Book Review: Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day
I've been searching for the words to describe Ishiguro's book. There's something about it - purity? Perfection?
It's somewhat like looking at a painting or being enamored by sincere poetry, it leaves something in you, that stays for days on end and carefully unfolds to maturity.
Ishiguro tells the story of an English Butler who voyages through memory lane, holding up his life to the critique that hindsight offers. This is a story of a man dedicated to duty, loyal to a fault - if there's anything such as this. Duty came first for him, and before its altar all else is put to rest - affection, love, personal life, opinion, common sense. This is, in a few words, what dignity entailed according to Mr Stevens, the Butler. Hear him speak: "The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost; they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming, or vexing. They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstances tear it for him in the public gaze; he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone."
During the course of the novel, you become friends with Mr Stevens, you get to know him. And so you shed silent tears for him as you see his loneliness, solitariness and near despondency. You pity him as he stands naked before what would have been; a life that would have been–and I say this cautiously–happy. You cannot but see, at the end of the book and near the end of Mr. Steven's life, that what you have read is a summary of a life lived with dignity and the utmost professionalism but all the same, a 'wasted life'. He realizes this and he himself says:
"I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?"
But for Steven, and indeed for us all, "What can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?"
"What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment."
We should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of our day.
"The Remains of the Day" is many things, not a single thing. Ishiguro's handle on the structure of words, and his prosaic mastery is definitely a feat one must aspire to. "I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets its beauty apart." This book, in my opinion, is not for everyone, it’s for the tender and the thoughtful unafraid of being broken at the end of a page.
