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

In a 1986 Guardian interview, (pre-Remains), Ishiguro writes that he was dissatisfied with his early novels because he judged them as being too much like screenplays with sections of dialogue followed by explanation. During an illness, he read the Combray section of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and saw how he could write in a less linear way by following the characters’ memories and thoughts to link together sections. At the risk of all sorts of legal trouble, I’m going to quote Mr. Ishiguro, begging his indulgence ahead of time. (whiny voice: Don’t worry, he doesn’t read this blog). “Quite aside from the sublime beauty of these passages, I was thrilled by what I then called in my mind (and later in my notes) Proust’s “methods of movement” – the means by which he got one episode to lead into the next. The ordering of events and scenes didn’t follow the demands of chronology, nor those of an unfolding linear plot. Instead, tangential thought associations, or the vagaries of memory seemed to move the novel from one section to the next. Sometimes the very fact that the present episode had been triggered by the previous one raised the question “Why?” For what reason had these two seemingly unrelated moments been placed side by side in the narrator’s mind? I could now see an exciting, freer way of composing my novel; one that could produce richness on the page and offer inner movements impossible to capture on a screen…I could put down a scene from two days ago right beside one from 20 years earlier, and ask the reader to ponder the relationship between the two…I could see a way of writing that could properly suggest the many layers of self-deception and denial that shrouded any person’s view of their own self and past. Breakthrough moments for a novelist are often like this: scruffy, private little events…Everything I have subsequently written has been determined by the revelations that came to me during those days.” So how is this style expressed in Remains? Let’s look for evidence in a passage from the novel’s third section, Morning-Day Two-Salisbury: The protagonist, Mr. Stevens, is beginning the second day of his journey thinking about a future event, his soon-to-occur meeting with Miss Kenton, a woman he has a depth of feeling for, a woman whom he hopes to persuade to return with him to Darlington Hall. A particular visual memory comes to mind: “I can recall distinctly climbing to the second landing and seeing before me a series of orange shafts from the sunset breaking the gloom of the corridor where each bedroom door stood ajar…I had seen Miss Kenton’s figure, silhouetted against a window, turn and call softly, “Mr. Stevens, if you have a moment.” This is powerful, perhaps erotic stuff. Poetic. Then he says, in his fussy, digressive fashion: “There are some very pertinent reasons why this memory has remained with me, as I wish to explain… Well, what are these pertinent reasons? Probably that he loves her, but he cannot acknowledge that as it would mean having to acknowledge how he’s wasted his life. Instead, he presents a long-winded account of several incidents around the time Miss Kenton first came to Darlington Hall. Eventually, he meanders to another near erotic memory of when she appeared in his office bearing a bouquet of flowers to “brighten” the gloom. Of course, within the memory, Mr. Stevens rejects the idea of bright flowers and puts her down by criticizing her conduct in another matter, which leads to an argument that brings them closer yet in anger. What I am trying to convey here is the elegant way Ishiguro moves about in time and space. Many authors might turn Mr. Stevens’ recollections into a “flash-back” event where the narrative moved in perhaps jerky, clumsy fashion. Instead of a smooth progression through a lot of time, a different story might begin: Darlington Hall-1922 “Mr. Stevens was dusting the trophies in the library. The bell rang, and he waited impatiently to see who would answer it.” In other words, it would be more of a cinematic “flash-back” where there is a clear demarcation between two separate time-periods. Ishiguro’s scene is all couched in memory, and the narrative moves in and out of the past as Mr. Stevens recalls long ago feelings that re-contextualize the book’s present. What’s important is the present; the thread which unites these disparate elements is his unexpressed affection and yearning for Miss Kenton, as well as his growing fear that he’s squandered his life. This is very much about using the past to explain and justify things—a central theme of the book. Mr. Stevens is on a journey to justify the way he’s lived his life and must continually move about in time to do so. Ishiguro’s technique is ideally suited to show this. The plot of Remains is actually fairly simple. Next week, we’ll take a look at it. Okay? (‘Kay) Till then. #TheRemainsOfTheDay #KazuoIshiguro

Last week, I began our discussion of The Remains of the Day by saying that we’d sniffed out another unreliable narrator—Mr. Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall—who is shown narrating the story of his six-day journey by car to the West of England in 1956. During the trip, he presents a labyrinthine tale of his days so far at Darlington Hall, employed in large part by Lord Darlington, a wealthy man, now deceased, who has been vilified as a traitor to Britain because of his activities before and during the Second World War. Mr. Stevens defends Lord Darlington, to himself and to an imagined reader he addresses as “you,” in large part because Stevens himself feels implicated in the mis-behavior of his former employer whom he served with blind devotion. The style of the book often shows a more complete story to the actual readers than the one Mr. Stevens presents to his imagined one. What we get from Mr. Stevens are at best morally ambiguous doings served with a majestic dollop of denial. It’s as if Mr. Stevens, in presenting his memories, is daring his imagined reader to disagree with his sugar-coated interpretations—that, or he yearns for affirmation. As a result, Mr. Stevens appears increasingly unreliable, although cracks begin to appear in the form of self-doubt. (more on this later). A fine example of how Mr. Stevens distorts and misreads things occurs in his recollections of the 1923 Peace Conference held at Darlington Hall—notable too because it coincided with the death of Mr. Stevens’ father. Lord Darlington convened an international conference to try to persuade world governments to scrap the Versailles Treaty, a treaty he believed was too harsh on Germany. The attendees are largely wealthy gentlemen (there are two ladies) who are anxious to allow Germany to regain its power (we all know how that went). Lord Darlington and his colleagues blame France for much of the negative sentiment toward Germany, but they realize to have any real effect, they must have an actual Frenchman at the conference and try to enlist him in their cause—even though they dislike the French. They invite M. Dupont, an official in the French government. M. Dupont keeps himself removed from the attendees—except for the American delegate, a Mr. Lewis. Mr. Stevens observes the two men having private, possibly conspiratorial discussions. Whenever Lord Darlington or the other delegates try to talk to M. Dupont, Mr. Lewis interrupts them. M. Dupont seems disengaged from the conference, spending his time listening—perhaps so as to be able to report to his government about what these aristocrats believe and are planning. Then on the final night, at the farewell dinner, Mr. Stevens observes M. Dupont giving a speech to the assembly. He thanks Lord Darlington for his hospitality and says: “Many things of interest have been said in this house over the past days. Many important things…There has been much which has implicated or otherwise criticized the foreign policy of my country.” He paused again, looking rather stern. One might even have thought him to be angry. “But none of them, may I say, has fully comprehended the reasons for the attitude France has adopted toward her neighbor.” This remark causes some puzzlement among the other delegates who evidently aren’t sure how to interpret it. M. Dupont continues: “…there is, I believe, an imperative to openly condemn any who came here to abuse the hospitality of the host, and to spend his energies solely in trying to sow discontent and suspicion…My only question concerning Mr. Lewis is this. To what extent does his abominable behavior exemplify the attitude of the present American Administration?…You see, I refrain from outlining just what this gentleman has been saying to me—about you all.” Mr. Stevens, as well as many of the delegates, reads this as a rebuke to Mr. Lewis, who then gives his own speech, in which he describes Lord Darlington and the others as “gentlemen amateurs” who are headed toward disaster by trying to meddle in politics. To me, this scene represents Mr. Stevens misunderstanding what occurs and reporting his misunderstanding as if it were the “truth.” I believe the implication of the scene, communicated by the actual narrator, is that M. Dupont and Mr. Lewis have conspired to pretend to have a falling out in order to allow M. Dupont to diplomatically let the delegates know that he has not been fooled by them, and that what he and Mr. Lewis really think is that they’re a bunch of ignorant losers. However, Mr. Stevens only sees the surface theater, the reflection of what he wants to see. And it should be said that, during the conference, he’s focused on his butler duties, wanting to make the conference a success—which he defines as whatever Lord Darlington thinks. Mr. Stevens does this at the expense of ignoring his father who is upstairs dying. His father tries to tell him important things—that he loves him, that he’s been a good son, but Stevens chooses his duties as more important—perhaps because he’s unable to respond in a human way. However, on his car trip into the past, Mr. Stevens shows that doubt has crept in. #TheRemainsOfTheDay #KazuoIshiguro

This week, a new story, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1988 The Remains of the Day. (Whiny voice: This week, a new story, Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat and—ow! Sounds of struggle, a crash. Something seems to strike a microphone, and feedback ensues). ‘Kay. Everyone settle down. I want to apologize—get him! Don’t let him get away!. (indistinct yelling). I first read Remains in 1995 when I was living in Chicago. My wife and I had seen the wonderful 1993 Merchant/Ivory film version starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, and I was eager to read the original book. I purchased the 1993 Vintage International Edition—connected to the film—and rely on it to this day. Remains is one of my favorite books and films, and this is the fifth time I’ve read it. (Distant shouting—big deal, Mr. Big Shot!) There has been a lot of scholarly attention on and writing about Remains, and if I make use of any of these ideas, I’ll do my best to cite them. The cover of this edition is made up of images from the film showing Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in character as Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton, the butler and housekeeper of Darlington Hall, a large estate in England during the nineteen twenties. (The film collapses the time a bit, I believe, so that its events begin more in the thirties). After the title page, there is a dedication to a real woman who was a friend of Ishiguro’s in the 1980s, Mrs. Lenore Marshall. Remains is in broad terms about a road trip that the protagonist, Mr. Stevens, undertakes from Darlington Hall in southeast England to the southwest where he seeks Miss Kenton, who had left Darlington Hall to marry before the war and has recently written Mr. Stevens to let him know about a separation from her husband. Stevens hopes to persuade Miss Kenton to return—both for professional and personal reasons. So it is a story about a journey, both to reconnect with Ms. Kenton and to understand the past, and Stevens’ role in it. The novel is divided into eight sections, each one’s title refers to portions of the six days of Mr. Steven’s journey, except for the first, which is—Prologue 1956 Darlington Hall. The first line. “It seems increasingly likely that I will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.” Mr. Stevens original employer, Lord Darlington—deceased in the book’s present—had a compromised life. An enormously wealthy man who socialized with the elite of British society, he also became involved with those who supported Adolph Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany. He went so far as to try to broker a peace agreement between the Nazis and the British government, and is shown as being anti-semitic. He is, however, also shown as someone who rejected the Nazis and their beliefs, perhaps too late. Stevens was his loyal butler throughout, and now struggles with the satisfaction he feels at being a good butler vs. the reputation his former employer has as a traitor. Was Stevens complicit with Lord Darlington’s misbehavior? Was Lord Darlington himself complicit with the Nazis, or was he their dupe? It should be said that Mr. Stevens is never shown directly doing something to help the Nazis (beyond taking the German Foreign Minister’s coat). His sins are, if you will, ones of possible omission rather than commission. He remains the loyal servant of Lord Darlington despite having clear evidence of the Lord’s mis-guided conspiracy with immoral people. The text is written in first person, presenting the thoughts of Mr. Stevens—not so much as a memoir but as a piece of rhetoric designed to persuade an imaginary reader of Mr. Stevens’ lack of guilt—not unlike Pat in Silver Linings Playbook, who is trying to convince his ex-wife of how he’s reformed himself. However, in Remains, we gradually sense that this imaginary reader is another butler whom Mr. Stevens believes is the only person who can really understand him. Let’s define the imaginary reader as a hypothetical entity that a work is addressed to, whose attitudes, etc. may differ from an actual reader’s. Adam Parkes in his book The Remains of the Day: A Reader’s Guide, writes that the use of this structure (a narrator addressing an imaginary reader) sets up two audiences. One is the sympathetic “you” to whom Stevens addresses his plea for understanding; the other is the reader of the novel, who is shown not only Mr. Stevens’ plea, but also the growing evidence that compromises claims of innocence. Mr. Stevens is pre-occupied with presenting himself in a certain way which is not congruent with the truth. An example occurs when he is traveling through the countryside and stops to avoid running over a chicken. The hen’s owner rushes out to thank him, saying he was probably in a great hurry, and he replies: “Oh, I’m not in a hurry at all,” I said with a smile. “…I’m just motoring for the pleasure of it, you see.” Well, this statement is contradicted by large sections of the narrative that show Mr. Stevens’ eagerness to re-connect with Miss Kenton. Why does Mr. Stevens deny this? He wishes to present the world with an image of himself as a different person, sometimes a gentleman, sometimes the perfect, loyal servant to a great man, instead of the person he really is—and this person, we shall see, remains a puzzle to him. #TheRemainsOfTheDay #KazuoIshiguro

One of the hallmarks of fiction, one of the things that often keeps us reading, is how the protagonist transforms in the story. Aristotle himself got us going on this idea; static heroines/heroes just aren’t very interesting. Recently, we looked at a story—By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept—that is all about transformation via Ovid’s Metamorphoses. So…(wait for it)…how does Pat transform in Silver Linings? At the beginning of the story, Pat is focused on the end of what he calls “apart time,” the separation from his wife, Nikki. He dreams of reconciliation with her and is convinced that the pathway to this is to do all the things she wanted him to do in their marriage. Nicely summarized by the expression “To be kind rather than right,” this path involves being in excellent physical condition, not losing his temper (that’s an understatement; it’s more like controlling his rage), and reading and appreciating the novels she taught to her high school students. Pat believes that by being a “better” man (as he thinks is defined by Nikki), he will get her back. He believes this process will occur magically, that all he has to do is stick with his program, and his personal movie will have the happy ending he desires. We’ve talked about how Pat is shown to be an unreliable narrator of his story. At the end of the novel, he has given up his dream of re-unification, he has taken direct action to become closer with Tiffany, and has lost interest in his self-betterment program. He has, I believe transformed from someone who feels essentially worthless, to being able to recognize his worth. Most importantly, his view of the “reality” he shares with his family and friends becomes much more realistic. He journeys to see the real Nikki and observes her with her husband and children, a tangible sign that she’s moved on. And we’ve talked about how this transformation occurs because of the (mostly) gentle disconfirmation and confrontation of Pat’s delusions by his family and friends. And therapist! After considerable confrontation, Pat is at his parents’ home on New Years Eve. His mother falls asleep on the couch, Pat goes to retrieve a blanket to cover her and finds the VHS tape of his wedding. He puts it in the machine and presses PLAY. There’s no commentary and/or internal experience of this, but I think there’s a sense in the story that, at this point, Pat is ready to face his demons. He’s gone through lengthy preparation—the process of loving confrontation, the trauma of learning Tiffany has deceived him about Nikki, and the trauma of being mugged and having his leg broken. He’s—somewhat miraculously—reconnected with his old friend Danny, who does not offer explicit advice but has a strong influence on Pat to face his problems. Pat presses PLAY and watches the film of his wedding. He sees Nikki, his parents, his brother. He hears the dreadful “Songbird” song that the wedding band played and which has haunted him ever since. Then for the first time, he’s able to remember what he could not previously—the reason for his being sent to the psychiatric hospital. He’d gone home early from work and found Nikki with the man she’d been having an affair with. He physically assaults this man, nearly killing him, and turns with rage on Nikki, but she conks him over the head with a CD “boombox.” He wakes up in restraints in the hospital. Nikki divorces him, and he is sent to a secure psychiatric setting for years. Pat remembers the whole thing; the narration is dispassionate, matter-of-fact. He finishes, regards his reflection in the TV, then goes and leaves a message for his brother, saying he needs a huge favor. The favor is to get Tiffany’s number. In response to a call that is not shown, she sends him a long letter explaining why she made up the story about Nikki—because she loves Pat. She writes of the loss of her husband and the difficult process of letting go. She asks forgiveness. This letter is another nice example of layering in the narrative. The reader is presented with an unmediated message from another character in the story—not Pat, who is not shown distorting what Tiffany writes to him. At the end, Pat meets Tiffany in a park. He acknowledges he needs her as she needs him. It’s clear they are going to be a couple and that they will face many problems together. There is no resolution of everything. Just a reliable narration. And this represents Pat’s biggest transformation—giving up his delusions about the past, his attempts to “go back” to something that never was. Next week, a new story. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, a novel with a different sort of unreliable narrator. Till then. #SilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick

I have written about how Pat is an unreliable narrator in Silver Linings. The unnamed narrator presents Pat’s story as a sort of journal he eventually tries to send to his ex-wife Nikki, a journal which is a sort of instrument of propaganda, designed to convince Nikki to accept him again. However, cracks begin to appear in what Pat writes, the “journal” begins to contain passages that would probably not bring the “real” Nikki toward reconciliation—like Tiffany’s profane tirade we looked at last week. These are entries that Pat probably would not approve for his letters to Nikki, but they creep in anyway, showing the reader that Pat is not only unreliable in presenting the truth, but also not in full control of the narrative. Poor fellow. By the way, fun fact—there are a number of famous unreliable narrators in literature. Don Quixote is a prime example. We will examine what happens in the story—probably next week—but this time, I’d like to look at some of the assumptions the story makes and how this effects our reading. There’s an implication that a separate “reality” exists as a background to Pat’s journal. His version of things is clearly not a reliable picture of the reality of the story and the characters in it. His is a very idiosyncratic version designed to influence, to paint a pretty picture of his resolve to “be kind rather than right.” We get a sense that the other characters do not necessarily share this world, that they inhabit a different version of reality. Tiffany is a prime example, as is Jake, Pat’s father, even his long-suffering mother. To varying degrees, they reject and challenge, and dis-confirm Pat’s world-view. There’s an implication that they are more correct, and that Pat is often delusional, yet they are not shown as being smarter or as not having problems. In fact, it’s clear that Tiffany is very troubled. Pat’s father is an alcoholic, abusive jerk. Dr. Patel, Pat’s psychiatrist, comes closest to being wise, but he is also shown letting Pat encounter him as a real person who loves professional football. This is part of the complexity of the story. It would be quite different if Pat met an unequivocally wise person who would present a more stable and “realistic” view of life to challenge Pat’s troubled one. But this doesn’t really happen—Tiffany is the one who finally cracks Pat’s delusions but she does it for her own reasons—she loves him and is jealous about his feelings for his ex-wife. The people in Pat’s life are all flawed humans with their own problems and agendas. His mother is pretty close to being self-less. But of course that’s her exact problem, and it causes her to be taken advantage of by the people she loves. In any case, we the readers only have what we have, Pat’s unreliable version at first, and then a growing crush of disconfirmation. We have to imagine how things “really are,” and this pulls us in to the story. We read passages where I think, we feel sorry for Pat because it’s obvious how mistaken he is. We groan (causing raised eyebrows from our partners) when Pat returns to his “life as a movie with a happy ending” story. Contrast this with a story where everything is explained accurately, where the author makes all the characters mouth-pieces of her/his own agenda. An author who believes she/he is right and wishes to demonstrate this to the reader. It’s part of the strength of Silver Linings that we become so involved with Pat’s character, wanting him to succeed. To truly find a silver lining. And of course, at the end, he does find a silver lining in Tiffany’s love, but it’s not a sweeping one that miraculously makes everything better. He must endure pain and loss to get to a better place, and at the end of the story, it’s clear that his struggle is not over. The ending is open. ‘Kay. Many of you have asked me to comment on the more formal elements of this fine book, and I will do so now. In terms of the narrative structure of Silver Linings, we have a story told by an unreliable first-person narrator whose story is, of course, actually told by a nameless, faceless narrator entity who is able to be inside the protagonist’s head. Present tense is utilized throughout, along with some conditional passages that collapse time (making use of “she/he would” type of constructions). Adaptations of film techniques are used—the repetitive “montage” section that also collapses time. Frequent use of letters are used, which adds another layer to the text. Reference is made to a number of other novels—because Pat is trying to read the books that Nikki teaches to her class. The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, A Farewell to Arms, and The Bell Jar are all described, and this cleverly provides a way for the Narrator to confront Pat’s delusions. These are all stories without happy endings—in Pat’s mind—and he angrily rejects them. However, the effect on the reader is to be shown that Pat is mistaken. The narrator entity’s presence can also be seen in passages we have discussed where other characters intrude on and confront both Pat’s delusions and his composition of a propaganda type “Notebook” to win back his ex-wife. Also we have the chapter titles that seem to slyly question Pat’s rigid world and poke ironic fun at the events in the story. “An Infinite Amount of Days Till My Inevitable Reunion With Nikki.” “I Fear Him More Than Any Other Human Being.” “Break Free of a Nimbostratus.” Next week, we’ll look more at the ending of the story and how Pat’s character transforms. Till then, my dears. #TheSilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick

I have said that, in Silver Linings, Pat is an unreliable narrator. Let’s look at this more closely. An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They aren’t telling the story accurately, because of a need to lie, or in Pat’s case, a need to deny the truth. Hold up, hold up! Is Pat even the narrator of Silver Linings? It’s probably more accurate to say that the story’s narrator tells the story through Pat’s experience, his consciousness. (whiny voice—Mr. Big Shot, Mr. Big Shot, can you talk about something else now?) The story is Pat’s voice, mostly Pat’s voice—there are also those things the style of the novel conveys, like the chapter titles. (Well, sure). It’s Pat’s voice, and like all of us humans, he’s sometimes in error. It’s an interesting puzzle, best beloved. The protagonist is telling a story that the reader increasingly comes to realize is in error—which implies there is another, truer story that’s conveyed somehow. (Gibberish!) Pat’s voice says: “…and then there is my writing, which is mostly daily memoirs like this one, so that Nikki will be able to read about my life and know exactly what I’ve been up to since apart time began. (my memory started to slip in the bad place because of the drugs, so I began writing down everything that happens to me, keeping track of what I will need to tell Nikki when apart time concludes, to catch her up on my life. But the doctors…confiscated everything I wrote before I came home, so I had to start over.” So Pat explains just what Silver Linings is, a way to communicate with Nikki, the implication being that it is a sanitized version for her consumption. He’s writing an account of his life but it is for her, it is not necessarily the truth. It’s what he wants her to believe. It emphasizes that he wants to get back together, that he’s doing all the things she wanted him to do—be in shape, read the books she taught. The character of Pat is someone who believes he can make up for all his errors and get back the life he used to have. He idealizes Nikki and their life together. So how does the reader come to realize that Pat is an unreliable narrator and that there is another, truer reality, a reality he must come to accept? (More on that next time). It’s clear from the first chapter that Pat has been confined in a psychiatric hospital and is supposed to be taking medication. At the same time, he espouses his silver linings philosophy and idealization of Nikki. His mother gets him out—it’s said because good lawyers are involved who promise the court that Pat will be in outpatient therapy and take his meds. Why is he in a psych hospital taking meds? Why does everyone there tell him that Nikki will not come back no matter what he does? If you have some conception about psych hospitals and mental health treatment, you might wonder at Pat’s grasp of reality and suspect that he is an unreliable narrator. If he is just this nice, positive guy who loves his wife, why did she leave him? And why is he in the hospital? These are significant questions the reader starts to ask. Once he’s home, Pat’s conception of things shifts, his idealization of Nikki slips. He reads the books she assigns to her students to read (she’s a high school teacher), and is upset by Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway. In his view, neither are creators of silver linings. Why, he wonders, would Nikki teach such depressing stuff to kids? Other characters, his friend Tiffany, his mother, Ronnie, Jake, Dr. Patel, begin to challenge his view. The Sister Sailor Mouth chapter contains a fine example. Pat reacts violently at a Philadelphia Eagle’s game, losing his temper and assaulting a Giants fan who had assaulted his brother, Jake, but is terrified that Nikki will be angry at his behavior. He talks first with his new friend Tiffany about it, and her reaction is swift and profane. “Fuck Nikki,” Tiffany says. “The Giants fan sounds like a total prick, as do your brother and your friend Scott. You didn’t start the fight. You only defended yourself. And if Nikki can’t deal with that, if Nikki won’t support you when you are feeling down, then I say fuck her.” Pat says, “Don’t you ever talk about my wife like that.” “Your wife, huh…You mean your wife, Nikki, who abandoned you while you were recovering in a mental institution. Why isn’t your wife, Nikki, sitting here with you now, Pat? Think about it. Why are you eating fucking raisin bran with me? All you ever think about is pleasing Nikki, and yet your precious Nikki doesn’t seem to think about you at all.” Pat reports, “I’m too shocked to speak.” There are other cracks. Pat’s brother Jake reveals that Pat has been in the hospital for several years vs. the few months he thought. Pat’s mother gets drunk and tells him Nikki was not such a great wife. Pat begins to transform, and as a result becomes less unreliable as a narrator. He is confronted with other character’s views and must struggle to render his own congruent. Instead of presenting a “sugar-coated” story for his ex-wife, he starts to focus in a more honest way on his own inner turmoil. #TheSilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick

I'm very pleased to announce that Blue Lake Review will publish my short story "The Loss of the Whaling Ship Pequod" in their May issue. Yes, my friends, there is a Moby Dick reference here, but the story is about the Dreamers Program, the pathway to citizenship that was under so much attack in the previous administration. When the story comes out in May, I'll post a link.

This week a new story, Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel, The Silver Linings Playbook. I first read the book six years ago after seeing the great film adaptation directed by David O. Russell, and the differences between the two intrigued me. I believe the book is a darker rendering with a more open ending. Matthew Quick was a public and private school English teacher. Silver Linings was his first published book and was nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award and optioned for a film before it was published. My position reading the book for the first time was a unique one. (Because you think you’re special). I refuse to get drawn into childish name calling with certain audience members. If you don’t have anything constructive to say, then just listen. As is said in Silver Linings, it’s better to be kind than to be right. (Bully!) I had a whole set of pre-conceptions about the characters and story. I knew nothing of Mr. Quick. I quickly realized the novel was a different beastie than the film and grew to appreciate it in its own right. I’ve read that David O. Russell filmed more than one version of the script before settling on one—specifically having Robert De Niro portray the character of the father as darker vs. more comedic. However, neither Mr. Russell nor Mr. De Niro have commented on these matters to me. (Because they don’t care). Silver Linings the novel is what we will focus on. I have the first paperback edition from 2010, published before the film was made. The first-time reader is confronted with the cover that displays the title, and a distant image of two people jogging down a suburban street. The author’s name is there, as well as a quotation from “Nancy Pearl, NPR, Summer’s Best Books,” in which she says, “Heartwarming, humorous, and soul-satisfying.” Well, such is the standard for book promotion. Since I spend most of my waking hours listening to National Public Radio, I took this quote positively. The title refers to silver linings, a focus on positive things, and to playbooks, an athletic reference, the whole title seems to refer to an athlete’s guide to achieving silver linings. Here we have an interesting self-referential thingee. The book is indeed about a former athletic coach who has a personal philosophy about seeing the positive, and the story itself is a kind of guide for the reader on how to find silver linings—not at all in any pedantic way, meaning it doesn’t hit you over the head, trying to teach you something. But there is wisdom within. However, the protagonist’s philosophy is shown to be—at least initially—largely derived from self-delusion and denial. Pat Peoples (Pat Solitano in the film) is a former high school teacher who, at the beginning of the story, is released from a psychiatric hospital where he’s been confined after a brutal assault on a man his wife Nikki was having an affair with. He has coped with being hospitalized by idealizing his now ex-wife and believing that he can magically make her return to him by becoming the person he thinks she wanted him to be. That’s a tortuous sentence. In Pat’s words: “I believe in happy endings…And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time…Haven’t you ever noticed that life is like a series of movies?…Well, you have adventures. All start out with troubles, but then you admit your problems and become a better person by working really hard, which is what fertilizes the happy ending and allows it to bloom…Plus I know it’s almost time for the happy ending, when Nikki will come back, because I have improved myself so very much through physical fitness and medication and therapy.” Works of fiction are made up; the reader is always asked to accept certain elements of a story’s reality on faith. Silver Lining is a realist novel told in memoir style by a first person narrator who we’re asked to accept as the voice of Pat Peoples, the protagonist who we’re also asked to accept as a “real” person. Not so hard, he presents himself in realistic fashion, albeit obsessed and in denial. Further, we’re asked to believe that he is communicating with us through a text, that he is telling us a story. As this story develops, we come to understand that Pat is an “unreliable narrator.” In other words, he believes what he is relating is true, but we start to doubt that he knows what he’s talking about. More on this next time. Of course, in the time-honored tradition of this blog and my thoughts, I would like to— (Sounds of loud yawning). I would like to present the classic story-telling triumvirate in Silver Linings—first, the real author, Matthew Quick, second, the Narrator who stays pretty close to the Protagonist, and finally, the book’s style. We have immediate evidence of the presence of the style in the chapter headings. Chapter 1 is entitled, “An Infinite Amount of Days Until My Inevitable Reunion with Nicki.” Very interesting, almost like another layer and voice of commentary. Ostensibly in Pat’s voice, this phrase is saying Pat’s reunion with his ex-wife is both an infinite number of days away (it will never occur) and inevitable—a bit of a paradox. Of course, you can also take it as a somewhat poetic expression of Pat’s experience—that his wait to be re-united with his wife feels endless. However, as we read, we form the impression that Pat is rather concrete and not terribly poetic. Further, Pat would not, particularly at this early stage, admit that the reunion is infinitely off in the future, being very committed to re-union. Curious. Who is communicating with us here? Is it the Narrator? Don’t think so. I think it’s the style, the text’s implied author whom we’ve had to flush out before. The style or the implied author, begins to diverge from the story presented by the Narrator about the Protagonist, gradually showing the reader that the Protagonist is mistaken. Actually the Narrator also assists the reader in understanding that Pat is mistaken by showing, not these chapter titles, but certain interactions with other characters. #TheSilverLiningsPlaybook #MatthewQuick