrator is a youth in his early twenties who escapes life in Germany “for various reasons,” he says, by journeying to 1966-era Manchester, England to be an exchange student. Rather than the city he imagined, he finds himself in a bizarre, deserted, spectral place of ruined nineteenth-century buildings and grime. In keeping with the book’s theme of exile and emigration, he describes the eeriness of the plane flight from Germany, his first sight of Manchester: “By now, we should have been able to make out the sprawling mass of Manchester, yet one could see nothing but a faint glimmer, as if from a fire almost suffocated in ash. A blanket of fog that had risen out of the marshy plains that reached as far as the Irish Sea had covered the city, a city…inhabited by millions of souls, dead and alive.” He has the anxiety-provoking experience of going through British customs in the middle of the night—this and the plane flight, and the first sight of a destination, are all experiences familiar to travelers and emigrants. In the early morning, the city is described: “Views opened up across the wasteland toward the still immensely impressive agglomeration of gigantic Victorian office blocks and warehouses…that had once been the hub of one of the nineteenth century’s miracle cities, but, as I was soon to find out, were now almost hollow to the core…the city had long since been deserted, and was left now as a necropolis or mausoleum.” A taxi driver takes him to the Arosa Hotel—Arosa is a town in Switzerland, but also means “gentle awakening” in Gaelic. After a prolonged period of knocking, the hotel owner, Gracie, finally opens the door. She is described as having a Lorelei-like air. Lorelei— a beautiful maiden who threw herself into the Rhine River in despair over a faithless lover and was transformed into a siren who lured fishermen to destruction. “And where have you sprung from?” she says to the narrator “…only an alien would show up on my doorstep at such an hour on a blessed Friday morning with a case like that.” The hotel is described as “…a maze of dead-end corridors, emergency exits, doors to rooms, toilets and fire escapes, landings and staircases.” Gracie brings him the “teas-maid” machine, a combination alarm clock and tea-maker. “…it has often seemed…as if the tea-maker brought to my room by…Gracie…that weird and serviceable gadget, with its nocturnal glow, its muted morning bubbling, and its mere presence by day, kept me holding on to life at a time when I felt a deep sense of isolation in which I might well have become deeply submerged.” Gracie calls it an “electrical miracle.” Gracie would carefully count the hotel profits (cash in 1966) in an obsessive manner and leave Sunday morning to deposit it, not returning till Monday mid-day. The narrator reports: “…on those Sundays in the utterly deserted hotel I would regularly be overcome by such a sense of aimlessness and futility that I might go out, purely in order to preserve an illusion of purpose, and walk about the city.” There are some very mixed messages here—is the Arosa a “gentle awakening,” and if so, awakening to what? Gracie is siren-like (dangerous) but gives the narrator a sort of magic artifact which saves him from despair. Eventually in his wandering, the narrator comes upon the studio of Max Ferber. “In one of these deserted buildings was a studio which, in the months to come, I visited as often as I thought acceptable, to talk to the painter.” From here, the story swings into Max Ferber’s tale of escape from the Holocaust. At the end, things return to the narrator who receives a manuscript from the possibly dying Max Ferber and goes on a long walk around Manchester, searching for artifacts of Ferber’s life. The story concludes with the narrator describing a photograph in the manuscript of “three young women, perhaps aged twenty…I sense that all three of them are looking across at me…I wonder what the three women’s names were—Roza, Luisa and Lea, or Nona, Decuna and Morta, the daughters of night, with spindle, scissors and thread.” Nona, Decuna and Morta were the three Roman goddesses of fate, who spun the web of human destiny. So the narrator is imagining the photo he’s observing is an image of them, with the implication that human destiny is controlled by fate instead of will—a significant philosophical stance, no? What’s going on here? In technical terms, it could be said that the narrator’s story is a frame-story, in that it surrounds the chapter’s story of Max Ferber. The first chapter, Dr Henry Selwyn, also has this structure, wherein things begin and end with the narrator. There are considerable, almost alarming degrees of repetition and mirroring between the narrator and Max Ferber. Both men, of different ages, tried to flee the experience of the Holocaust but found themselves in Manchester, England, a city that curiously surrounds them with reminders of the horror and devastation they struggled to escape. Is this perhaps the point of the story—that human lives are controlled, not by personal agency, but by fate? P’rapps so, best beloved. Next week, let’s look a bit more at Max Ferber’s story and summarize. Till then, you happy few! #TheEmigrants #W.G.Sebald

The third section of Emigrants, Ambros Adelwarth, is all about revenants, people who return, people who are thought of as dead but come back anyway. The section begins with the narrator speaking—almost as if he were being interviewed. “I have barely any recollection of my own of my great-uncle Adelwarth.” This distinction “of my own” is critical, as the narrator learns about his great-uncle—who died when he was a child—through other family members’ stories, photographs, and from a journal kept by Ambros Adelwarth himself that the narrator’s aunt gives him. Ambros lived in America at the end of his life, although he was the epitome of the emigrant, or exile, in that his life was characterized by constant re-location, going from Germany to France, to London and Japan, America, and a long trip to the Middle East, a return to Europe and finally to America where he died in Ithaca, New York in 1953. There are other reasons why he is the quintessential emigrant that we will delve into, best beloved. The narrator describes not knowing much about Ambros till 1981, when the narrator received a photo album belonging to his mother that showed family members who had emigrated to America from Germany in the 1930s. The narrator says: “The more I studied the photographs, the more urgently I sensed a growing need to learn more about the lives of the people in them.” He takes a flight to Newark, rents a car, and drives to Lakehurst, New Jersey where his aunt and uncle live. It’s worth noting that this is twenty-eight years after Ambros’ death—a long time that the narrator does not account for. In other words, why now? Probably because of the needs of the book, the process of “fictionalization,” as Sebald calls it. His aunt and uncle tell him about their experiences of emigration, his uncle saying, “I often come here, (a local beach)…it makes me feel that I am a long way away, even though I never quite know from where.” Gradually, his aunt reveals she is “haunted” by her uncle Ambros, and begins to tell the narrator about Ambros’ life. He worked as a servant, albeit an elite one, for most of his life, traveling the world. He was employed by a wealthy Jewish-American family on Long Island, and became a sort of companion to the families’ eldest son, Cosmo. Ambros was gay—as Uncle Casimir relates, “Of course…he was of the other persuasion, as anybody could see.” In this way, he was doubly alienated—first as a non-Jew working for a Jewish family, and second as a gay man living in the first half of the twentieth century. The narrator finally receives Ambros’ journal, which is an account of a trip he took with Cosmo to the Middle East. The journal is presented, and the verb tenses shift from past to present. There are two types of memory addressed in Ambros Adelwarth, indeed in Emigrants in general. The first is somewhat implicit—regular utilitarian memory that allows the narrator to function in the world, remembering his plane tickets, his keys, the address of his aunt and uncle in New Jersey. This kind of everyday memory makes our worlds full, giving a sense of continuity through time. It is reassuring. It’s the kind of memory we associate with pleasant things, the stories we tell that give depth and meaning to our existence. “I remember the time I went to—" Well, we don’t have to get into all that. The second kind of memory is not so pleasant and preoccupies Emigrants. The end of the chapter and of Ambros’ journal says, “Memory, he added in a postscript, often strikes me as a kind of dumbness. It makes one’s head heavy and giddy, as if one were not looking down the receding perspectives of time, but rather down on the earth from a great height, from one of those towers whose tops are lost to view in the clouds.” This is the memory expressed by the revenant, the ghostly reminder of the unsettled past, which gives no relief or comfort. The experience of being haunted by specters or ghosts. The narrator’s Aunt Fini comments about Ambros…”the things he said he had witnessed…seemed so improbable that I supposed he was suffering from Korsakov’s syndrome…an illness which causes lost memories to be replaced by fantastic inventions…the more Uncle Adelwarth told his stories, the more desolate he became…After Christmas ’52 he fell into such a deep depression that although he plainly felt a great need to talk about his life, he could no longer shape a single sentence, nor utter a single word, or any sound at all…telling stories was as much a torment to him as an attempt at self-liberation. He was at once saving himself…and mercilessly destroying himself.” What is going on here? Ambros exhibits a symptom of those who have survived trauma, an inability to let go of the past, an affliction that affects his sanity. Yet, as described by the narrator, he did not have a particularly traumatic life. He did not fight in wars, did not endure the Holocaust and WWII, which is a major theme of Sebald’s. I believe he is Sebald’s proxy for people who have suffered in these ways. His life, as presented in Emigrants, shows the discomfort of memory compulsively remembered. Indeed, all the stories in Emigrants express this theme. Memory—for Dr Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth, and Max Ferber—is a burden that cannot be carried. As the narrator says in Dr Henry Selwyn, “But certain things, as I am increasingly becoming aware, have a way of returning unexpectedly, often after a lengthy absence.” A sentiment which could express something pleasant, or something ominous. Uncle Casimir has this kind of dark and weighty memory when he speaks of feeling that he’s a long way away, even though he never quite knows from where. Aunt Fini describes how, after Ambros is unable to tell any more of his memories, he leaves his house in Mamorneck, New York, and voluntarily enters a private psychiatric hospital in Ithaca. Back in the present of the story, the narrator leaves his aunt and uncle’s house to travel there. Although the asylum has been closed for years, he meets Dr. Abramsky, who was the assistant to Dr. Fahnstock, the director of the hospital. The narrator learns that Ambros was treated for depression with electro-convulsive therapy, a treatment that gradually erased his memory. “Kay. Next week, we’ll look at some aspects of the final section of Emigrants, Max Ferber. Don’t forget! Till then. #TheEmigrants #W.G.Sebald

Last week, I wrote about how Emigrants can be seen as the story of a narrator’s reactions to encounters with four different people—except that reaction is not shown beyond a basic point, and must be inferred by the reader, which may, as a result, invite her/him to experience their own reactions. This post proved to be controversial, with strident demands for clarification and elaboration, so here goes. Dr Henry Selwyn, the first section of the book, ends with the narrator saying, “When we received the news, (of Selwyn’s death) I had no great difficulty in overcoming the initial shock. But, certain things, as I am increasingly becoming aware, have a way of returning unexpectedly, often after a lengthy absence.” An interesting comment. After having shared seemingly profound things with Dr Selwyn, the narrator “had no great difficulty” in overcoming the shock of his death. There’s no explanation for this; perhaps the narrator was preoccupied with other pressing matters, perhaps the connection with Dr Selwyn wasn’t so important (that seems unlikely—why write about it then?). Perhaps Sebald is trying to convey the way Selwyn himself had lost his past by denial and forgetting. Sebald goes on to describe how years later he was traveling in Switzerland and saw particular mountains Dr Selwyn had shown him in slides from a vacation. “At that point, as I recall, or perhaps merely imagine, the memory of Dr Selwyn returned to me for the first time in a long while.” He glances at a local paper he’d bought and sees the story describing the discovery of the mummified remains of Johannes Naegli, an Alpine guide, missing since 1914, which have been exposed by a retreating glacier—the same man Dr Selwyn had described as his closest friend. The section ends, “At times they (the remains) come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.” An elegy perhaps—not so much for the hapless Naegli, but for Dr Henry Selwyn, although the narrator does not describe this reaction, leaving it to the reader. Similarly, at the end of the next section, Paul Bereyter, the narrator is interviewing Lisa Landau, Paul’s companion later in life. She describes an anecdote Paul had told her about how an uncle had predicted Paul would “end up on the railways,” meaning that, due to his fascination with trains, he would eventually be somehow employed on them. The irony is enormous, as Paul killed himself by lying on a railroad track. “When Paul told me this perfectly harmless holiday story, said Mme Landau, I could not possibly ascribe the importance to it that it now seems to have, thought even then there was something about that last turn of phrase that made me uneasy. The disquiet I experienced because of that momentary failure to see what was meant—I now sometimes feel that at that moment I beheld an image of death—that lasted only a very short time, and passed over me like the shadow of a bird in flight.” That is the end. One can only imagine the narrator’s reaction listening as Mme Landau relates this tragic story—only imagine because we don’t really know how he felt. We are left with our own feelings—for me, both stories provoked a feeling of awe at the tragic irony of life. At the intensity of human connection and the pain of separation and how people recover from loss. And sometimes don’t. Last week, I raised the question: Did Paul betray the narrator by suicide? We could ask the same question about Dr. Henry Selwyn. Last week, trying to “copy” Sebald’s method, I left the answer(s) open for the reader. A commendable maneuver, but perhaps more is needed. In Emigrants, it’s no accident that Sebald described four lives that ended in suicide (okay, Ambros Adelwarth and Max Ferber were a bit different but both have the theme of the narrator exploring their lives after their deaths—okay, Ferber is still alive at the end. Okay, stop). I believe what he was trying to show was that these four led lives of displacement and despair they could only escape by death. The suicides were certainly not directed at the narrator as acts of anger—so could the narrator experience them as betrayal? There is no direct reference to this. As I read about Dr Selwyn and Paul Bereyter and their deaths, I feel sadness. To live one’s life and at the end, choose destruction seems particularly tragic. I think the people closer to Selwyn and Paul—perhaps Selwyn’s wife and Mme Landau—might indeed have felt betrayed. But Emigrants provides layers of insulation so that we the readers are shown lives at two degrees of remove. We are reading the account of a narrator showing tragic lives. The stories are quite a bit about the narrator’s realization he didn’t really know the departed. We are not reading a novel that shows the intensity of their inner experience, their consciousness. All we have to go on are the photographs, the interview transcripts, and the stories, stories that show us things about ourselves. Next time, we’ll move on to the curious exploration of the life of Ambros Adelwarth, Sebald’s actual great uncle. Till then. #TheEmigrants #W.G.Sebald

A theme I’d like to pursue in thinking about this remarkable book, is that Emigrants is (among other things) about the effect on the narrator of learning the more complete lives of the four men in the story. However, that effect is not spelled out beyond the clear implication that the narrator was very moved by learning these fuller stories. It is left open, so that the reader’s own reaction is not constrained by the narrator’s. In conversation with Dena, (always a pleasant activity), I got excited over the idea that maybe the character of Paul in the second section of Emigrants, is similar to the implied author of a novel. By way of review, the implied author is an entity “distinct from the author and the narrator, the term refers to the "authorial character" that a reader infers from a text based on the way a literary work is written. Dena and I were talking about Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, who may have disappointed her readers by divorcing her husband—after the book’s warm climax of finding love with him—true love, the reader was led to believe. But apparently, the real Elizabeth was a different person than the persona or implied author she created in the book. Some might say this was treachery—maybe if you present a book as being your real story, you are vulnerable to being accused of lying if it isn’t. But Eat, Pray, Love was clearly marked as memoir, no? Last week, we considered whether Emigrants is fiction or something else, as it’s based on “real” experience. (Why do you keep putting the word “real” in parentheses? It’s annoying). I concluded that there was a strong element of fiction in this work. Sebald himself talks about a process of “fictionalization” of “real” events and people. (Please respond to my complaint.) In Paul Bereyter, the reader is told a story by a narrator who receives disturbing news. “In January 1984, the news reached me from S that on the evening of the 30th of December, a week after his seventy-fourth birthday, Paul Bereyter, who had been my teacher at primary school, had put an end to his life.” A train came out of the darkness, and he had lain down on the railroad tracks outside of town. The narrator, who for years had thought of Paul as the best teacher ever, is devastated. “…in the end, I had to go beyond my own very fond memories of him and discover the story I did not know.” He sets out to learn what he can about Paul from family and friends, in order to understand how such a positive man could destroy himself. And he discovers that Paul’s excellence as a teacher may have been an attempt to overcome a dark past. Paul was partly Jewish, and his family was persecuted by the Nazis; Paul himself was curiously drafted into the German Army and served during WWII. He suffered from mental health problems and deteriorating eyesight which eventually forced him to give up teaching. Like all the characters in Emigrants, he was afflicted by a feeling of not belonging anywhere. Just as a reader might have a strong reaction to Elizabeth Gilbert’s being a different person than her character in Eat, Pray, Love, the narrator was disturbed that Paul Bereyter might be different from the image he had of him as the “author” of a significant part of his childhood. Of course, the narrator in Emigrants is not a “real” person. (Oh, no. Here we go again. And in typical bully style, you’re ignoring me). It’s an illusion that he’s “real” just as there was an illusion that Elizabeth Gilbert was “really” the protagonist of Eat, Pray, Love. (What?) The narrator believes Paul was the same person he’d come to know in school, just as the reader of fiction thinks the author is the same person who wrote the book. But Paul’s death tips the narrator off to the illusion. He presents Paul’s more complete story, and the reader is invited to react. Let’s revisit our old example of the Dick and Jane stories. I’ve written before about how, as a child reading those books in the first grade, I had no idea of and no interest in who the author, William S. Gray, was. I suppose I had a vague idea that Mr. Gray might actually be my teacher, Miss Schroeder (who I had a crush on, but we don’t have to get into that). What if I had learned, or learned in this present, that Mr. Gray was an alcoholic loner who finally killed himself? A survivor who wrote children’s books to deal with the trauma of intense WWII combat? How would this affect me? I might feel betrayed. I might feel grief. I might decide it didn’t really matter, that the texts were what were important, no matter who wrote them. At least I learned how to read. If I were like the narrator of Emigrants, I’d embark on a program of research into Mr. Gray’s previously hidden life, trying to understand and document its complexity by interviewing his survivors. Did Paul betray his students by hiding his pain? Did he betray them by killing himself? Was what was of real importance the way he helped and inspired his students? (A lot of questions). Yes. #TheEmigrants #W.G.Sebald

In Amazon’s system of classification, Emigrants is found under literature and biography, and the promotion says the book combines elements of biography with fiction. It is a somewhat jarring experience to begin reading the book, perhaps with the expectation that it is fiction, because the four stories, combined with the black and white photographs, that comprise the narrative have such a sharply realistic quality. The photographs in the Henry Selwyn section seem to follow the text closely—except for the enigmatic one of a misty church graveyard. It leaves you guessing: Were Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth and Max Ferber real people? If not, who and what are the photographs of? The first section, Dr. Henry Selwyn, concerns a man whom the narrator—who never mentions his own name—meets while looking for a place to live. The narrator refers to himself as “I” and curiously is accompanied by someone named Clara—the real Sebald’s wife’s name was Ute. In an interview with James Wood, Sebald says that Selwyn was a real person, and that Sebald met him and learned more about his life by interviewing family members. It would seem then that this is a story about an encounter with a real person, an account of what this person said about himself, of what others said about him, and of the thoughts and feelings he provoked in the narrator. Is any of it invented or fabricated? Yes. Does that make it fiction? Maybe, best beloved. That is a difficult question that gets at the issue of what fiction is. Jacques Ranciere in his book, The Edges of Fiction writes: “What distinguishes fiction from ordinary experience is not a lack of reality but a surfeit of rationality.” He goes on to discuss Aristotle who said that history presents how things happened as isolated, particular events, whereas fiction talks about events that do not occur at random but in consequence of a chain of cause and effect. The gods or fate do not cause this chain, the actions of the protagonist do. And these actions must be contrary to what the reader expects—there is always a reversal, a peripeteia that must be resolved. There is nothing here about whether or not the events “really” occurred, rather that, in fiction, they are shown to be caused by humans. By this definition, Emigrants begins to look more like fiction. In Dr. Henry Selwyn, Dr. Selwyn reveals certain aspects of his life to the narrator. He welcomes the narrator and “Clara” into his home and allows them to observe his eccentric lifestyle. He tells the narrator about his life and how he is “homesick” for his childhood, spent in a different country. He was taken to England when he was seven and grew up there, assimilating in a successful manner, even changing his name. He erases his origins and marries, not telling his wife who he really was. And now, in old age, he mourns his past and is unable to be comfortable in the house he lives in, his place of exile. He feels he doesn’t fit anywhere and can only spend his time with animals and plants. After the narrator moves on, Dr. Selwyn shoots himself. One could describe this man’s life as a biographer or historian would—the significant events, the places lived. The people known. Sebald focuses on the way in which Dr. Selwyn adapted to a new country. He rejected his old one and changed his name and identity. He worked hard to become a physician and was successful. Reading this story, one might expect him to continue to meet success, have a family and a career. Happiness. But that is not the case. Dr. Selwyn gradually loses interest in his marriage and his work as a doctor. He becomes melancholy and reclusive, eventually retiring to the dilapidated estate where the narrator encounters him. His life does not go according to plan. He is unable to escape being from somewhere else and feeling, as a result, that he doesn’t belong anywhere. In the interview with James Wood, Sebald responds to the question, is The Emigrants real? “Essentially, yes, with some small changes…Dr. Henry Selwyn, for instance, lived in that house, not in Hingham, but in another village in Norfolk. His wife was just like that, Swiss and very shrewd. She’s still alive, I think and so is Elaine, their most peculiar maid.” Selwyn did have a Swiss mountaineering friend but it was not Johannes Naegeli, whom Sebald read about in a magazine. “It just needed a tiny rapprochement to make it fit…The invention comes in at the level of minor detail most of the time, to provide l’effet du reel.” In a piece about the process of translating Sebald, Michael Hulse shares a letter he wrote to “Max” as he calls him, where he expresses concern that Emigrants might be fiction. “That fiction and imagination are in some manner involved I do not question, but it matters to me to locate them within the documentary aspect of your texts, as a token of your dedication to your quest for these lives…where (does) the literal truth stop and your imaginative re-creation or addition begin?” Sebald responds: “Fictionalization, as I see it, is, in this text not a matter of substance, that is to say it is nothing to do with making up characters, events that befall them and complicated plots. Rather, the sense of fiction, the feeling that one is at a level removed, by a notch or so, from reality is meant to come out of adjusting the focus of the telescope one looks through, so that some things seem very distant and others (especially those which are in the past) quite close and immediate. ‘Kay. Next week, we’ll go deeper into the story. Till then. #TheEmigrants #W.G.Sebald

This week, a new story, The Emigrants by the late German author W.G. Sebald. I’m reading Michael Hulse’s 1996 translation of the 1992 original in German. Austerlitz was the first book I’d read by Sebald, followed in rapid succession by The Emigrants and Vertigo, then later The Rings of Saturn and his essays. Although Sebald was fluent in English—he taught at a university in England most of his life—he left translation to others. Translation was key to the success of Emigrants in America and other English-speaking lands. Michael Hulse does a wonderful job—I’d have to speak German to appreciate all his artistry, but I offer the opening sentence of the first section of The Emigrants as an example: “At the end of September 1970, directly before I took up my position in Norwich, I drove out to Hingham with Clara in search of somewhere to live.” A beautiful sentence, with great drive and rhythm. It very neatly answers the questions when, where, how, and why. It also introduces a key theme of the story—the search for a place to live. All the book’s characters are emigrants from somewhere else and struggle with feelings of not belonging. The story has four sections of unequal length. Each presents a narrator—never named, but who seems to be rather like Sebald himself—telling the story of four men: Henry Selwyn, Paul Bereyter, Ambros Adelwarth, and Max Ferber. Each contains a similar theme of emigration from and loss of a homeland. I would like to examine each section in detail, but today, I want to consider some aspects of Sebald the writer. Recently, I watched Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novak’s excellent documentary on Ernest Hemingway and learned about how Hemingway actively created a persona or avatar, as the filmmakers call it, who was the imaginary author of the writing, the imaginary Ernest Hemingway—different from the real human and,—by the way—immortal. Authors of fiction always do this creation, but some more so than others and more willfully. W.G. Sebald (called Max by those who knew him) seemed to be an author who actively created less of a persona but as a result, invited more speculation. In barebones, we know that Sebald was born in Germany in 1944 and grew up in the aftermath of WWII. He emigrated to England and taught European Literature in the city of Norwich, writing and publishing many fine works of literary criticism before his first work of fiction, The Emigrants, in 1992. This won the Berlin Literature Prize, the Literatur Nord Prize, and the Johannes Bobrowski Medal and met with considerable acclaim, particularly after it was translated into English in 1996. Sebald wrote three other works of fiction; his final book Austerlitz, is regarded as his masterpiece. He was married, had one daughter, and tragically died at age 57 in a car accident in 2001. That’s about it. There are some fascinating interviews available as well as several books of criticism and essays. But the Sebald or Max who exists as an imaginary writer the way Hemingway did is elusive. There are a number of photographs—in fact photography plays a major role in Sebald’s writing—something we’ll get to later. The pictures of him show a serious man of middle age, often wearing wire-rimmed glasses, chinos and a wrinkled shirt. He had a thick, graying mustache and was rarely smiling. Nothing heroic, or Hemingway-esque. An intellectual perhaps, someone who was very focused on memory and writing. He was sometimes shown studying a dog-eared paperback. The interviews with him focus on his writing, not his biography. He downplays who he was. There are no statements I can find of this sort: “Sebald loved to force his way into European libraries brandishing a camera and automatic pistol. He’d insist on copying the most delicate and treasured manuscripts, sometimes beating hapless staff members with a dog-eared paperback till he got what he wanted. However, he was equally skilled at charming his way out of the resulting trouble with the authorities, often by drinking them under the table.” (Whiny voice. Mr. Big Shot, Avatar was a science fiction movie. I’ve got you this time, you literary bully. You made all this up, just like always). What I’m attempting to talk about is how images of authors exist for their readers—whether they create them or not. Our society creates avatars of authors, partly as a way to sell their work, partly because readers want to get to know a version of who they’re reading. (You have a mustache, so did Hemingway. You’re the one who’s copying.) I can say for myself that while reading Emigrants, I was curious about who Sebald the author was. I learned what I could and essentially formed an impression of him as a scholarly man, someone who was very sensitive and not interested in celebrity. Someone who loved books and writing. Was this the image Sebald wished to present? Probably. Was it close to who he really was? I think so, but am not certain. Next week, I want to talk about whether the form of the Emigrants is fiction or something else. Till then. And I do have a mustache and beard—they are mine, not Ernest Hemingway’s. I like to be fuzzy. #TheEmigrants #W.G.Sebald

I'm pleased to announce my story "The Loss of the Whaling Ship Pequod" is now live on the Blue Lake Review site. Here's a link: https://bluelakereview.weebly.com/the-loss-of-the-whaling-ship-pequod.html Many thanks to Blue Lake's Editor, Mitchell Waldman, and to Will Allison, who edited the story. Yes, there is a Moby Dick reference here, but the story isn't really about whaling. #AlanBray #BlueLakeReview

The last chapter of Remains is entitled Weymouth. It begins with Mr. Stevens sitting on a pier, or boardwalk, by the sea, waiting for the evening lights to be turned on. Light and darkness as metaphor for revelation and repression play an important part in the story, and this is a fine example. He then recounts the content of his meeting two days prior with Miss Kenton, which in many ways is the climax of the book. James Phelan, in his book Living To Tell About It, presents a fine analysis of the extraordinary skill Ishiguro displays throughout this chapter. It begins: “This seaside town is a place I have been thinking of coming to for many years. …this pier, upon which I have been promenading for the past half-hour…A moment ago, I learned from an official that the lights would be turned on ‘fairly soon’, and so I have decided to sit down here on this bench and await the event. …it has been a splendid day. … It is now fully two days since my meeting with Miss Kenton in the tea lounge of the Rose Garden Hotel in Little Compton…Miss Kenton surprised me by coming to the hotel. I was, I believe, simply staring at the rain on the window by my table. … The light in the room was extremely gloomy on account of the rain. But by and large the Miss Kenton I saw before me looked surprisingly similar to the person who had inhabited my memory over these years.” What’s of note here is that the chapter begins in the story’s present time, and shows Mr. Stevens looking back two days in time and recalling not only his long awaited rendezvous with Miss Kenton, but also a more recent encounter he’s had with another man on the pier. Thus the character Mr. Stevens knows what’s occurred as he relates the tale and, like a good storyteller, withholds this information until he’s ready to present it. Actually, I believe this is a trace of the implied author, who is the good storyteller. Miss Kenton had surprised Mr. Stevens by seeking him out early rather than keeping their appointment. Mr. Stevens quickly learned that she had reconciled with her husband and had no intention of returning to Darlington Hall as he had dreamed might be possible. But what really rocked Mr. Stevens occurs as they wait for the bus which will carry Miss Kenton away. In his awkward fashion, he steered their conversation toward more intimacy by saying he’d been concerned that Miss Kenton’s husband might be somehow abusive. She reassured him that her husband was not abusive but took things further: “I suppose, Mr. Stevens, you’re asking if I love my husband.” She said that she does but, after a period of silence, continued: “But that doesn’t mean to say, of course, there aren’t occasions now and then—extremely desolate occasions—when you think to yourself, What a terrible mistake I’ve made with my life. And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life, you might have had. For instance I get to thinking about a life I might have had with you, Mr. Stevens…” This was devastating for Mr. Stevens, he reports his heart broke. Why though? I don’t think it’s because he’s shocked at Miss Kenton’s pronouncement and acknowledgement that she more or less loved him. I think that’s what he suspected all along and that this news is more confirmation than anything. Confirmation that he blew it, that there’s no time now to make things right. It’s too late, and he felt the tragedy. What a life I might have had. Also, what she said is central to his own life. The fear of having made a terrible mistake with life, of missing a different, better existence is a driving force in Mr. Stevens’ reality, not just as regards Miss Kenton, but also relative to his service to Lord Darlington. But the point is that as the chapter begins with Mr. Stevens sitting on the pier, he already knows what’s happened, it’s the reader who does not. His narration doesn’t begin: “I am sitting here, and my heart is broken. I’m an idiot.” Perhaps it is more accurate to say he doesn’t feel this way at that moment. In true Mr. Stevens fashion, he’s covered the pain he feels with denial and focuses on the anticipation of when the lights will be turned on. Ooh, metaphor. However, he then relates an equally devastating encounter he’s just had with an older man who was sitting next to him on the pier, a man who quickly discloses he too was once a butler. As I’ve said before, this man is the embodiment of the person Mr. Stevens has been addressing all along in his “diary,” the “you” whom he believes will surely understand him. The others on the pier are willing the night to fall—Mr. Stevens imagines. (Still in the present—after the encounter). “This confirms very aptly, I suppose, the man who until a little while ago was sitting here beside me on this bench, and with whom I had my curious discussion. His claim was that for a great many people, the evening was the best part of the day, the part they most looked forward to…Of course, the man had been speaking figuratively, but it is rather interesting to see his words borne out so immediately at the literal level. I would suppose he had been sitting here next to me for some minutes without my noticing him, so absorbed had I become with my recollections of meeting Miss Kenton two days ago. In fact, I do not think I registered his presence on the bench at all until he declared out loud: “Sea air does you a lot of good…The fact is,” I said after a while, “I gave my best to Lord Darlington. I gave him the very best I had to give, and now—well—I find I do not have a great deal more left to give…Oh dear, mate. You want a hankie?” Here, it’s revealed that Mr. Stevens is crying—not by Mr. Stevens who merely says he’s “overtired” but by the reported utterance of the other man. Mr. Stevens continues: “Lord Darlington wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man at all. And at least he had the privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship was a courageous man. He chose a particular path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lordship’s wisdom. All these years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really, what dignity is there in that?” The other man replies: “Now look mate…if you ask me, your attitude’s all wrong, see? Don’t keep looking back all the time, you’re bound to get depressed. And all right, you can’t do your job as well as you used to. But it’s the same for all of us, see? We’ve all got to put our feet up at some point; You’ve got to keep looking forward…The evening’s the best part of the day.” There’s tremendous irony here. That the evening is the best part of the day is a theme throughout Remains, but of course this sentiment is not true for Mr. Stevens who has managed to hold all the pain of his life at bay until the end when it makes his heart break. At the last page, Mr. Stevens focuses on the future, listening to the people on the pier talk and trying to pick out if they’re “bantering” with one another. Bantering is the language that Mr. Stevens does not know how to speak but would like to learn in order to better serve his new employer, Mr. Farraday. I think what this represents is not a complete regression to his old coping mechanism of denial and repression. During the course of his journey and of the story, Mr. Stevens experiences a shattering self-realization but from that, he resolves to transform to someone who can banter—perhaps learning to use humor to soften the tragedy of his own life, a defense mechanism Dr. Freud would approve of, especially over denial. ‘Kay. Next week a new offering, The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald. Till then. #TheRemainsOfTheDay #KazuoIshiguro

Although Mr. Stevens spends considerable time reflecting on the past during his journey, he is at times confronted by people from the present who challenge his beliefs. On the afternoon of the second day of the trip, Mr. Stevens has car trouble and encounters a man identified as a servant or batman, who in the course of assisting Mr. Stevens, learns he was employed at Darlington Hall. “Then his voice changed noticeably as he inquired: “You mean you actually used to work for that Lord Darlington?” He was eyeing me carefully again. I said: “Oh, no. I am employed by Mr. John Farraday, the American gentleman who bought the house from Lord Darlington.” Oh no, indeed. Stevens adopts St. Peter’s playbook in denying he knew Christ. This is an important passage and an example of how the story calls for two levels of reading. On the level of his narration, Mr. Stevens describes the encounter in bland, concrete terms. He offers no explanation for his misleading response that no, he didn’t work for or by implication knew Lord Darlington—when the reader knows that he did. Also, the careful reader will note further clues provided by the implied author: the manner in which the man asks Mr. Stevens about “that” Lord Darlington—his voice changes noticeably, he is “eyeing” Mr. Stevens to see his response. The implication here, given weight by Mr. Stevens’ earlier mention of the negative way in which Lord Darlington is perceived, is that the man is raising the issue of Lord Darlington’s tarnished reputation and frankly wondering if Mr. Stevens should be tarnished by it as well. Mr. Stevens doesn’t “let on” if he’s aware of this innuendo, he only relates his response sans commentary. He denies knowing Lord Darlington, a man he claims to have been devoted to. Mr. Stevens then goes to a nearby pond to sit quietly and view nature. He reflects: “Indeed, but for the tranquility of the present setting, it is possible I would not have thought a great deal further about my behavior during my encounter with the batman…I may not have thought further why it was that I had given the distinct impression I had never been in the employ of Lord Darlington…It could be that a meaningless whim had suddenly overtaken me at that moment…” Then Mr. Stevens recalls a second time when he denied knowing Lord Darlington, and then says: ”It may be that you are under the impression that I am somehow embarrassed or ashamed of my association with his lordship…nothing could be further from the truth…Indeed, it seems to me that my odd conduct can be very plausibly explained in terms of my wish to avoid any possibility of hearing any further such nonsense concerning his lordship…I have chosen to tell white lies in both instances as the simplest means of avoiding unpleasantness…Nothing could be less accurate to suggest that I regret my association with such a gentleman.” But why then, the reader must ask, the “white lies?” Just to avoid “unpleasantness?” It’s interesting here that Mr. Stevens must take some “tranquil” time to reflect on what’s happened in order to develop an explanation, saying that otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have thought about it. Personally, I don’t believe him at all. I think he is very aware of what he’s done and is ashamed. Ashamed, aware of the way Lord Darlington is regarded, and unwilling to defend him. This incident serves to alert the reader that “something is wrong,” and it also contributes to Mr. Stevens’ growing inability to keep denying that “something is wrong.” As he reflects on the past and is confronted by the present, he is faced with the way he’s distorted things and, regrettably, wasted his life. Mr. Stevens is an unreliable narrator of his experience. Unreliable to himself. But it takes time and further encounters for him to catch up with the reader on this matter. Mr. Stevens runs out of petrol and stays the night in the small village of Moscombe at a private home. During this evening, the villagers believe Mr. Stevens is a gentleman, and he does nothing to dissuade them, claiming to have known Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden on a much more equal basis than he actually did. One of the villagers, Mr. Harry Smith, challenges Stevens’ definition of dignity, saying that dignity is a quality all men and women have a claim to as citizens of England who fought and defeated Hitler. Mr. Stevens is disturbed by the idea and tries to privately dismiss Harry Smith’s opinions. An idea he has clung to is that whatever mistakes have been made by he and by Lord Darlington, his service to the man has been justified by his showing dignity, the mark of an excellent butler. Now he’s being confronted by someone who says people have dignity because they take stands and oppose tyrants, risk their lives and survive. These stakes are much higher than those Mr. Stevens played. He must exert considerable energy to shore up his collapsing beliefs. He says later on: “But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such an event turned out differently? One could presumably drive one’s self to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of “turning points” one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one’s life, but at the time, of course, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as if one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out vagaries of one’s relationship with Miss Kenton, an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever unredeemable.” Profound, beautiful writing. #TheRemainsOfTheDay #KazuoIshiguro

Remains has an interesting structure. As I have said, the novel is broken up into a prologue and seven chapters, each one identified by a geographic place and by time. Thus we have Prologue July 1956 Darlington Hall, followed by Day One Evening Salisbury, and so on to the last which is identified as Day Six Evening Weymouth. Each chapter begins and ends with at least a sentence or two in the story’s present—the summer of 1956 (which interestingly is the time of the Suez Canal crisis, a diplomatic humiliation for the colonial Britain that Mr. Stevens idealizes). After the story provides a context of Mr. Stevens being wherever he is, he typically digresses into extended memory and association about the past—with some notable exceptions that occur in the present. We will get into those. I promise. Adam Parkes, in his book The Remains of the Day A Reader’s Companion, makes the point that the England Mr. Stevens journeys through is largely a mythic creation, not unlike Thomas Hardy’s evocation of a timeless, rural Wessex or William Faulkner’s American South. Some of the place names—Salisbury, Taunton, and Weymouth are real, but others—Mortimer’s Pond, Moscombe, and Little Compton—are inventions. This structure focuses the reader both on the passage of time as well as on a journey that is set outside normal time. It is a mythic time through an older part of England, a time in which Mr. Stevens, freed from his regular duties, is able to reflect and try to organize the past. The text is written as if it were Mr. Stevens’ making entries in a sort of diary which is written by an “I” and addressed to an unnamed “you,” who is, apparently, imagined as another butler—someone who would surely sympathize and understand Mr. Stevens’ story. So, we get an interesting artifact of first-person narration—the story has two audiences, the imagined “you” written to in the diary, and the actual reader who is unknown and unaddressed by the protagonist. The “you” is privy to what Mr. Stevens tells him/her, the real audience, to all Mr. Stevens relates plus the irony communicated by the implied author. (An example, if you please). In the Day Three Evening section, Mr. Stevens sets out in his diary to address “the question of his lordship’s attitude to Jewish persons, since this whole issue of anti-Semitism, I realize, has become a rather sensitive one these days. In particular, let me clear up this matter of a supposed bar to Jewish persons on the staff at Darlington Hall.” Well, yes, the whole issue of anti-Semitism had become rather sensitive in the wake of the Nazi’s program of genocide. A classic example of Mr. Stevens’ understated and possibly clueless thoughts. Mr. Stevens goes on to relate how Lord Darlington ordered two maids dismissed because they were Jewish, and how Mr. Stevens—although troubled—made little protest. And yet, somehow, Mr. Stevens is shocked, shocked, that anyone would call Lord Darlington anti-Semitic. He says: “…let me say furthermore that they (Jewish staff members) were never treated differently on account of their race. One really cannot guess the reason for these absurd allegations.” This is a nice example of the two levels of message: The imaginary addressee of Mr. Stevens’ diary would read about Lord Darlington’s “supposed” anti-Semitism and how shocked Mr. Stevens was that anyone could think he was so inclined. But then the same entry presents his anti-Semitic behavior, which is difficult to excuse unless you are Mr. Stevens. It’s obvious from the text (the implied author) that, in fact, the two maids were treated differently because they were Jewish—the opposite of what Mr. Stevens says. This structure of two-tiered communication is pervasive. What effect does it have? Adam Parkes says: “In Remains Ishiguro devises a style that tells the reader something is wrong even as the narrator claims the opposite.” Something is wrong. Mr. Stevens presents his memories and musings in, as we have seen, a very “sugar-coated” way. He travels through the beautiful English countryside in his employer’s car, stopping at inns and taverns to take the time to ponder how Lord Darlington, whom he served so faithfully, could now be thought a traitor. And perhaps with slightly more insight, he also recalls Miss Kenton, the object of his quest. If he can persuade her to re-join him at Darlington Hall, it might really “solve his staffing problems.” Indeed. Is Mr. Stevens simple-minded? Hiding something? James Phelan in his book, Living To Tell About It, makes a distinction between a story’s narrator underreporting or underreading what he tells the reader. Underreporting means that in this case, Mr. Stevens, does not admit his own personal interest in what he says—something both he and the reader are however, aware of. Underreading, on the other hand, means Mr. Stevens does not consciously know—or is at least unable to admit to himself—what the reader infers about his personal interest. It’s hard to determine which of these two processes Mr. Stevens is involved with in the passage above. He certainly has an agenda of rationalizing away all objection to Lord Darlington’s actions, as they reflect on his. But, to what degree is Mr. Stevens consciously aware of this agenda? The reader can see it, can he? I think part of the artistry of the book is that an answer to this question is suspended till the end. #TheRemainsOfTheDay #Kazuo Ishiguro

What is the plot in Remains? Well, what is plot? “The main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.” But this definition leaves a lot out. Do these events flow from the actions of the characters or are they the work of an external entity, like fate? (or the implied author—heh, heh, heh!) Do the characters themselves transform or do they cope with the confines of living in a plot? Is the plot the work of the author or the characters, if you will. (Please answer some or all of these questions). The famous Road-Runner cartoons are fine examples of plot-driven stories. For the characters, there is, sadly, no internal change. The Road Runner and Wily Coyote do the same things, time after time. In a sense, they are imprisoned by the plot. The hapless Coyote always loses, the perky Road Runner always escapes. The viewer knows this outcome, but is still entertained to see how it plays out. The traditional murder mystery novel is plot-driven (and this is not a criticism). A savvy detective must solve a crime—solving the crime is the point of the story, not some inner transformation of the detective. In fact, the detective must remain the same for the series to work. The reader knows the crime will be solved but is delighted by seeing how. We know that Ishiguro tends to be uninterested in traditional linear plots—where there is a story arc, an interrelated sequence of events that may be separate from the characters. The idea Ishiguro is talking about, of having the associations of the characters lead the narrative vs. something external, points us to his stories as being character driven. “Character-driven stories deal with inner transformation or the relationships between the characters. Whereas plot-driven stories focus on a set of choices that a character must make, a character-driven story focuses on how the character arrives at a particular choice.” So, a character-driven tale tends to be more in depth about the inner life of the character. In Remains, the elderly English butler, Mr. Stevens, of Darlington Hall, is encouraged by his employer to take a car trip. Mr. Stevens is initially reluctant but changes his mind when he receives a letter from Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall twenty years before. In her letter, she tells him about a separation from her husband and the sadness she feels over how her life has ended up. Mr. Stevens resolves to meet her near where she lives, perhaps persuading her to return with him to Darlington Hall. He’s been making small mistakes in the management of the house and believes he needs help. There’s a gradually developing subtext of Stevens hoping he and Miss Kenton can become romantic partners, but he denies this to himself and others, saying rather that his journey is purely professional, not personal. He sets out, and has many memories both of Miss Kenton, and of his former employer, Lord Darlington, now deceased. In the present of the story (post-war), Lord Darlington is vilified as a Nazi sympathizer, and Mr. Stevens, out of shame, actually denies having known him several times. He tries to reconcile his many years of excellent service with the prevailing belief that his employer did bad things. He does this by denying Lord D’s culpability and his own, maintaining to himself and to an imaginary person he is addressing in a sort of diary, that he was “only doing his job,” a job he did well. He finally meets with Miss Kenton, who is reconciled with her husband and does not intend to return to Darlington Hall. But she does say she has at times wondered what her life might have been with Mr. Stevens. Not only does she make it clear there’s to be no future for them, she also lets Stevens know that there might have been one had he communicated his feelings. His heart breaks, although he hides it all. In the last scene, he is at a seaside boardwalk and encounters another aged man who was a butler, a sort of embodiment of the “you” he’s been addressing throughout. Mr. Stevens confesses things, and the man tells him he should stop dwelling in the past. The evening’s the best part of the day. After the man has left, Mr. Stevens remains on the boardwalk. He thinks: “Perhaps, then, there is something to his advice that I should cease looking back so much, that I should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of my day…if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, (to do great things), surely that is in itself…cause for pride and contentment.” He resolves that he will learn a new language of bantering in order to better serve his new employer. So, yes—the plot is simple. A road trip, but one in which the traveler ignores the scenery and the people, and is drawn inward and into the past by associations. His past was rather glorious, being the butler of Darlington Hall, having the lengthy “professional” relationship with Miss Kenton. Believing he was serving a worthy employer and doing important things, like promoting world peace. His present life is much more modest. No grand affairs and dinners, a small staff to supervise. Is the best over? He’d hoped to re-capture a part of it with Miss Kenton, but that is not to be. The journey is essentially inward. There are people he meets along the way who provoke different reactions—like Mr. Harry Smith and Dr. Carlisle. If the question of the novel is will Mr. Stevens re-unite with Miss Kenton and reconcile his conflicted feelings about his past, the answer is no and perhaps. Now then, you might ask, is Mr. Stevens therefore more like Wily Coyote, doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? Huh. “You” ask the hard questions. Lemme just say straight out that Mr. Stevens doesn’t fall into a thousand-foot canyon or blow himself up with sticks of dynamite. In the end, Mr. Stevens does seem to maintain his personality traits of denial and repression. However, the story is about his confronting his feelings concerning Miss Kenton and Lord Darlington. He admits to himself that he yearned for Miss Kenton and that Lord Darlington made mistakes, admissions he was unable to make at the outset. He will transform by learning a new “language.” #TheRemainsOfTheDay #KazuoIshiguro