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/lit/ - Literature

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18886783 No.18886783 [Reply] [Original]

What is the /lit/ opinion on Kazuo Ishiguro?

Personally I've loved every single novel of his, such a talent for atmosphere.

>> No.18886795
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18886795

>Cazzo Esciduro

>> No.18886849

very good indeed

>> No.18886999

I remember some self professed oldfag saying he was very popular here in the first year of the board.

>> No.18887037
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18887037

>>18886999
trips confirm the oldfag prophecy

>> No.18887042
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18887042

>>18886783
Ishiguroanon #2 here (the original /lit/ Ishiguro fan predates me but doesn't seem to post anymore). Love him to pieces. A wonderful writer. Very content to do his own thing, and he does it well. Banal and yet remarkably powerful. Great writer. Remains of the Day helped me to change my direction in life, and I'll be forever thankful of Ishiguro for that.

>> No.18888573

The Unconsoled sounds so derivative

should i buy it?

>> No.18888586

Do yall like Tao Lin? I'm reading Taipei and it fucking sucks.

>> No.18888597

>>18886783
The unconsolable is a masterpiece

>> No.18888714

>>18888573
Dunno bro. I enjoyed it, but it's not so much that it's derivative, more like he sets up this scenario with the baffled Ryder being led through half-understood requests from the townspeope and just reels it off again and again for hundreds of pages. The book could have been half the length with the same meaning, or twice as long and still entertaining.

>> No.18890010

>>18886783
What are his best book to read first?

>> No.18890135

>>18890010
There is a chart that tells you where to start just 5 posts above your own: >>18887042

>> No.18890881

>>18886783
>Kazuo Ishiguro
Who?

>> No.18890891

>>18888597
what does that even mean?

>> No.18891198

>>18886783
>TOLSTOY'S REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IS PROBLEMATIC REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>> No.18891216

I'm newish to reading and read Klara and never let me go. Loved them.

>> No.18891232

Everything I’ve read by him had a really enjoyable atmosphere. It’s hard to explain in words but maybe you’ll get it if you read him.

>> No.18892176

>>18891198
It really is though.

>> No.18892193

>>18891198
??

>> No.18892381

>>18891198
Ishiguro never cared about such things, faggot

>> No.18893824

Bump for based Kazuo

>> No.18893835

Bland and safe. Probably the worst type of 1900s on filth. Remains of the Day was an embarassment. May have read one other by him that was written after, but did not finish it. Forgot the name.

>> No.18894086

>>18893835
Care to elucidate this point?

>> No.18894095

>>18887042
I loved Nocturnes :(

>> No.18894184

Reminds me of a certain helicopter fan

>> No.18894282

>>18894086
>first person from a racist nazi butler as a metaphor for Banality of Evil
Boring writing anyone could. I only read writers who have better prose and are more creative than me, he is neither. Then I read Never Let Me Go and I don't remember it.

>> No.18894288

>>18894086
>Care to elucidate this point?
He's not creative

>> No.18894436

>>18894095
My impression of them was that one or two were good, and the others were kind of meh. Which were your favorites, anon, and why?

>>18894282
>first person from a racist nazi butler as a metaphor for Banality of Evil
If that's what you get from Stevens and Remains of the Day, then I can confidently say that you're so wrapped up in being woke in the ongoing culture war that you're missing the point of Ishiguro's book, which is sad and a shame (and both the sadness and the shame are yours, not Ishiguro's).

>> No.18894468

>>18894436
>If that's what you get from Stevens and Remains of the Day, then I can confidently say that you're so wrapped up in being woke in the ongoing culture war that you're missing the point of Ishiguro's book,

The book is just ordinary, the prose is basic, the ideas are basic, no fluidity, no creativty. A complete waste of time and the political metaphor just adds to the complete corporeality and Earthliness that is Ishiguro. When I read I want to float not be bogged down by relevant statements and platitudes.

>20th Century Asian diasporee esposuing secular liberalism and the evils of the Nazis part 10
Nothing interesting at all in there.

>> No.18894522

>>18894468
You are so focused on the nazis, anon, that you're missing the forest for the trees. Remains of the Day is a portrait of a wasted life, by one who is so remarkably repressed that even when he has his epiphany that he wasted his life by living for others instead of taking responsibility for his own life, he still goes right back to rededicating his life to being in the service of others just half a page later.

Is that a basic point? Maybe, but it's expressed remarkably well, and with much more subtlety than something like John Williams' Stoner which /lit/ so loves to worship (I don't mean to denigrate Williams here, FWIW).

Ishiguro's prose fits his narrator perfectly in Remains. You might say that Ishiguro lacks much range, and you would not be wrong, but you would be wrong to say that his prose is out of place in Remains. And I don't know how you can with a straight face say that Ishiguro lacks fluidity, when he's basically taking a pseudo-Proustian approach to how Stevens keeps circling back on his memories over and over again. As for creativity, I defy you to show someone making the metaphor between Stevens and Jesus (in the washing of feet) in this context.

I mean, I get it - you don't enjoy Ishiguro and he doesn't do anything for you. Fair enough. De gustibus non est disputandum. But to say that he is enitrely a waste, when there is so much other much worse literature being written today, just seems like you have some personal axe to grind. Why not talk shit about Waldun in all of his shitty threads, instead of shitting up a nice, comfy, Ishiguro thread?

>> No.18894594

>>18894522
Could you tell me in all honesty any work of literature from pre-1900 that is 'a portrait of a wasted life' and if not then why this contemporary invention is something I'd ever want to read lol? Sounds malicious, smug, and only allowable because he made him a nazi enabler lol. It's just one guy, as you said, focused on that one aspect on him: That he is obsequious and wasted his life. Updike and Bellow do that too, and I think it's just a terrible style of writing that honestly is plaguing contemporary literature. Even reading someone like Celine and Kerouac and they're doing it too and their aesthetically unrefined ways, it's just solipism.

Williams should be denigrated he is absolutely horrific.

I wouldn't rate Proust very highly either and Thackeray and Swinburne deal with memory more effectively, as does Henry James in some instances. I don't enjoy this post-1900s highly introspective writing with a singular purpose-- type of terse writing. It seems callous and easy to me. I don't really value psychology in general.

Because Ishiguro won the nobel prize and IDC about /lit/ memes enough to take them seriously or even enter those threads. My aim is to criticize the top, because that is when we get innovation.

The 1900s writers I value that aren't basically direct responses to the previous generation (HG Wells, most pulp, Ford Madox Ford, Hamsun, etc.) are William Burroughs, Nabokov, and Anthony Burgess all of which show much more creativty and looser daring prose than Ishiguro did in those two books.

>> No.18894599

>>18894594
>>18894522
Also, One Hand Clapping by Burgess is basically a much more enjoyable Remains of the Day without the obvious political element and a general commentary on working conditions. I mean it's so easy to criticize the Nazis in 1989 that there's zero point of putting it in there and sours the mood for me.

>> No.18894761

>>18894599
>>18893835
i like you anon
you think very clearly... like me
keep up the spirit even if these midwits try to bring you down

Do you like Celine's Journey to the End of the Night btw?

>> No.18894965

>>18894282
>butler as a metaphor for Banality of Evil

You seem to have completely missed the point there mate. The Eichmann comparison would suggest that the butler's actions have any consequence, which they don't. He's reduced himself to an accessory to another man who failed by his own measure. It's little to do with race or facism, everything to do with the class system and the risk of letting work ethic eat your individuality to the point where you can't even see your chance to escape.

>> No.18894996

>>18894594
>Could you tell me in all honesty any work of literature from pre-1900 that is 'a portrait of a wasted life'

Great Expectations
Pere Goriot
New Grub Street
Middlemarch
Notes From Underground
Jude the Obscure