First published 5th April 2015
Ursula K. Le Guin (a.k.a. Morgan Le Fey) has recently laid a curse on Kazuo Ishiguro (a.k.a. Don Quixote). Now, maybe an unread obscure indie dilettante novelist like myself (a.k.a. Bilbo Baggins) can get away with breaking all the genre rules, you know: write literary fiction beneath the invisibility cloak of genre fictions, sub fictions, tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral. I’m free to mix up the sacred genres how I like and do whatever it takes to piss off publishers and readers. For a writer like me this is the only joy. But our living literary national treasures like Kazuo Ishiguro cannot. In fact, it would seem, given the recent literati bun fight, they shouldnot. In some ways I feel sorry for Ishiguro standing there looking lost, a little bemused at all the foggy fuss over his latest novel, The Buried Giant. I mean, no one seems to care what he cares about. Even if he may have misjudged things this time – failed, maybe, to listen to his wife’s concerns (apparently) – he’s still, I believe, an honest and authentic writer. He’s also almost an intellectual and, to be a popular intellectual in this day and age is very rare indeed. It’s almost oxymoronic in this moronic world. Sniff. Sigh.
Whatever.
The bun fight, indeed.
What bun fight?
You know, the one that has covered the literary land with a strange mist that has everyone forgetting stuff. The fog that pervades literary media and ensures that no one talks about what the book is actually trying to say. Hmm, reading over Ursula K. Le Guin’s blog reminds me this might be because no one really careswhat Ishiguro’s first novel in ten years is about. Certainly Le Guin doesn’t.
Everyone in the room is talking but no one listens.
Oh, but I’m interested. Like the novel’s Saxon warrior, Wistan, I’ll not be so easily sidetracked or hoodwinked or stumble off into the marshes because of some smoke screen bull shit. Sure, I want to know, when the fog clears, the mists lift, if we have a great Alpine view – or is the landscape revealed to be more mundane and a little disappointing? Later, we’ll see…
But for now, back to the bun fight. Here it is:
Alexandra Alter (19th Feb New York Times) quotes David Mitchell:
Some fans view “The Buried Giant” as a leap not just for Mr. Ishiguro, but also for fantasy literature as a whole. David Mitchell, author of “Cloud Atlas,” said in an email that if he was “forced at knife point” to name his favorite Ishiguro novel, he would choose “The Buried Giant” for the way it uses fantasy tropes to explore questions about love and mortality.
“Fantasy plus literary fiction can achieve things that frank blank realism can’t,” said Mr. Mitchell, who added that he hoped “The Buried Giant” would help to “de-stigmatize” fantasy. “Bending the laws of what we call reality in a novel doesn’t necessarily lead to elves saying ‘Make haste! These woods will be swarming with orcs by nightfall.’ ”
After:
“Mr. Ishiguro still seems slightly anxious about how the book will be received. It could be embraced as brilliant and groundbreaking, or it could be a spectacular flop if readers balk at his full-on excursion into fantasy.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”
This taken up by Le Guin in her Book View Café blog post of 2nd March:
Quoted in the main:
A wild country inhabited by monsters, an old couple who must leave their home without knowing exactly why, a sense that important things have been, perhaps must be, forgotten… Such images and moods could well embody a story about the approach of old age to death, and indeed I think that is at least in part the subject of the book. But so generic a landscape and such vague, elusive perceptions must be brought to life by the language of the telling. The whole thing is made out of words, after all. The imaginary must be imagined, accurately and with scrupulous consistency. A fantastic setting requires vivid and specific description; while characters may lose touch with their reality, the storyteller can’t. A toneless, inexact language is incapable of creating landscape, meaningful relationship, or credible event. And the vitality of characters in a semi-historical, semi-fanciful setting depends on lively, plausible representation of what they do and how they speak. The impairment of the characters’ memory in this book may justify the aimlessness of their behavior and the flat, dull quality of the dialogue, but then how is it that Axl never, ever, not once, forgets to address his wife as “princess”? I came to wish very much that he would. Mr. Ishiguro said to the interviewer, “Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?” Well, yes, they probably will. Why not? It appears that the author takes the word for an insult. To me that is so insulting, it reflects such thoughtless prejudice, that I had to write this piece in response. Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.
‘Surface elements,’ by which I take it he means ogres, dragons, Arthurian knights, mysterious boatmen, etc., which occur in certain works of great literary merit such as Beowulf, the Morte d’Arthur, and The Lord of the Rings, are also much imitated in contemporary commercial hackwork. Their presence or absence is not what constitutes a fantasy. Literary fantasy is the result of a vivid, powerful, coherent imagination drawing plausible impossibilities together into a vivid, powerful and coherent story, such as those mentioned, or The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland.
Familiar folktale and legendary ‘surface elements’ in Mr. Ishiguro’s novel are too obvious to blink away, but since he is a very famous novelist, I am sure reviewers who share his prejudice will never suggest that he has polluted his authorial gravitas with the childish whims of fantasy.
Respect for his readers should assure him that, whatever the book is, they will honestly try to follow him and understand what he was trying to do. I respect what I think he was trying to do, but for me it didn’t work. It couldn’t work. No writer can successfully use the ‘surface elements’ of a literary genre — far less its profound capacities — for a serious purpose, while despising it to the point of fearing identification with it. I found reading the book painful. It was like watching a man falling from a high wire while he shouts to the audience, “Are they going say I’m a tight-rope walker?”
To which Ishiguro replies in The Guardian on 8th March:
At a Guardian event held at the Royal Institution in London on Sunday, Ishiguro said that veteran author Ursula K. Le Guin was “a little bit hasty in nominating me as the latest enemy for her own agenda,” after she had written a blog post accusing him of “despising” the fantasy genre.
“I think she wants me to be the new Margaret Atwood,” he said, referring to the criticism the Canadian author and poet has received from Le Guin for distinguishing her writing as “speculative fiction” and for saying science fiction was about “talking squids in outer space”.
Blah, blah, blah.
First thing I’d suggest is that Le Guin and Ishiguro are actually on the same page i.e. the vehicle qua genre has little to do with the tenor of a novel taken as a metaphor. So what’s the big deal? Well, simple: sniping bad temper and professional jealousy. Le Guin’s blog provides a sort of Amazon one-star-teen-tantrum floundering attempt to understand the book because she’s pissed off and doesn’t want to understand in order to appreciate. It’s petty and sad. It’s vain.
It’s profoundly depressing that when a reasonably cerebral novel like this gets pushed onto the stage everyone (including apparently reputable writers like Le Guin and David Mitchell and literary critics) gets bogged down in weird arguments over orcs and pixies. Thanks to the mass fantasy cult – peddled by publishing arbiters of market segmentation and merchandising in recent years – any reference to pre-Chaucerian English/European culture triggers instant discussion of dungeons and dragons and them movies made by that bloke in New Zealand with elves and stuff or even that Hogwarts movie about owls.
Ursula K. Le Guin (and David Mitchell): no. Fantasy does not generally contain deeper, philosophical tenors. Fantasy is popular because it’s shallow, WYSIWYG and escapist. Fantasy is not metaphorical (in the general sense that there is nothing below the surface narrative). At most there is just plot, plot driven probably by a struggle between good and evil and resolved through some act or acts of revenge. There are characters but nothing profound or significant is said about the human condition or human relationships or how people change and develop. There is little if any psychodrama. Shallow, shallow, shallow. And that’s what most people are comfortable with and want. Sad but true. Fantasy is not literary literature because it’s literal.
When asked what a fantasy novel is about, it’s easy. A fantasy is ‘about’ what happens. There is no metaphorical ‘structure’ to explore. However, when asked what a metaphorical (literary) novel is about, that should be harder to answer. In fact the vehicular level (what Le Guin refers to as ‘surface elements’) is relatively unimportant in literary fiction. What really matters is the tenor of the novel’s ‘metaphor’ i.e. the philosophical premises, the arguments, the morality, the deeper message(s), the beliefs of the writer. Metaphor is what makes fiction literary. Metaphorical writings by intellectual writers baffle and upset most readers who inadvertently stray off the path of literal genre fiction like fantasy or ‘clit lit’. Initially such readers are confused then disappointed. Disappointment soon turns to anger and frustration fuelled by pricked self-esteem defence systems that shut down access to any further consideration or thought processes. Alarm bells ring through the empty caverns of their minds. Because no surface meaning seems immediately discernible, there is no meaning. The Amazon one-star-teen-tantrum fit follows: “There! Screw you, you pretentious asshole!”
Hmm.
Whatever it is, Ishiguro’s latest novel is not fantasy. Since Ishiguro is not free to flout the genre rules as easily as an independent invisible scribbler like me, maybe this tedious issue could be put to rest by saying The Buried Giant is really what Tzvetan Todorov would call ‘the fantastic’. Actually, strictly speaking, if we need to be precise about the novel’s literary classification, it may well be of ‘the marvellous’. But more, Ishiguro plays with elements of the forgotten and perhaps lost genre of mediaeval romance qua a life journey. Whatever, in Todorov’s terms The Buried Giant is of the same genre as, say, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 or Edgar Alan Poe’s The Black Cat. Kafka comes to mind too, of course. When placed in this genre, a genre that is a close cousin to magical realism, much of the dreamlike vagueness of The Buried Giant starts to make sense. To begin thinking about The Buried Giant in terms of the fantasy genre is as ridiculous as thinking about Angela Carter’s The Company of Wolves as being a muddled cribbed fairytale. Yeah right, doh!
Yes, I suppose getting the genre right does matter. Correct genre identity ensures the reader reads the narrative in the ‘right frame of mind’. Again, it is depressing that literary commentators can’t even get off this base one issue. There is no reference made to mediaeval romance. Many would never have heard of Todorov. And sure, when playing around with genres, writers take big risks with uninformed and not so literate readers and publishers who are bound to get upset because, for example, a satire on Fifty Shades of Grey, ‘failed to turn them on and was too farcical and silly.’ The illiterate are the most literal.
Blah, blah, doh.
Time to cut to the chase, or at least gallop more confidently in that direction and identify the tenor of Ishiguro’s novel. Well, ‘didn’t-do-it-for-me-confused-reader’ Ursula K. Le Guin claims the novel is: “a story about the approach of old age to death, and indeed … is at least in part the subject of the book.” Wrong. Even when Ishiguro is forced to spell things out to get readers on the right track (see Alter: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/boo…) some, like Le Guin – for reasons and agendas best known to themselves – effectively seek to dismiss the relevance of the book’s tenor altogether. They’re not interested in what the book is trying to say. For them it’s irrelevant. I think the bun fight thing is a shame, to be honest. A new book by a good novelist deserves more careful consideration and analysis than that generated by some vitriolic rant from a fellow and less admired – perhaps bitter – writer.
To forgive is to forget? To forget is to forgive? Of course, it is obvious, even to a squire’s packhorse, that Ishiguro is dealing with my old pluralistic friend multiculturalism. How can/should/do ethnically and culturally diverse peoples live in peace and harmony alongside each other? Indeed, how so particularly after past conflict? Okay, not Palestinians and Jews or Muslims in France but Celts and Saxons. But the subject of the theme is the same. Merlin’s figure of forgetfulness, the sleeping dragon, Querig is simply a device or symbol standing for the way peoples can and do forget differences after wars and conflicts. In a romance this will be a dragon. In the world of realpolitik this will be postmodern’s relativism, the League of Nations, the United Nations, the European Union.
But the sleeping dragon, the buried giant, is not really so important. It’s what the key characters (Axl and Beatrice on the one side and Wistan and Edwin on the other) decide to do that is more significant for Ishiguro. Consequently, Ishiguro is referring to what we ourselves, in the less marvellous world, decide to do with the socio-political machinery of forgetfulness and forgiveness.
Initially, it seems that Ishiguro is advocating a sort of forgive and forget approach to world peace. Bury differences. Let sleeping dragons lie. As such he might be in danger of clashing swords with Santayana and his “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” – that now rings like some prophetic curse, of course. Whatever, is this what Ishiguro intends? I mean to draw his sword against the Spanish St George!? It’s enough to get a genre mixer like me diving for cover over the saloon bar.
No. I don’t think this is Ishiguro’s intention. To get to the real tenor or message of the romance we need to look at what happens after Querig is slain. Forgetfulness is not forgiveness at all. Before the mist is lifted, characters are lost. Ishiguro attempts to capture a sense of unease and that the key characters seem to be driven by forces without themselves. Again, we have to be willing to read through the allegory here. (Too many critics fell over the fantasy controversy way back to have got this far. To find the true meaning of this novel is to find the Grail. Excelsior! Um, right. Where was I? Oh yes. So…). Freewill. Ah yes. That’s the point. Spoiler coming up:
You can’t forgive by forgetting. Forgiveness has to be an act of free will. It is an act of love. When memory returns to Axl and Beatrice, Axl forgives Beatrice her past infidelity in a sort of Verklärte Nacht gesture of true love. On the other hand, Wistan and his protégé, Edwin, choose hatred. What does this signify? It means that, after past wrongs – whether familial or on a bigger socio-political scale – we all choose to forgive through free acts of love or seek revenge through free acts of hate. Love or revenge. The choice is ours to make but only when we fully acknowledge the wrongs done to us. To forget is not to forgive.
One thing more: I don’t think Ishiguro is being prescriptive here. He’s not telling us how we should be. He is not presenting one way to be better or more valued than the other. Good artists, the better writers, are descriptive in their portrayals of human action and life choices. People just choose to love – and thereby forgive – or they do not. Interestingly, Axl’s final act of returning from his wife’s death boat destined for some Avalon Isle and their dead son is deliberately ambiguous. Within the death symbolism, it might simply be necessary because Axl is not himself yet dying/dead. I don’t think, however, his final action is intended to suggest a rejection of his love. Whatever, the moment is poignant for a reader able or willing to overcome the difficulties of wading through a postmodern pastiche of an Old to Middle English romance written in Modern English.
That’s the tenor for what it’s worth. Alpine view or boggy fenland?
Tricky. I mean, the message is cute, cosy and warm. More Malvern Hills, perhaps, than sublime Alpine peaks. The message isn’t original or philosophically daring. Possibly it’s relevant to modern times and the way terrorists test our taking faith in multiculturalism. Yes. Sure. Why not? And that alone is a pertinent and valuable excuse for a writer. No harm in repeating old values when they are being put to the test. Good art doesn’t have to have new messages. Blah, blah, blah.
But there is still the laughter and the cynical ridicule in critical circles. It is possibly a shame that the critical reception of The Buried Giant is unlikely to turn positive. It’s particularly shameful because at the journalistic level no one seems to be able to get beyond the fantasy genre issue to give the book’s meaning serious consideration. The fog of form obscures content.
Ishiguro has not just miscalculated his readership but modern/contemporary culture. Very few readers now can or care to access Beowulf, Gawain and the Green Knight, Saxon riddle poems, ancient Celtic poems of Welsh bards, Chaucer, Cervantes or even Rosemary Sutcliffe and Ann Radcliffe other than through post Tolkien fantasy nonsense. That fact should serve to condemn our modern media-driven culture more than to condemn a writer perhaps foolhardy enough to test it. A culture that has forgotten its roots and history is barely a culture at all. Perhaps Ishiguro should explore this more dangerous facet of forgetfulness? Perhaps journalists writing lit. crit. should dig out their parents’ dusty copies of Graves’s The White Goddess. I don’t know. Whatever it takes…
But one last thing: if the vehicle of Ishiguro’s novel fails to connect to a modern ‘illiterary’ audience, the tenor is possibly relevant to today but not so original, then what of the ground, the connection between vehicle and tenor without which no good analysis of a novel’s figurative qualities should conclude?
Is the language appropriate, given the theme? The quick answer is: it could have been. If I want to criticise the book for the right reasons, it is over Ishiguro’s eclectic mishmash of intertextualities. I do have real issues here, and rather than bore with too much reference and detail, I’ll point out two and bit particular examples that grate.
The first is the character Sir Gawain. The literary origins of Gawain go back to Malory and other Arthurian legend poets and writers and also the anonymous The Gawain Poet, of course (a confessed fact Ishiguro quietly refers to in an attempt to point the hullabaloo crowd towards his intended allusions – Alter, NYT). That’s cool. No problems there. But Ishiguro very oddly seems to conflate this most upright and stern of chivalric knights with the sort of comical Don Quixote knight of Renaissance satire.
The second is over what feels like a poor mix between Middle English tropes and figures from probably Chaucer with Old English or Saxon references. Maybe this is an ‘okayish’ mixing of echoes and motifs but there is still something wrong going on here. I think it may be this: there’s a danger here of confusing the world of Old English and Saxon with the world of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The former took chivalry and warrior heroes very seriously. The latter, through, for example Chaucer and Cervantes, certainly did not. Let’s face it, there are at least four hundred years between the earnestness of Beowulf and the chivalric mocking satires of The Canterbury Tales.
I’m not convinced that Ishiguro has the knowledge or literary depth to handle these references. A final example: Axl and Beatrice’s life in a Celtic hovel at the beginning of the novel comes across as being an odd mixture of Chaucer’s Fabliau night time frolics in The Miller’s Tale played out in a Hobbit barrow.
If we are going to mock Ishiguro’s latest novel, it’s over this failure to convincingly master the references to these literary cultural lost relics. And possibly the result is that Ishiguro, in spite of my efforts to champion him, manages references less convincingly than Tolkien who, let’s face it, really did know his Anglo Saxon Norse and Celtic. If Ishiguro has sought to be perhaps more erudite than he actually is then certainly this novel might have exposed him for being something of a literary Googling Don Quixote. That’s a shame because Ishiguro is better or has been better than this.
At the end of the day it remains to be seen if Ishiguro can repair the melting wax of scorched wings with a new novel at least as good as The Remains of the Day. Either way, Ishiguro can’t win with this novel: either he’ll be erroneously ridiculed for descending into PlayStation fantasy or lambasted for bungling over British literary heritage.
Do we trust the author to have simply wanted to write an honest, kind, cosy fable about love and stuff? Nope. No fecking way.
We’re all so clever. It makes me sick.