Word: ishiguro
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Nocturnes,” Ishiguro examines that dreaded moment in which people arrive at middle age and have to confront their mediocrity. Characters drift apart as they realize that they have not fulfilled their individual ambitions: the marriage between trophy wife Lindy Gardner and her fading American crooner husband unravels; the apprenticeship of a young Russian cellist under a woman who professes to be an accomplished musician dissolves; a struggling jazz musician, seeking notoriety, undergoes an unnecessary facelift and befriends Gardner while recovering from his surgery in a futile attempt to achieve celebrity...
...notably employed this technique in “Remains of the Day,” which won him the Man Booker Prize in 1989. In that novel, the main character conceals as much of his psyche as he reveals, leading to a gradual but profound understanding of his life. Ishiguro depicts the characters that form “Nocturnes” in a similar way; he uses the first person throughout. But perhaps because of the constraints of short form fiction, he doesn’t allow his character to undergo a full emotional unfolding...
Nonetheless, Ishiguro remains a master at sketching out environments and characters through minimal, precise language. The struggling songwriter manages to conjure a grimy, lethargic music scene with characteristically British wit: “But the majority of auditions happened at a much more shambolic level. In fact, when you saw the way most bands went about things, it was no mystery why the whole scene in London was dying on its feet.” In the same way, the American jazz musician who befriends Gardner, has a completely different syntax that instantly identifies him as a member...
While Ishiguro’s depiction of the confrontation with failure appears wanting, his examination of protective psychological mechanisms remains one of the strongest points of the collection, underscoring both life’s pathos and surrealism. Ishiguro examines the absurdity of how humans protect themselves from the outside world and the moment in which this protection begins to wear down. Eloise McCormack, the self-professed virtuoso cellist who coaches young Tibor on his technique, eventually confesses that she cannot play the cello. She justifies this by claiming that other, less-gifted teachers would have destroyed her innate gift...
Short-listed for the man Booker Prize for four out of his six novels, of which one, The Remains of the Day, won in 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro is the undisputed genius of vagueness, threshold states and constantly shifting surfaces. Now he has turned his attention to the short story for the first time. Nocturnes, subtitled "Five Stories of Music and Nightfall," was written, Ishiguro said in a recent interview, as a unified, organic project from beginning to end. It is much like a novel and unlike most short-story collections, which tend to be a gathering of work published elsewhere...