As we continue our exploration of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, let’s take a look at some structural issues. The story concerns two main characters, Marianne and Connell, and is told by an unnamed narrator in intriguing and adept fashion, a narrator who is able to whiz around and get inside all the characters’ heads. This busy and dare we say omniscient narrator entity however, is not an “I” in the story. It is not a character narrator as we have encountered before, actually just last time when we looked at Ishiguro’s Nocturnes. The narrator remains anonymous and apart and is pretty close to our old friend the implied author. Your old friend. There is liberal use of an element called free indirect speech or discourse. We’ve encountered this before too. Mario Vargas Llosa, in his book The Perpetual Orgy (a favorite at my house), writing of Gustave Flaubert, writes, “Flaubert’s great technical contribution lies in his bringing the omniscient narrator so close to the character that the boundary lines between the two vanish, in his creating of an ambivalence in which the reader does not know whether what the narrator says comes from the invisible teller or from the character…” It should be said that the device of free indirect speech was not invented by Flaubert; it goes back to at least the eighteenth-century and was used brilliantly by Jane Austen. What is it and why are you talking about it in the context of Normal People? What is the point? ‘Kay. Free indirect speech is what happens when the subordinate clause from reported speech becomes a contained unit, dispensing with the “she said” or “she thought.” For instance: Kate looked at her bank statement. Why had she spent her money so recklessly? Who the devil is Kate? She’s an example. More to the point, who is speaking here, Kate or the narrator? Or both? Normal People begins with this passage. Although I don’t think it’s free indirect speech, it is ambiguous as to who is speaking. “Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell.” Pretty straightforward, I suppose—but whose perspective is being described here? It could be that Marianne is shown answering the door when she is alerted by Connell ringing the bell. Or it could be that when Connell rings the bell, he perceives Marianne answering the door. Oh, oh. Down the rabbit hole, my friends. In a third reading, it could be that the narrator is showing this sequence to the reader. The passage continues: “She’s still wearing her school uniform, but she’s taken off the sweater, so it’s just the blouse and skirt, and she has no shoes on, only tights.” ‘Kay, who’s noticing this? Is it the narrator telling the reader what Marianne is wearing, or is it the narrator describing what Connell notices about Marianne? Or is the narrator describing Marianne’s own awareness of her attire? And this is just the first paragraph. But, you say (you actually did say) why is this important? The reader could blissfully read this paragraph with the belief that she/he knows exactly what’s going on. No need for some “pretentious bully” to ‘splain the hidden meanings. The point is that there’s a lot of ambiguity here, and it creates an effect. At the very least, it brings Connell and Marianne close together; it puts the focus on their relationship, and this, we shall see, is the point of the book. Still on the first page, we have this passage: “Lorraine folds the rubber gloves up neatly…” Lorraine is Connell’s mother, an important but not central character, so it’s probably the narrator here who’s describing her folding the gloves “neatly.” This use of an adverb is what we get from a narrator describing something vs. a character’s own thoughts. “We” don’t usually think using adverbs. On page two, we have: “He (Connell) presses his hands down further into his pockets, as if trying to store his entire body in his pockets all at once.” Huh, again this is probably not something Connell would think about himself unless he’s unusually poetic. It could be the narrator describing how he’s arranging his hands using a metaphor, it could also be the narrator showing Marianne’s perspective on Connell’s behavior. Most of chapter one is the narrator observing the encounter between Connell and Marianne and generally showing Connell’s perspective and reactive thoughts. There is a skosh of exposition: “People know that Marianne lives in the white mansion with the driveway and that Connell’s mother is a cleaner, but no one knows of the special relationship between these facts.” Marianne and Connell may “know” this but wouldn’t “say” it in this way. It is the narrator’s language and perspective. What about free indirect speech, you say. Well, here’s an example from later on in the first chapter. “When he (Connell) talks to Marianne he has a sense of total privacy between them. He could tell her anything about himself, even weird things, and she would never repeat them, he knows that. Being alone with her is like opening a doorway from normal life and then closing it behind him.” Yes, the narrator is showing Connell’s inner experience, but it’s in his language (“weird things). Please contrast this with a more traditional showing of inner-ness. “Connell thinks, when I talk to Marianne, I have a sense of total privacy between us. I could tell her anything, even weird stuff, and she’d never repeat it.” Incidentally, the quoted passage mentions “normal life,” which refers to the title. We will investigate this theme of “normal-ity” as we go. I promise you. Perhaps this is a good time as any to bring up Gérard Genette's distinction between “the world in which one tells” and “the world of which one tells.” This refers to two different modes of storytelling, one in which the storyteller is part of the story being told and one in which it is outside of it, showing and describing. The narrator of Normal People is outside in the sense of not being a character in the story whom the other characters affect but who is right there in the room like a phantom the other characters are not aware of. There is a boundary between the narrator, and Marianne and Connell, and it is different from the boundary between the story and the reader. Marianne and Connell are not shown affecting the narrator, but Normal People affects me. Ooh. Till next time. #NormalPeople #SallyRooney #AlanBray

This week, a new story, my friends, Irish author Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, Normal People. Normal People was a bestseller in the United States and won critical acclaim, including being longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Set in Ireland during the post 2008 economic downturn, it concerns two young Irish folk, Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron, and their relationship over time as friends and lovers. An Emmy nominated television adaption of the book aired in 2020. After the title page, we find an epigram, a quote from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda: “It is one of the secrets in that change in mental poise which has been fitfully named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness.” It’s no accident that this quotation appears at the beginning. Let’s keep it in mind as we study the book, and perhaps return at the end to consider its meaning. The title too—Normal People—is it meant ironically or more literally? We’ll see, as the orange demon used to say. Writing about a different book in The New York Review of Books, Anahid Nersessian makes an interesting comment, “…the romances of Sally Rooney seem aimed at readers who, like her characters, have sex with the austere diligence of a high school valedictorian. What sets Rooney apart is that she makes what ought to be the most ordinary aspects of intimacy seem aspirational, as if consent and mutual gratification—however defined—were the summit and not the ground of erotic possibility.” At first, this seems rather negative, painting Ms. Rooney’s work as romance, an implicitly lessor genre, and then describing her characters as austere and diligent in sexual matters, suggesting they’re a joyless lot. Valedictorians might object! However, the full quote actually offers praise, saying that Ms. Rooney is set apart from other writers in that she makes ordinary aspects of intimacy seem aspirational. Consent and mutual gratification are the summit of erotic possibility. Well, yes, Connell and Marianne have sex a lot. Yay! And they are not particularly wracked by guilt about it. Double yay! Some critics have praised Normal People for being a realistic depiction of contemporary men and women in their teens and twenties, particularly regarding their sexuality. Prraps so, best beloved. Right from the beginning, there is a sexual tension between Marianne and Connell; they are attracted to each other, despite class differences and the issue of Marianne being a sort of pariah at the private school they both attend. This is not a traditional heterosexual tale of the man pursuing the woman who must finally offer consent to do the deed. Indeed, Marianne seems to be good-naturedly reveling in the power of her sexual attractiveness, in the way Connell’s face turns red around her. Connell is the one who seems somewhat embarrassed by his lust. And, I’d say, Ms. Rooney, a woman, writes empathetically about Connell, a male character. There are some interesting structural issues in the book having to do with the narrator and the use of time, and rest assured we will be getting into those. Yay? At this point, let’s say that the connection between Connell and Marianne is that Connell’s mother Lorraine, cleans house for Marianne’s mother, and that the two young folk attend high school together. In the first chapter, there’s an interesting passage where Marianne and Connell are talking about school. Marianne seems flirtatious and confidant. Connell “dreads being left alone with her like this, but he also finds himself fantasizing about things he could say to impress her.” His dread is due to his concern over being identified with social pariah Marianne by his very caste-conscious schoolmates. In this scene, he points out in the context of talking about tests that Marianne isn’t at the top of the class in English, and she responds, “Maybe you should give me grinds, Connell.” Connell finds this interesting and anxiety provoking. “Giving grinds” is ambiguous; in British/Irish slang, it can mean tutoring, taking extra lessons outside of school hours, and it may also refer to sexual intercourse. Then Marianne (that scamp) introduces a mise en abyme, a story within the story, a part that is emblematic of the whole. One of the teachers, Miss Neary, is apparently lusting after Connell and this embarrasses him—the same structure of Connell being embarrassed over Marianne’s advances. Marianne tells Connell she likes him and this leads to the two of them arranging for Marianne to come to Connell’s house when his mother is gone so that they can have sex. And this is presented in a refreshingly straightforward manner. Marianne escapes her loathsome brother Alan (more on him later) and sends Connell a text—on my way, and he replies, cool, see you soon. Sex ensues. “Kay. Let’s talk about sex a minute (or two). I’m going to say that in Normal People, Marianne and Connell present a generally positive view of sex, although we need to talk about Marianne more in this regard (her choice of partners and certain…behaviors, in particular.) In fairly modern parlance, they are both sex positive people, meaning that they consider sex a beneficial and healthy part of being human. This would be in contrast to sex negative people who deem any sexual behavior outside of procreation to be evil or forbidden. Sex negativity restricts the establishment of an inclusive world in which everyone can express their sexual and gender orientations without fear or judgement. It may make people feel depressed and guilty about not thinking a certain way about sexual matters. Connell and Marianne frequently have sex as part of their caring relationship—and not to procreate, Connell uses a condom. Normal People shows sex as essentially joyous and meaningful, an attitude that gives yours truly hope for the future, as well as validating Ms. Nersessian’s comments. Till next time. #NormalPeople #Sally Rooney #AlanBray

Last week, due to constraints of space and time, we interrupted our discussion of Cellists, the last story in Nocturnes. Let’s continue where we left off. In September, Mr. Kaufman says there’s an opening at a hotel in Amsterdam for a cellist, with “light housekeeping duties.” Tibor asks for a couple of days to decide. His hesitation makes the fellas in the band angry. “That woman’s turned him into an arrogant little shit.” So the fellas are perhaps jealous/envious. They think Eloise is like a flirty actress, they’re mad at Tibor for not accepting his lot, which is theirs as well. They’ve all had the same dreams as he but apparently without such a mentor. Tibor had never told Eloise about Mr. Kaufman, feeling ashamed. Now he doesn’t want to tell her about the job offer. In a scene where he’s playing for her, she stops him, saying there’s something wrong. But she thinks it’s because he’s realized she can’t play the cello, which she admits to Tibor, saying she is a virtuoso, but is yet “unwrapped.” Tibor is almost “unwrapped,” thanks to her help. Tibor shows anger at her deception but quickly forgives her for misleading him. However, he decides to go away on a short holiday, and before leaving, lets Mr. Kaufman know he’ll take the job. So, something occurs when he’s confronted with Eloise’s lies. It’s a turning point. Maybe he decides she hasn’t really been teaching him anything, that it’s all been a sham. And he’s running out of money. So he takes the job. But it’s more than the money issue. Maybe he’s accepting that he’s not the virtuoso he thought he was. If Eloise can lie about herself, maybe she’s been lying about his potential too, lying in order to be intimate with him. When he returns after a week, she welcomes him emotionally, wants him to play for her, he does. They have “a wonderful afternoon together,” and are closer than ever. They don’t allude to her confession or to his absence. Then, Peter appears. Peter—the man who loves Eloise and from whom she’s been hiding. Eloise wants to talk to Tibor alone while Peter gets ready for dinner. She says she’ll probably marry Peter. Tibor tells her he has taken the hotel job, they wish each other happiness and part. Para break. “Tibor left our city soon after that.” The guys have drinks with him a last time. “Like I said, this all happened seven years ago. Giancarlo, Ernesto, all the boys from that time except me and Fabian, they’ve all moved on. Until I spotted him in the piazza the other day, I hadn’t thought about our young Hungarian maestro for a long time. He wasn’t hard to recognize…And the way he gestured with his finger, calling for a waiter, there was something—maybe I imagined this—something of the impatience, the off-handedness that comes with a certain kind of bitterness. But even that’s unfair…it seemed he’d lost that youthful anxiety to please, and those careful manners he had back then…perhaps he has a day job behind a desk somewhere. Maybe he had some business to do nearby and came through our city just for the old time’s sake, who knows? If he comes back to the square, and I’m not playing, I’ll go over and have a word with him.” Seven years ago, the band blamed Eloise because they believed she’d made Tibor think he was talented and then abandoned him. The reader sees a different story—so does Tibor, I think. The story about the connection between Eloise and Tibor doesn’t have that much to do with the music. She needed him, he needed her. He needed her to make him feel special, and she needed him as a way to hide from and delay the inevitable marriage to Peter which represented something, a compromise, a settling for something less than what she’d dreamed of. So both Tibor and Eloise transform in the story, accepting less and giving up on their dreams. At the end, we don’t know how Tibor himself feels about the encounter with Eloise, and we know nothing of Eloise. We do know they had a powerful connection that the narrator didn’t understand. The narrator, as is true in the other stories, does not change. He is the storyteller. We might recall from the first post about Nocturnes that Ishiguro stated the book was not comprised of short stories, on the contrary, he saw the sections linked like movements in a symphony. How about this? As we’ve gone through Nocturnes, I’ve mentioned themes and motifs that recur. Each story makes some mention of windows and doors and features a first person narrator who is a musician; the action in each story often culminates in a scene set during the early evening, the end of the day. The narrators are unreliable and clueless about the characters and events they storytell about. And these character subjects are typically a couple or a part of one, who are experiencing stress and heartbreak. These are the elements that connect the five parts. But is there a progression, the way there would be in a musical piece? Or a novel? Crooners tells the story through Jan of a cold and cynical arrangement made of their marriage by Lindy and Tony Gardner. Come Rain or Come Shine has glimmers of sincerity between the characters, despite Ray’s shenanigans. In Malvern Hills, the couple who are the subject of the story, Tilo and Sonja, are sincerely touching and tragic as they confront long-standing problems in their marriage. Nocturnes is funny and slapstick, but ultimately sad as the narrator, Steve, winds up alone. And in Cellists, we read about a real, although fleeting, connection between Tibor and Eloise. So it seems Nocturnes begins with a revelation of considerable cynicism about love, and conclude with a multi-layered showing of tenderness between people who sincerely connect and part. Between these, we have a tale of a marriage in which the partners try to trick each other into reconciliation, one of two people facing the dissolution of their marriage, and then a story about the relationship between two people who clumsily try to help each other but eventually part ways. A complex and satisfying book, my friends. Till next time and a new book, Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Ooh! #Nocturnes #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

In Cellists, the fifth and final story in Nocturnes, we return to the city of Venice but with new characters. The complex narrative structure involves the story of a young musician, Tibor, told by a first-person narrator, another musician who is an unnamed saxophonist, although it could be someone who played with Jan in Crooners. It begins with the narrator telling a story about how he was performing in the piazza and saw a man whom he recognized from seven years earlier, Tibor, a cellist. At that time, the narrator and the other fellas in the band had befriended Tibor, who had come to Venice to perform in a summer arts festival. The story looks back in time from at least two vantage points; one, when the narrator sees Tibor again, and two, when the events of the story occurred, seven years before. The narrator tells both stories, but the older story is one that Tibor related to the narrator. That’s pretty confusing. ‘Kay. Tibor has had good training and a few gigs, but they’ve petered out and he is struggling, The musicians decide to help him and introduce him to Mr. Kaufman, a sort of agent. The band members who’ve had formal musical training feel a kinship with Tibor. “But to be fair, I think it was just that they liked to take the Tibors of the world under their wing, look after them a little, maybe prepare them for what lay ahead, so when the disappointments came they wouldn’t be quite so hard to take.” This is a nice mise en abyme—an encapsulation of the whole story, a story of someone helping Tibor and trying to prepare him for the inevitable disappointment. The story of what occurred seven years before gets going. “When people say Tibor changed for the worse that summer, that his head got too big for his own good, that this was all due to the American woman, well, maybe there’s something to that.” After a paragraph break, we read: “Tibor had become aware of the woman while sipping his first coffee of the day.” The story enters Tibor’s “head,” although the narrator continues to tell the story to his narratee. The woman accosts Tibor, saying she’d heard his recital of the previous day. She flatters him, tells him he has potential. “At this stage, what you’re doing is waiting for that one person to come and hear you.” “She looked very pleasant, beautiful even,” he told us at the time. “But as you see, she’s ten, fifteen years older than me. So why would I think anything was going on?” So, at some point, seven years ago, Tibor had told the guys this story and now it’s being related by the narrator to the narratee. Huh. The woman, Eloise McCormack, implies that she is an accomplished cellist who can help him to play better. “Like you,” she said quickly. “I have a sense of mission, I guess.” She is not telling the truth; she does not play the cello, although at this point, the reader has no reason for doubt. As in the other stories in Nocturnes, sexuality doesn’t factor in here, although the reader may wonder. What is going on with the two levels of narration? The narrator is telling a story to his narratee, and the implied author is telling the story to his audience. I don’t think at this point, there’s a lot of divergence. The mystery of Eloise is intact on both levels. She is lying about herself, but no one knows that—except the implied author who doesn’t reveal it. Tibor is perhaps unreliably overestimating his talent, but again, that’s not clear. The narrator knows the truth and is withholding some information. Tibor, after two days of indecision, goes to Eloise’s room (the bedroom is closed off) and plays for her. She critiques his playing, and as a result, he feels he’s playing better than ever but struggles, wanting to leave, wanting to stay. He tells his friends (after the fact): “I could suddenly see everything,” he explained to us. ”A garden I’d not yet entered.” He returns over several days and plays. “…to an outsider, had there been one, (her comments) might have seemed presumptuous.” An interesting passage—who notes this? The implied author, not Tibor—“Tibor was no longer capable of regarding her interventions in these terms.” “But what’s she like herself?” we kept asking him. “On the cello?” This implies he is leaving the sessions with Eloise and going to tell the guys about it after. Tibor is curious and then suspicious about Eloise’s playing. Where is her cello? One day, the bedroom door is ajar, and he looks in but sees no cello. “Would a virtuoso, even on holiday, go so long without touching her instrument? But this question, too, he pushed out of his mind.” “As the summer went on, they began to prolong their conversations by coming over to the café together after their sessions, and she’d buy him coffees, cakes, sometimes a sandwich. Now their talk was no longer just about music.” She asks him about a girlfriend. He’s reluctant to ask her personal questions but learns a little. She’s American, has moved from Boston to Portland, dislikes Paris. “She would laugh much more easily now than in the first days of their friendship and she developed the habit, when they stepped out of the Excelsior and crossed the piazza, of linking her arm through his. This was the point at which we first started noticing them, a curious couple…a flirty actress, as Ernesto put it…In the days before we got to talking to Tibor, we used to waste a lot of idle chat on them, the way men in a band do.” So the narrator is observing them some time after the sessions have begun. The “flirty actress” remark is interesting as it will be revealed that Eloise really is acting the role of a musician. But we the readers see that she is not so much flirty as anxious and needy. Then, Eloise says that she is involved with a man named Peter Henderson, who wants to marry her. She is hiding from him in Venice, out of apparent ambivalence. “She didn’t bring up Peter again, but now, after that exchange, a new dimension had opened in their relationship…he (Tibor) knew his presence there beside her was appreciated.” So her revelation helps Tibor to make sense of what’s happening. She’s involved with Tibor and the intimacy is helping her because she’s hiding out from Peter, postponing a decision. This makes Tibor feel more comfortable. This is one of the book’s themes—the narrator (here once removed) is confronted with a male/female relationship in stress. Also, it should be noted that, like many of the characters in the book, Tibor is an immigrant from another country, Hungary. They continue their relationship. Eloise suggests she play passages he’s having trouble with, but he resists this, saying that if she played, he would just be copying her, when she talks, in contrast, it “opens windows.” There’s a sense that Tibor knows Eloise is lying about being a cellist and is trying to protect her. And here is another theme in the book—windows, portals. ‘Kay. I think we should stop here for this week and conclude our discussion next time. Till then. #Nocturnes #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

The fourth story in Nocturnes is entitled Nocturne and is the longest of the five contained therein. Does this have meaning? I don’t know, my friend. I don't know. Some things don’t. Nocturne concerns a first-person narrator, Steve, who is a professional saxophone player, which satisfies at least two of the requirements for stories in this book—that they present first-person narrators who are musicians. Steve tells a story to his narratee that begins: “Until two days ago, Lindy Gardner was my next-door neighbor.” This is very interesting because it’s the only time characters “migrate” across the stories, Lindy being a character from the first section, Crooner. We know a bit about Lindy from that story, and this knowledge informs our reading of Nocturne, which takes place some months after the events in Crooner. This is a good example of there being more than one audience for a story. In this case, we have the narratee, the person whom Steve is addressing in his narration, and we have the authorial audience who knows things Steve does not, and who is addressed by the implied author. Steve is not as successful in his career and marriage as he’d like to be. Somewhat like the narrator of Malvern Hills, he is resentful about this and bemoans “fake” success—success that is not based on real talent but connection. His manager suggests he get a facelift because it’s felt that Steve’s physical unattractiveness is holding back his real talent. Of course, he resists the idea as fakery and also has no money, but his wife supports the scheme, and then leaves Steve for another fellow who, perhaps improbably, agrees to pay for Steve’s cosmetic surgery. Yes, the story has a slapstick feel. Steve decides to get the surgery, hoping that his wife will return to him if he’s more attractive and successful. The procedure is done, and Steve goes to recover in a posh Beverly Hills hotel where his next-door neighbor is—you guessed it—Lindy Gardner, also recovering from cosmetic surgery. Both characters have bandages covering their faces except for eye slits. Lindy invites Steve over; Steve is reluctant because he feels Lindy is a poster child for fakery, a no talent person who has become a celebrity due to connection but agrees to visit anyway. Well. We can see right off that there is a lot of irony in this tale. Steve, who rails against fakery and nurtures his authenticity as an artist, agrees to undergo a “fake” procedure not to make his career a success but to win back his wife. And, although he dislikes Lindy Gardner (her commercial image) he’s willing to engage with her when he realizes she’s a neighbor. Steve and Lindy hang out, play chess (there’s no romance at all, never comes up). At Lindy’s request, Steve plays her one of his CDs but this provokes a curious reaction—Lindy turns cold and dismissive. Steve is hurt, but Lindy apologizes, saying that she always has a negative reaction to real talent. Steve’s playing moved her, but also made her angry because it was so genuinely good. (we know from Crooners that this is an issue for Lindy; Steve does not know because he hasn’t read Crooners). Steve learns that a colleague, Jake Marvel, is going to receive an award for Jazz Musician of the Year during a ceremony at the hotel. He is resentful, believing that Jake, unlike him, lacks talent. He complains to Lindy about this. Lindy reveals that late at night (nocturne-ally) she likes to prowl around the huge hotel. She steals the award Jake is supposed to receive, and gives it to Steve, saying that he is the rightful honoree. Steve is upset and convinces her they must return the award. This leads to a long slapstick scene wherein Steve and Lindy, their heads bandaged and wearing dressing gowns, search the darkened hotel for the place Lindy took the award. Along the way, they get into a huge argument over—you guessed it—fake vs, authentic success. When Steve vacillates over whether or not they should return the award, Lindy questions Steve’s belief that Jake is unworthy. “The trouble with people like you, just because God’s given you this special gift, you think that entitles you to everything. That you’re better than the rest of us…you don’t see that there’s a whole lot of other people weren’t as lucky as you who work really hard for their place in the world…” Steve responds: “I sweat and heave and break my balls to come up with something worthwhile, something beautiful, then who gets the recognition? Jake Marvell! People like you!” More comedy: Lindy stuffs the award inside a turkey carcass about to be served at the buffet. Steve has difficulty getting it out because it’s stuck way inside. He finally does; he and Lindy hurry upstairs. They leave the award on someone’s room service tray and go to Lindy’s room. Steve confesses to Lindy that he’s been hoping the facelift will bring his wife back to him. Lindy says life is bigger than just loving one person, that he should pursue success. Steve says goodnight. And when they see each other again, just before Lindy goes home, everything feels different. Lindy seems unfriendly and dismissive. Steve concludes “So that’s the story of my time as Lindy Gardner’s neighbor.” He talks to his wife Helen again, and tries to determine whether she might be interested in reconciliation but receives no clear signal. “Maybe Lindy’s right. Maybe, like she says, I need some perspective, and life really is bigger than loving a person. Maybe this really is a turning point for me, and the big league’s waiting. Maybe she’s right.” Huh. An intriguing tale, especially as it’s arrayed with the others we’ve discussed. Is Steve unreliable as a narrator? Prrapps so, the maestro says. I wonder about that ending—it seems like a huge change of heart for Steve to say maybe Lindy’s right, and that the whole story is a turning point for him. The big league’s waiting. It’s waiting, but I don’t see Steve joining it—despite the face lift and the way he claims he’s transformed after the encounter with Lindy Gardner. Maybe Lindy’s distance at the end means something—she knows that Steve’s unable to take her advice. Hold up! you say. It could be that Steve really has reached a turning point and will now embrace “fake” success. Maybe, I say. But maybe not. Such a transformation would go against the way his character is shown in the whole story. I imagine Steve sitting alone in his hotel room, head still covered in bandages, telling this story about how Lindy Gardner was his neighbor. Telling it to himself because there’s no one else there. ‘Kay. Next week, we’ll look at the last story in the book, Cellists. Till then. #Nocturnes #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

In the third story of Nocturnes, Malvern Hills, we immediately come on a first-person narrator who is never named. “I’d spent the spring in London, and all in all, even if I hadn’t achieved everything I’d set out to, it had been an exciting interlude.” We learn that this fellow feels the weeks are “slipping by” and that he’s “vaguely paranoid about running into his former university friends, asking “how I was getting on since leaving the course to seek “fame and fortune”…with a very few exceptions—none of them was capable of grasping what was or wasn’t, for me at this particular point, a “successful” few months.” We learn that the narrator is a musician—like all the narrators in the book—and that he has unsuccessfully been trying to find work. He’s gone on many auditions and had not been hired. Instead of doing covers (which is what is wanted), he performs his own songs and feels resentful at the lack of recognition he’s getting. When he angrily asks at one audition why the band isn’t hiring him, he receives the answer, “No offence, mate, It’s just that there are so many wankers going around writing songs.” The narrator apparently doesn’t believe he’s a wanker and dismisses this attitude as “stupidity.” He decides to spend the summer at his sister and brother-in-law’s B&B in the Malvern Hills, a scenic parkland in the country. There’s a sense that he is going there to get away from his problems; he has fond memories of the place. “That summer, though, I felt this was the most beautiful place in the world; that in many ways I’d come from and belonged to the hills.” We learn that, in the way of background, his parents divorced when he was a child, and the family house was sold. In short, he is adrift although has difficulty admitting it. Here we have this story’s iteration of one of the themes of the book: the yearnings that exiles feel toward home. Mention is also made that his sister and brother-in-law expect him to work in exchange for room and board. This arrangement, “suited me just fine because it meant I couldn’t be expected to work too hard…The work was easy enough—I was especially good at making sandwiches—and I sometimes had to keep reminding myself of my main objective in coming out to the country in the first place: that’s to say, I was going to write a brand-new batch of songs ready for my return to London.” It should be noted that this element is a steady one for Ishiguro—a story of someone working for someone else, a servant or assistant, in this case in a resentful and passive-aggressive way. The main part of the story concerns the narrator’s encounter with a Swiss couple, Tilo and Sonja, who come into the restaurant. They are on vacation and staying nearby so that the narrator runs into them as they hike in the hills. They overhear the narrator playing one of his songs and praise it, wanting to hear more. They reveal they are musicians who have gradually given up some of their original musical dreams to make money by playing pop songs in restaurants. (including ABBA). However, the couple seem to be polarized, in that Tilo, the husband, is completely positive about everything: the lunch they have at the B&B, their lodgings, the vacation they’re on, the state of their career, and even the apparent neglect from their adult son who doesn’t return their phone calls. Sonja, the wife, is equally negative about all these things, complaining angrily about the vacation, their lifestyle, and their son. Eventually, the narrator (who seems oblivious to the couple’s discord) runs into Sonja who has just had an argument with her husband. Tilo has gone alone for a hike, saying the couple should probably break-up because they are so different. Sonja, who doesn’t want this, is upset and tries to escape her usual pessimism to encourage the narrator to pursue his musical dreams. They story ends with the narrator seeing Tilo at a distance and thinking he seems to be “re-appraising” the hills. The narrator concludes he needs to work more on the bridge of the song he’s writing. Hmmm. What we have here is not only the usual theme of an exiled narrator musician who is unreliable in his judgements, but also the consistent scenario of the narrator faced with a married couple—in this case, Tilo and Sonja—who are transforming. The narrator doesn’t seem to transform and appears rather clueless about the depths (or shallowness) of his talent. In a self-centered way, he angrily rejects any criticism and misreads the expectations of his sister and brother-in-law. If we think about the first two stories, Crooner and Come Rain or Come Shine, we may recall that each narrator’s chief concern is the story he’s telling his audience—not necessarily the story we the readers are getting. These narrators are concerned with how they come off, their appearances. Jan, in Crooner, wants to tell the story of how he helped the famous musician Tony Gardner, and how Tony complimented his talent. Ray, in Come Rain or Come Shine, shows himself just needing comfort as he visits his somewhat dense and troublesome friends, and how he will go to extreme lengths to get it. The narrators are talking to their imagined narratees, not to us. They want to convince their narratees and see them as sympathetic to their problems. The narrator of Malvern Hills also wants a respite from the stupidity and rejection he faces. He tells the story of Sonja and Tilo but is not really concerned with their pain, only that they seem to appreciate his talent. (much like Jan). What we the readers receive from the implied author, just as in the other stories, is a tale of tragedy about long term lovers failing (to various degrees) to work out their differences, a story told by an oblivious narrator. So is he under-reading or under-reporting? Under-reading, I think. He is oblivious to his own narcissism and to the complexities of others. Perhaps the ending does represent some change though. After thinking that Tilo must be re-appraising things, the narrator decides maybe the bridge of his song needs a little more work. Till next time. #Noctures #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

The title of the next story in Nocturnes contains another musical reference, Come Rain or Come Shine, the title of a famous American song standard. It is narrated by Ray, who, like Jan in Crooner, is someone living abroad, away from England, his country of birth. The story continues to incorporate motifs of music, evening, immigration, and portals. It begins with Ray describing how he’d become close with a couple, Emily and Charlie, in university days, apparently twenty-five years before the present of the story. At that time, Charlie was his best friend as was Emily—although there’s no mention of any sexual attraction on Ray’s part. He describes how he and Emily bonded over their appreciation of American standard songs performed by artists like Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holiday. Ray then relates how, after university, he took up teaching English in Spain and is still there. “…I’ve been stuck in the same humid buildings year after year, setting spelling tests or conducting the same conversations in slowed-down English…When I first took up English teaching after university it seemed a good enough life…if the teaching was tedious and the hours exploitative, at that age you don’t care much…In the late 80s, there was still talk of making a lot of money teaching in Japan, and I made serious plans to go, but it never worked out…then before you know it, you’re forty-seven years old and the people you started out with long ago have been replaced by a generation who gossip about different things, take different drugs, and listen to different music.” After “a few months that hadn’t exactly been the best in my life,” he goes to visit Emily and Charlie (who have married) in London. He goes with a sense of desiring connection with the past, with England, and his old friends. But he’s immediately disappointed—“his” room at the couple’s house is untidy, Charlie is distracted and critical of his life. In fact, both Charlie and Emily are concerned and critical over Ray’s existence. “…he (Charlie) fired questions at me about my life in Spain, and each time I told him anything, good or bad, he’d do this sour little smile and shake his head, like I was confirming his worst fears.” Charlie says: “Listen to me…your situation’s hopeless. You’ve got to hand in your notice…I can tell you won’t do any of this…You’ll go back and carry on just the same…in a year’s time, you’ll be moaning about exactly the same things.” Emily says: “Oh, honestly, Raymond. You let yourself be exploited left, right, and centre by that ghastly language school, you let your landlord rip you off silly, and what do you do? Get in tow with some airhead girl with a drink problem and not even a job to support it. It’s like you’re deliberately trying to annoy anyone who still gives a shit about you!…Raymond, don’t you ever stop and ask yourself who you are?” Emily asked. “When you think of all your potential, aren’t you ashamed? Look at how you lead your life! It’s…it’s simply infuriating! One gets so exasperated!” Not only are his old friends disapproving of the way he’s living his life, but they are also having marital problems. In fact, in a comedic twist, Charlie—who has to go away on a business trip—wants Ray to stay with Emily, believing that Ray’s presence will show Emily that he (Charlie) is not so bad by comparison. There follows a slapstick scene that comprises the bulk of the story. Ray accidentally damages Emily’s diary after discovering it expresses dismay over his visit. “Raymond coming! Groan, groan!” Then he tries to hide the evidence. With Charlie’s help (by phone) he attempts to create the impression that the neighbor’s unruly dog burst into the house and tore up the diary. This ruse involves breaking vases and cooking an old shoe in order to get the proper dog smell. (Dogs smell like popcorn). Please pay attention. Emily returns from work and, appalled by the chaos, takes it as confirmation that Ray is deranged. However, she decides to cook dinner, and the pair listens to old vocal jazz records the way they used to. However, in a change, Ray does not wish to argue with Emily about which interpretation is better—the way they used to do. Ray tells Emily that Charlie loves her and doesn’t want to divorce. The two of them wind up dancing together out on the terrace. “You’re right, Raymond,” she said, quietly in my ear. “Charlie’s all right. We should sort ourselves out.” “Yes, you should.” “You’re a good friend, Raymond. What would we do without you?” Ray remembers the song they’re dancing to is eight minutes long. He thinks after it’s over, they’ll go inside, and Emily may become angry again because of his destruction of her diary and the cooking of the smelly shoe. “What did I know? But for another few minutes at least, we were safe, and we kept dancing under the starlit sky.” It appears that Charlie’s scheme may indeed have worked. Compared to Ray, Charlie seems better to Emily. Ray represents another unreliable narrator who underreports—at least to his friends. He acknowledges to his narratee—the entity he’s telling the story to—that he’s been stuck in an unsatisfying job and that the recent few weeks have been particularly bad. He wants to visit his old friends as a kind of re-charging. He thinks of them as happily married, solid and respectable. Grown-up—perhaps the way he’s imagined himself becoming. However, when they point out the deficiencies in his life, he denies them, saying rather that he’s doing just fine—and the reader knows this is not the case. There is a strong theme here of someone living a sort of exile and longing for home—at least the illusion of a home that once was. But Ray is confronted with change; Charlie and Emily are not the same people he knew in university. And they are not accepting of his perhaps younger lifestyle. Yet, at the end, there’s a sense that Ray has transformed in that he’s no longer interested in entering into arguments with Emily over old standard jazz songs. But he is consistent in just wanting things to be “nice” for the eight-minute length of the song they’re dancing to. He remains nostalgic for the way they all used to be. The title Come Rain or Come Shine is probably meaning-laden, my friends. There are no coincidences, as Don Juan used to say. The implication is that Emily and Charlie love each other no matter what. And Emily can accept Ray with all his problems, and still see that he is a good friend. However, I think in Ray’s case, the song title has a twist. Emily and Charlie may be mistaken in thinking that Ray cares for them. We the readers know that Ray is self-centered; he goes along with the couple’s schemes and endures their criticism because he desires the comfort of the past, not because he’s such a good friend. At the end, he wants the romantic song to continue. Ray remains the same, come rain or come shine. Like Crooner, Come Rain or Come Shine uses romantic music in an ironic way. (To quote Jordan Catalano). Till next time. #Nocturnes #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

Last week, we began to look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, specifically the first tale, Crooner. I cut the diamond in stating that I thought the narrator, Jan, was underreading vs. underreporting. Let’s look at this more closely. (whiny voice: Why is this even important?) For a deeper understanding of the story. Please settle down. James Phelan talks about this distinction in depth. To review, underreporting is when a character narrator does not admit to his narratee what both he and the authorial audience know about his personal interest. What does this mean? A simple example would be where the reader of a story knows that the narrator hates broccoli, let’s say because the narrator has reported in several scenes that reliable characters have said this to the narrator. You hate broccoli. But the narrator then says in his narration, “You know, I love broccoli.” The reader immediately wonders why the narrator is saying this, since it isn’t “true.” Underreading, on the other hand, is when a narrator does not consciously know—or is not able to admit to himself—what we infer about his personal interest. In the above example, let’s say the narrator has showed himself as being nauseous every time he eats broccoli. However, he keeps eating it and doesn’t seem to make the connection. Again, the authorial audience might wonder why is he doing this? Why can’t he admit he hates broccoli? (That’s ridiculous). A careful reader might say of the above examples that they seem pretty similar. On the face of it, it is difficult to distinguish between underreporting and underreporting. An effective way to determine whether a character narrator is underreading or underreporting is to link the unreliability to inferences about the narrator as character. In Crooner, what do we infer about Jan as a character? We know that he plays guitar in café bands in Venice, Italy, that he has a young and informal way of narrating. He’s different from other musicians he works with in that he plays guitar, a non-traditional instrument, (for the café bands) and he’s not Italian. He’s from an eastern European country and grew up under a communist government, raised by a single mother who has since died. He says, “Years later, when I was working in Warsaw…” and relates a story of buying his mother Tony Gardner records to replace those he accidently scratched as a child. “It took me over three years, but I kept getting them, one by one, and each time I went back to see her I’d bring her another.” When he spots Tony Gardner, “…I couldn’t quite believe it…Tony Gardner! What would my dear mother have said if she’d known! For her sake, for the sake of her memory, I had to go and say something to him…” Jan’s mother is his connection to Tony Gardner. “So I sat down and told him some more. About my mother, our apartment, the…records.” He can’t recall the titles of the records but describes the pictures on the sleeves, and Tony remembers the titles. There are some similarities between the two men. Tony is in a close relationship with Lindy, Jan with his deceased mother. Tony reveals he’s discarding Lindy for the sake of his career, Jan (we can infer) left his mother for the sake of his career and to become an adult. Eventually, Jan expresses disbelief at Tony’s coldness. When you love someone the way you’ve sung about, you stay together, he says. Jan is discovering that Tony doesn’t live the life he’s conveyed in his songs, he is much less romantic and more mercenary. (If Tony were an author, we could say that the “real” author is very different from the implied author. Heh, heh, heh). It’s disillusioning for Jan, who grew up admiring Tony, experiencing his mother’s love for the healing romance of the music. Tony isn’t like the “narrator” of his songs. This gives the story’s climax new meaning. Jan’s mother “never got out.” Tony wants Lindy to “get out.” Does this mean that Jan’s mother never got out of the romantic illusion? Persisting in tragic love affairs and listening to sad romantic music? Tony is apart from this and wants Lindy to escape it too. Yet, he serenades her with sad, romantic songs and she cries. Sobs—is this evidence that she hasn’t gotten out? Yet? Mebbe. Maybe that’s why Tony seems disappointed after the serenade. Hmmm. Tony is cold and calculating about his career. He tells Jan a story about tricking the maid when he and Lindy made love—tricking the help. He is tricking Jan too although Jan sees through it and is mad. Tony tries to project a romantic persona congruent with his singing, but he is not really like this and finally reveals it. The sardonic laugh. So Jan goes through a process of disillusionment that is more than just about Tony and his music; it’s about Jan’s whole life, the illusions he shared with his mother. But is he underreading or underreporting? Both I think, or it’s pretty hard to tell. Jan may not be admitting how he feels about his mother, perhaps out of guilt that he left her, perhaps still out of grief. Or he may not be aware of it—we just don’t know. He’s telling a story and wants his narratee to believe him, to accept what he’s saying, kind of on the level of: one time I met this celebrity, Tony Gardner, and he was “basically a good guy.” Is this denial? Or is it that he’s telling the story to the narratee and doesn’t want to spoil it by telling the truth—that Tony was a jerk. That’s what the story shows, what—best beloved—the implied author shows. I suppose that is underreporting. I think Jan is angry at Tony Gardner but will not admit this to his narratee because he wants to share in some of the celebrity glow. Let me tell you about the time I met Tony Gardner, the time I played with him, and he said I was pretty good. He was a good guy—that’s Jan’s story. Till next time. #Nocturnes #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

This week a new book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2009 Nocturnes, originally published in Britain and then by American publisher Knopf in the same year. It is dedicated to Deborah Rogers, Ishiguro’s long time literary agent. Nocturnes is a collection of five stories that Ishiguro himself has said were conceived of as a whole, like a piece of music with five movements. It is not a short story collection, as, to Ishiguro, a short story is complete unto itself, and these tales are not. Indeed, each story in Nocturnes has to do both with music and the close of the day but they each have different emotional registers. There is considerable humor. Two of the stories share a character, all five are told by a first-person narrator, who, as we shall see, is in each case, charmingly unreliable. On the surface, perhaps during a cursory read, the book may seem simple, almost banal, but I believe a closer examination reveals exceptional insight into we humans. The first section is entitled Crooner and is narrated by a young man named Jan who plays guitar in various café bands around Venice’s St. Mark’s Square. His narrative voice is casual, folksy; it’s difficult to give a sense of it without quoting long sections of the text, but I’ll try to give a briefer taste. “We’d completed our first full week outside in the piazza—a relief, let me tell you…” “I guess it showed in our music.” “But here I am talking like I’m a regular band member.” “Anyway there we were…” What I’m trying to convey is that Jan has a particular voice which is not the implied author’s voice. He’s a character narrator; he’s young and naïve. The story is told entirely through his perspective, but in a sense, it is given to him by the implied author who reserves a position of omniscience so that we the readers experience more than what Jan tells us. It wants the reader to read the story through the consciousness of a somewhat naïve young man. The story is more than this narration. What we learn is that Jan grew up in an Eastern European country, probably Poland. He was raised by a single mother whose favorite singer was American Tony Gardner. We learn that Jan’s mother is dead, but Jan is matter of fact about his life, expressing minimal regret or sadness. It’s difficult to tell from his narration how he feels about his life and his past. He randomly meets Tony Gardner who’s visiting Venice with his wife Lindy. This random coincidence—Tony Gardner sitting at a table where Jan can see him—provides the inciting incident for the story. It would be a different story if Jan had sought Tony Gardner out. As it is, the man who was Jan’s mother’s favorite singer “happens” to appear in Venice where Jan is working as a musician. Jan approaches Tony in the matter of a fan, and he and Tony talk in a friendly way. Tony’s wife, Lindy, joins them briefly. Jan observes some tension between the couple, Tony seems angry, but he and Lindy make up. After Lindy leaves, Tony has a proposition. He’d like to serenade her from one of the gondolas, with Jan accompanying him on guitar. At this point, the reader is being told a story by the narrator about something that happened to him. The reader may begin to form questions and theories about what may be going on beyond the level of narration. Specifically, is the implied author conspiring with the reader against Jan? Using him somehow, setting him up in a way that the reader may be able to grasp. What are Tony Gardner’s motives for this serenade business? It does not seem like he is being transparent with Jan. He says that he and Lindy are visiting Venice for a special trip, and that he wants to do something romantic to please her. Is this the truth or is there more? Jan is also curious. “It’s your anniversary, Mr. Gardner?” “Anniversary?” He looked startled. …then he laughed, a big booming laugh, and suddenly I remembered this particular song my mother used to play all the time where he does a talking passage in the middle of the song, something about not caring that this woman left him, and he does this sardonic laugh. Now the same laugh was booming across the square.” This is an interesting foreshadowing of what occurs, although Jan merely reports his association without making meaning of it. Jan is delighted at being asked to accompany Tony Gardner. “You can probably imagine, this was like a dream come true. And besides, it seemed such a sweet idea, this couple—he in his sixties, she in her fifties—behaving like teenagers in love. In fact, it was so sweet an idea it almost, but not quite, made me forget the scene I’d witnessed between them. What I mean is, even at that stage, I knew deep down that things wouldn’t be as straightforward as he was making out.” An interesting comment. Jan is referring to the moment of tension he witnessed between Tony and Lindy. He says the idea of the serenade almost but not quite made him forget it (as this story is past tense—Jan is remembering what happened) and that deep down, he knew that things wouldn’t be so straightforward. This passage accomplishes more than one thing. It cues the reader that the tension between the couple is significant and that, in the narrator’s opinion as well, things are not what they appear to be—although we don’t know if he is “reading” things accurately. Jan reminds me strongly of another Ishiguro character, Mr. Stevens, in The Remains of the Day—a story we have looked at in the past. Mr. Stevens tends to underread his motives, that is, he does not consciously know or is unable to admit to himself what his feelings are. This is in contrast to underreporting where a narrator doesn’t admit what both he and the reader know about his emotions. For Mr. Stevens, the result of this is that he denies his feelings and misinterprets other characters’ actions. Does Jan underread or underreport? Is he truly naïve or holding back on what he thinks? Jan and Tony Gardner set out in a gondola that night. They agree on the songs they will perform and then Jan wonders what he’s getting himself into. “To be honest, I was now beginning to wonder…what this whole serenade thing was about. And these were Americans, after all. For all I knew, when Mr. Gardner started singing, Mrs. Gardner would come to the window with a gun and fire down at us.” Tony tells Jan about his wife, how they met, the way that Lindy prepared herself carefully to meet and marry a famous man. He expresses some sadness and Jan says, “Mr. Gardner, it’s none of my business, I know. But I can see maybe things haven’t been so good between you and Mrs. Gardner lately.” He goes on to tell Tony about how his mother would get sad over a failed romance and then cheer herself up by listening to his recordings. “And Mrs. Gardner will hear us and who knows? Maybe things will start going fine between you again. Every couple goes through difficult times.” This is a bit of a leap for Jan, in that Tony Gardner hasn’t said directly that the marriage is troubled. Perhaps this, along with the association to his mother, is evidence of Jan’s sensitivity. The duo arrives at Mrs. Gardner’s window and Tony sings. Eventually they hear sobbing from Lindy’s open window. (Windows and doors recur in all five stories). “We did it, Mr. Gardner!” I whispered. “We did it. We got her by the heart.” But Tony doesn’t seem pleased and tells the gondolier to move them away. Jan feels mad at being left out of what’s going on—he’s being treated like the hired musician, the hired help, which is a major theme throughout all of Ishiguro’s work—the loyal servant toiling for an employer who treats her/him as less than human. Eventually they dock but remain sitting in the boat. Jan politely asks why Lindy was crying—was she moved by the songs or upset about something more? Tony tells him that she was crying because the couple will separate after this trip. Jan expresses dismay, and Tony explains that while they still love each other, Tony is trying to get his career going again and simply needs a younger wife. And he wants them to split up now while Lindy is still young enough to re-marry. I think Jan is underreading. Tony Gardner makes him remember his mother, how she would have sad love affairs and console herself by listening to Tony’s records. “She needs to get out before it’s too late,” Tony says of Lindy. Jan responds: I don’t know what I would have said to that, but then he caught me by surprise, saying: “Your mother. I guess she never got out…I don’t want that to happen to my Lindy…I want Lindy to get out.” Tony says he’ll try to come by to see Jan play again, but never does. Hmmm. I think we have to stop today. We’ll pick up next week on Jan and Tony’s story. Till then. #Noctures #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

Last time, we looked at the end of Kino and the way Kino the character transforms, driven to an extreme point by the experience of having his desolated heart trying to physically confront him. It is a painful transformation the story describes; it’s not as if, in the end, Kino becomes supremely happy running his little bar and listening to American jazz records, all conflicts settled. No, he winds up cowering in a bed in a seedy hotel. He’s in pain but it’s genuine pain, unlike many of his vicarious feelings earlier on. Some readers might read Kino—contained within the larger book, Men Without Women—and think, “Huh, this guy Murakami is Japanese but I’m not sure the story is tied much to Japan. It’s kind of a universal tale.” This take has some merit in that the theme of the destructiveness of ignoring your feelings—no, of actively denying them—occurs across many cultures, as does the theme of men living to their peril without women, something we will consider a bit more later. I’m no expert on Japan, but I’ve read a bit about Murakami, and I believe whatever the universal appeal of the story, he was writing about a specifically Japanese issue—the loss of identity. Murakami has been concerned about the loss of meaning and identity in Japan since WW11, a loss he associates with the modern Japanese obsession with work and material success. He is opposed to a lifestyle of materialism and acquisitiveness. Seen through this lens, Kino is sharp and clear, best beloved. The main character, Kino, is someone who does not conform with his peers’ attitudes. His first interest is professional sports, both as an athlete and then once he’s injured, as a sales rep for a running shoe company. But in both roles, it’s not so much the money-making orientation he seeks, but the beauty of running. Then after the breakup of his marriage, he opens a small bar in Tokyo, where he is uninterested in making a lot of profit, just in breaking even—not at all a common modern Japanese goal. It’s interesting to note that Murakami himself ran a small bar in Tokyo when he was younger. In any case, the fictional Kino is a maverick. Through a painful process of dealing with numerous allegorical figures and guardian spirits, he claws down to his identity, if you will. It’s a painful core but it’s him. Apparently, Murakami really wants his writings to help people see the need to have more in their lives than material success. ‘Kay. Yes, another lens here is that Kino is part of a story collection called Men Without Women, and this too is no accident. By my count, there are at least three women in the story—Kino’s wife, his aunt, and the scary lady with the cigarette burns—but they are distanced from Kino. His wife divorces him, his aunt lives elsewhere, and the scary lady? Well, have you read the story? She’s no helpmate. No sir, Kino is a man living alone without wife or children. Now, is this significant? Could it be that both men and women might live happily alone? Sure, I guess, but that’s not what Mr. Murakami (or more accurately, the implied author) thinks. I believe in this story and in the others in the collection, he shows that men living without women are diminished. Would he say the same for gay people? Polyamorous? Don’t know, this book is all about men without women. Apparently, Murakami really wants people to live as couples and families. But you might disagree with him. You might think the happiest, most authentic individuals are those who live alone. You might say, I don’t like the premise or theme of Men Without Women. That is probably a good argument for the value of a critical reading of fiction. It’s good to be aware of entities like the implied author, about themes. It’s important not to just assume that the author knows more than you do. It’s good to learn how tolerant you yourself are about opinions you disagree with. It’s good to be able to hold conflicting points of view in your head. Oh, stop. Too preachy. Because of the allegorical figures and the magical realism, Kino forces its readers to consider themes in the story. Kino himself is a finely drawn and sympathetic character; we relate to him in his struggles with athletics and the failure of his marriage as if he were real. He may have played a significant role in the dissolution of his marriage, but we are not shown that and are left with sympathy for a lonely guy. Other characters, like Mr. Kamita and the lady with the burns, are too one-dimensional to seem real. So we are limited if we want to read the story on the level of character and the emotions evoked. We have a hefty dose of theme, which is a reminder that this is fiction, that the implied author created this story and has an agenda about it. ‘Kay. Next week, a new one. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes. Till then, you happy few. #Kino #Murakami #AlanBray

Kino sets off, leaving a note that the bar will be closed till further notice. He stays at a hotel, goes to the movies, hires a prostitute, all the while pondering Mr. Kamita’s message. As per Mr. Kamita’s instructions, he sends his aunt a postcard with no identifying information. What had he not done that had caused such a serious problem? Hmmm. He feels increasingly alienated, watching office workers all day from his hotel window, mystified by their seemingly meaningful lives. He sends his aunt another postcard, but this time, writes a short note on it—in defiance of Mr. Kamita’s warning. “I have to somehow get connected to reality again…(he thinks in justification)…or else I won’t be me anymore. I’ll become a man who doesn’t exist.” So, he recklessly seeks contact with his aunt because alone, he is nothing. He’s becoming transparent. He’s not developing; he’s wasting away. Then, apparently in consequence of writing the note on the postcard, he wakes during the night and hears a booming knock on his door. “Kino knew who was knocking…The door had to be opened by Kino’s own hand, from inside…It struck him that this visit was exactly what he’d been hoping for, yet, at the same time, what he’d been fearing above all. The ambiguous ambiguity was precisely this, holding on to an empty space between two extremes.” This passage refers to several previous things in the text. First, Kino’s aunt had told him about how snakes—ambiguous creatures—hide their hearts outside their bodies for safekeeping. Then, Kino feels powerfully ambivalent about knowing who or what is knocking. An empty space is referred to, echoing Mr. Kamita’s warning about how things can slip inside spaces left by people who don’t do the right thing. “I wasn’t hurt enough when I should have been, Kino admitted to himself. (thinking of his divorce). When I should have felt real pain, I stifled it…I avoided facing up to it.” Good insight. Kino tries to hide, burrowing into the sheets and blankets. The knocking stops, then resumes right outside his hotel window, eight stories up. ”Like the sound of a heart beating with emotion.” Kino is terrified of confronting his own heart, to see how wasted it is. He thinks of Mr. Kamita and of the gray cat, clutching at those memories to save himself. But the knocking persists. “In a small dark room, somewhere inside Kino, s warm hand was reaching out to him. Eyes shut, he felt that hand on his soft and substantial. He’d forgotten this, had been apart from it for far too long. Yes, I am hurt. Very, very deeply…And he wept. In that dark, still room.” Ultimately, then, Kino must confront the deep sadness he feels. There is something in him that saves him, it’s manifested in the story in several forms—the cat, Mr. Kamita, his aunt, and finally an internal vision of a warm hand reaching for him. Our friends the Freudians would salivate over this, I’m sure. In any case, I think what we have in Kino is the story of an extremely reluctant transformation. Kino begins with a backlog of hurt that he denies. He dallies with evil and pain as ways to soothe his despair but maintains an ambivalent stance, unwilling to commit himself till the point at which he reveals his location and is tracked down by his wounded, ambivalent heart. But then in the final paragraph, he saves himself by admitting how he really feels. (whiny voice; ‘Scuse me, ‘scuse me, Mr. Pretentious Bully. Last time you said you were gonna talk about magical realism, so when are you gonna do it?) ‘Kay. I’m happy you reminded me, dear whiny voice. The least intelligent among us will grasp that some things in the story seem a bit…magical. Let’s remember our definition from last time. Magical realism is a narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction. I think it’s fair to describe Mr. Kamita and the cat this way. In any case, Kino knows little about them except for the ways they affect him, they are one-dimensional characters who try to protect him from danger. We’ve talked about how Mr. Kamita appears to be an allegorical character, a character who refers to a larger theme or to the idea of being a guardian. Indeed, there is plenty of verisimilitude in Kino, plenty to seduce us into the illusion of it being a “real” story. But this device of allegory reminds us that this is fiction and makes us aware of the implied author at work, shaping our experience of the tale. On the dark side of allegory and magical realism, we have the snakes and then Kino’s heart, which tries to get to him, apparently to confront him with how it’s devoid of any depth or weight—due, I think, to his maltreatment of it. Both the snakes and the heart seem to be unrealistic, magical things put into a realistic setting. A heart that could knock at a hotel door in the middle of the night and then climb to an eighth-floor window outside? Magical. Snakes, I don’t know so much about snakes. But the story’s description of a series of multi-colored reptiles appearing outside of Kino’s bar seems mostly fantastic. And we have the story Kino’s aunt has provided of how snakes are ambiguous creatures who leave their hearts elsewhere for safety. That’s magic, best beloved. Real living creatures can’t remove their hearts. I also said, in Kino, magical realism is used as a tool to find an identity, not to confirm it, meaning that all the elements—the cat, the woman with the burns, Mr. Kamita, the snakes, the heart—work to push Kino toward the climactic final moment in the story when he acknowledges he is deeply hurt. His transformation is to go from being ambivalent and uninvolved to feeling intense and genuine pain. The thing Mr. Kamita warned him about, the thing Kino did not do, was to care for his heart. He mostly did not do the wrong thing. He did not assault his ex-wife or her lover, he did not water the drinks in his bar, but he did not do the right thing in acknowledging his pain. He tried to deny and hide it. ‘Kay. Till next time. #Kino #Haruki Murakami #AlanBray

When we last left Kino, he’d just had the encounter with the woman burned by cigarettes and was shown feeling ambivalently about her. Ambivalent—please note that word as it will reoccur. The next scene after a paragraph break concerns Kino’s now ex-wife coming to the bar at her initiative after the divorce has been finalized. The couple has a glass of wine, and then, “The cat padded over and, surprisingly, leaped into Kino’s lap.” This is an unusual occurrence as the cat is generally aloof. Kino’s ex-wife says, “I need to apologize to you.” There is a sense here of the cat as another guardian to Kino, protecting him from pain and danger as Mr. Kamita does. His wife wants to talk about their break-up, but Kino is reluctant. “…he was starting to forget all that had happened back then. He couldn’t recall events in the order they’d occurred. It was like a mixed-up jigsaw in his mind.” As she talks about what went wrong between them, Kino imagines his ex-wife’s back covered in burn marks. What’s going on here? His ex-wife seems to be trying to have an ordinary conversation with him, to apologize for her part in their break-up. But the reader is cued that there is more going on. The cat acts in a protective way, Kino imagines his ex-wife as similar to the woman he slept with, a woman he thought was vicious. When we last heard about that woman, Kino was imagining that she’d return when she wanted to, have sex with him again and show off her new burns. It’s not a very sexy or positive image, and now he seems to be mixing up the woman he slept with and his ex-wife. Kino is in trouble, I would say. After a paragraph break, “Fall came, and the cat disappeared. Then the snakes started to show up.” Well, an ominous beginning to this section of the story. “The cat…was like a good-luck charm for the bar. Kino had the distinct impression that as long as it was asleep in a corner nothing bad would happen.” It leaves, and then the snakes start appearing. Snakes, we are told, are rare in Tokyo. After seeing three different snakes outside the bar in a week, Kino phones his aunt who tells him that “Snakes are essentially ambiguous creatures…the biggest smartest snake hides its heart somewhere outside its body, so that it doesn’t get killed.” She tells him how snakes are ambiguous, having both good and evil qualities. Kino is disturbed; we are shown another section of imperfect time that collapses several nights. He closes the bar, goes upstairs, wonders if the woman with the burns will return. He hopes she won’t; he hopes she will. “Another case of ambiguity.” ‘Kay. Some important connections are being made. Snakes, according to Kino’s aunt, are partly good and partly evil. Ambiguous creatures—Kino feels a lot of ambiguity; is he like a snake? After a paragraph break, Mr. Kamita returns and lingers till he is the last customer. He addresses Kino. “Mr. Kino…I find it very regrettable, that it’s come to this…you’ll have to close the bar. Even if only temporarily.” Kino is startled, to say the least. Mr. Kamita continues: “I really liked this bar a lot…Unfortunately though, there are some things missing…That cat won’t be coming back…For the time being, at least.” Kino looks around the bar, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. “He did, though, get a sense that the place felt emptier than ever, lacking vitality and color.” Mr. Kamita continues: “Mr. Kino, you’re not the type who would willingly do something wrong…But there are times in this world when it’s not enough just not to do the wrong thing. Some people use that blank space as a kind of loophole.” Kino responds: “You’re saying that some serious trouble has occurred, not because I did something wrong but because I didn’t do the right thing?” Mr. Kamita nods. He tells Kino again that he must close the bar for a while and go far away. Maybe hang religious talismans around the house. “Don’t stay in one place very long. And every Monday and Thursday make sure to send a postcard…you can mail it to your aunt…do not write your own name or any message whatsoever. Just put the address you’re sending it to. This is very important, so don’t forget.” Kino, surprised, asks if Kamita knows his aunt. “Yes, I know her quite well. Actually, she asked me to keep an eye on you, to make sure nothing bad happened. Seems like I fell down on the job, though.” Kamita says when it’s all right for Kino to return, he’ll be in touch. Until then, stay away. Whoa! I believe this is another instance of the implied author cueing the reader that this is not a story written in a realist style about a lonely guy in Tokyo who owns a bar. Mr. Kamita makes his guardian role explicit here and links himself to Kino’s aunt, who may be the ultimate guardian. What is going on here? Mr. Kamita seems to be saying that instead of doing the right thing, Kino did nothing, and that this created a space in which bad people could get through. The woman with the burns, perhaps? The gangsters? It could be that Kino’s aunt, worried about her ambivalent nephew who has a poorly formed identity, had stashed him in the bar for safety with Mr. Kamita and the cat as guardians. However, Kino can’t stay out of trouble. He gets entangled with the lady with the burns, confuses her with his ex-wife, and those darned snakes start showing up. The guardians decide the only solution is for Kino to escape into anonymity for a time. Kino lives a life without meaning and is tempted by violence and pain as a way to feel authentic. If one views human life as an opportunity to develop and become more fully alive, he’s not doing so well. In order to show this, the implied author uses allegorical characters and supernatural elements. The story remains essentially realistic—the snakes don’t talk, although the bad gangsters are one-dimensional, they appear human. The woman with the burns seduces Kino in a stylized, film noirish way but she doesn’t fly through the air or turn into a cheetah. What? My point is that Kino makes use of magical realism. In “real” life, we don’t have guardians with superpowers. (Sorry, we just don’t). Let’s talk about magical realism. ‘Kay. A narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction. In Kino, magical realism is used as a tool to find an identity, not to confirm it. Ooh! My friends, the clock on the clubhouse wall says it’s time to go. Wait, wait! We want to hear about magical realism. We’ll talk about it next time. Till then. #Kino #Murakami #AlanBray