{"id":137276,"date":"2021-02-23T08:47:39","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T16:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=137276"},"modified":"2021-02-23T08:50:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T16:50:14","slug":"kazuo-ishiguro-sees-what-the-future-is-doing-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=137276","title":{"rendered":"Kazuo Ishiguro Sees What the Future Is Doing to Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/02\/23\/magazine\/kazuo-ishiguro-klara.html\">From the New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>* As a man is, so he writes, and Ishiguro\u2019s sentences have nothing to prove. In the hands of some of his contemporaries \u2014 Martin Amis, say, or Salman Rushdie \u2014 the novel can sometimes feel like a vehicle for talent; high-burnish prose comes at the reader in a blaze of virtuosity, but the aesthetic whole isn\u2019t always equal to the sum of its parts. Ishiguro, a practitioner of self-effacing craft, takes a contrary approach. At first glance, his books can appear ordinary. \u201cIt seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days\u201d is the far from dazzling first sentence of \u201cThe Remains of the Day.\u201d The real action happens between the lines, or behind them, as when Stevens justifies his taste for sentimental romance novels on the grounds that they provide \u201can extremely efficient way to maintain and develop one\u2019s command of the English language.\u201d That they might also provide a dose of wish-fulfillment to a disconsolate, middle-aged bachelor is something we are left to infer for ourselves. It is not for nothing that Ishiguro has named Charlotte Bront\u00eb as the novelist who has influenced him most. From \u201cJane Eyre,\u201d he learned how to write first-person narrators who hide their feelings from themselves but are transparent to other people.<\/p>\n<p>* His family believed it was important to respect local ways, however odd they might appear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the New York Times: * As a man is, so he writes, and Ishiguro\u2019s sentences have nothing to prove. In the hands of some of his contemporaries \u2014 Martin Amis, say, or Salman Rushdie \u2014 the novel can sometimes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=137276\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137276"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137279,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137276\/revisions\/137279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}