Kazuo Ishiguro

[Anonymous No.15852744]

Are works of Ishiguro boring, or is it just me being bored with the stuff he wrote?

[Anonymous No.15852749]

>>15852744
I liked that book

[Anonymous No.15852757]

I've only read The Unconsoled and it wasn't boring

[Anonymous No.15852774]

Remains Of The Day is so fucking good.

[Anonymous No.15852776]

>>15852744
The Buried Giant was boring. I don't think his other books are but they do lack pizzazz.

[Anonymous No.15852814]

>>15852744
Funny, OP. I'd just finished this book when I came on here and saw your thread. I'm not sure why you found it boring, desu. It was incredibly engaging to me, and I must say it has made me rather melancholy for now. Perhaps once I 'sober up' from it I'll be able to see its flaws more clearly.

[Anonymous No.15852834]

That's Jeff Bezo's favorite book. Isn't amazing how one man can read a book and only be moved to make a shitpost, while another man reads the same book and founds a trillion dollar corporation.

[Anonymous No.15853187]

>>15852744
It's probably more you being a boring person who is incapable of looking even a millimetre below the surface (outside of "The Unconsoled," Ishiguro's work is not difficult or opaque). If the roiling and breaking souls of otherwise repressed characters (who constantly lie to themselves about their problems and feelings; Ishiguro is an absolute master of the unreliable narrator) doesn't get you going, then I guess it's time to go back to Tom Clancy and the like.

Remains of the Day is a masterpiece: charming, funny, and ultimately deeply tragic and devastating.

[Anonymous No.15853308]

>>15852744

You have to have not autism to understand his works (which are ironically about autism).

[Anonymous No.15853316]

>>15853187
>Ishiguro is an absolute master of the unreliable narrator

He stole this gimmick from Charlotte Bronte's Villette desu

[Anonymous No.15853356]

>>15853316
I don't disagree (and I don't think Ishiguro would either).

[Anonymous No.15853365]

>>15853316
>>15853356
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/books/review/kazuo-ishiguro-by-the-book.html
>Who is your favorite novelist of all time?
>Charlotte Brontë’s recently edged out Dostoyevsky. As I reread in maturity, I’m less patient with Dostoyevsky’s sentimentality, and those long improvised meanderings that should have been edited out. But his take on insanity is so wide-ranging and profound, one begins to suspect it’s a universal condition. As for Brontë, well, I owe my career, and a lot else besides, to “Jane Eyre” and “Villette.”

[Anonymous No.15853489]

>>15853365
>As I reread in maturity, I’m less patient with Dostoyevsky’s sentimentality, and those long improvised meanderings that should have been edited out.

lol what a pleb. this is what gets the nobel prize?

[Anonymous No.15853498]

>>15853489
I think he's just more mature than you desu senpai.

[Anonymous No.15853519]

Remains of the Day was incredible. LIke reading your diary, if you have avoidant tendencies.

[Anonymous No.15853596]

>>15852744
Honestly I agree. I found Remains of the Day largely dull with a concept that was so immediately obvious that most of the book just felt like belaboring the point. I had similar feelings about Never Let Me Go, which was also dull. I might reread it eventually to see if I'm missing something, but at this point I'd rather not.

>>15853187
While I agree that Ishiguro has a lot of technical chops when it comes to framing and narrative techniques, I agree completely with OP that Remains of the Day is just boring. The prose is adequate but not spectacular and the central theme of emotional repression and the faultiness of dignified service as a virtue in itself are both made abundantly obvious and are really fairly run of the mill ideas to anyone who's studied the period.

[Anonymous No.15853915]

>>15853596
ten bucks says people who say remains of the day sucks watched the movie and pretend to have read the novel, the novel is actually very subtly based I'm surprised he could sneak it past the awards committees

[Anonymous No.15853953]

>>15852744
>>15853596
>I found Remains of the Day largely dull with a concept that was so immediately obvious that most of the book just felt like belaboring the point.

I agree. I've read everything he wrote except for Pale View of Hills and his books tend to lean towards the loquacious and droll. Utterly inoffensive and obvious in their thematic content. Actually quite disappointing given all the hype surrounding his work. There's just something about his writing that's wooden and I felt that more than ever in The Buried Giant, where everyone speaks like a genteel Victorian Englishman without an impolite bone in their body. Completely devoid of passion. His best was Never Let Me Go.

[Anonymous No.15853965]

>>15853953
>His best was Never Let Me Go
Funny, I tend to think that NLMG was his worst except for Pale View and Orphans (though I enjoy Orphans quite a bit even though I recognize it's many failings).

[Anonymous No.15853978]

>>15852744
>>15853596
>>15853953

You have to go back.

[Anonymous No.15854012]

>>15853965
I found NLMG to be moving at parts. The fatalism and melancholy achieved the desired effect in a way that his others just fail to do. His method of gradually unveiling the layers of memory in the narrator actually jives with the plot and doesn't seem artificial or tacked on. You can definitely see what he's trying to do in his books, but it so often falls flat. The scenes in ROTD towards the end where he goes for a fractured effect in Stevens' recollections were so bad

>>15853978
read better books. There are others who do what he does much better

[Anonymous No.15854030]

>>15854012
If you thought remains of the day was "boring" what kind of books do you find "exciting"? You come off like a fucking pleb.

[Anonymous No.15854057]

>>15854030
Hilarious that someone tonguing the anus of a middlebrow author like Ishiguro is calling anyone else a pleb (he's better than Murakami, I'll give him that). Read this or some Walker Percy, son. You need a little pathos in your reading life.

[Anonymous No.15854220]

>>15854057
What the hell does he have to do with Murakami? And that's your recommendation? Some dopey 2nd rate pomo shit? Man gtfo of here lol

[Anonymous No.15854277]

>>15854220
You don't read literature

[Anonymous No.15854288]

>>15854277
No you.

[Anonymous No.15854333]

>>15852776
it's literature what do you expect? Buried Giant is great if you have above-average IQ to appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.15855169]

Bump for based Kazuo.

[Anonymous No.15855403]

Never Let Me Go was a pretty good misery porn.

[Anonymous No.15855413]

>>15852744
how come his lordship was so based?

[Anonymous No.15855688]

>>15853953
>inoffensive and obvious in their thematic content
Not a criticism that makes sense in fiction, or if it was it's a criticism that would see us discard almost the entire canon. Mouldbreaking ideas ought to be made directly so that they are maximally open to criticism, fiction is there to re-express the truth in a way that's more in line with lived experience.

>devoid of passion
Don't get this at all, his stuff is all about unspoken or inexpressible passion. "Spectacular" prose about sadness is for people who can only mourn by screaming and beating their chests.

[Anonymous No.15856447]

>>15853187
I wasn't explicitly talking about Remains of the day, but more about his works in general (including Remains of the day, yes).
(You) providing my character analysis is very much appreciated, cunt.

[Anonymous No.15857728]

>>15857714
>(You) providing my character analysis is very much appreciated, cunt.
In that way, I am like jannies - I throw those in for free.

[Anonymous No.15857743]

>>15856447
>(You) providing my character analysis is very much appreciated, cunt.
In that way, I am like jannies - I throw those in for free.