Hello
Gentle Reader
A
Nobel Laureate’s lecture is a speech in which they deliver and offer their
insights and thanks to the world. There lectures may help explain their thought
processes, and how their experiments may have incubated grand results and scientific
break thoughts. Others offer biographical stories, anecdotes, and personal
thoughts about their field, others raddle the cage or make grand political and
sociological gestures where they express disdain and disgust tyranny, totalitarianism,
authoritarian governments past and present, and warn about repeating history. All
the while, others tell or read stories.
Kazuo
Ishiguro’s Nobel speech: “My Twentieth Century Evening – and Other Small Breakthroughs,”—is
riddled with biographical sketches, anecdotes, thoughts, musings, theories admittances
of influences, and thanks. Ishiguro begins his speech by mentioning his younger
self back in the late seventies, whereupon it would be difficult to categorize
him socially or racially; at the time he was twenty four years old with long
hair complete with a dropping bandit style moustache. His accent was polished
by the south of England, peppered with the vernacular and dated slang of the
hippies. In other words, compared to the visiting Japanese people of the time:
Kazuo Ishiguro was a product all of his own. He confessed to being more
interested in discussing football or the newest Bob Dylan album; and when the inevitable
questions arose about his heritage, Ishiguro mentioned slight impatience and he
explained: he did not have any thoughts or opinions about Japan, as he had not
set foot on the island nation since he was five years old.
Memory
courses through Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel Lecture, moving from one defining point
to another point of similar interest. He admits without a trace of irony his
goal of becoming a rockstar by the age of twenty, but as mentioned before: he
did not have the constitution or style to be a stage performer; before
digressing his first two novels which imagined a Japan of his imagination and
thoughts, at which point Ishiguro reveals his unique childhood and upbringing,
whereupon the middle class expectation of an English child were placed on him
as much as they were on every other child of his community—though he was a curiosity
of sorts due to his unique foreign appearance and family. His parents viewed
themselves more as visitors then true immigrants, and often expected to return
to Japan, it was even theorized that Kazuo Ishiguro would move back to Japan
and spend his adult life in Japan. This did not happen; but the Japan of his
dreams and imagination did not escape his mind, as his first two novels were
attempts at creating a international form of literature, one which moved above
post-colonial thought. Yet after these two novels; Ishiguro decided to explore
a unique England, one engulfed with rigid stoicism and unemotional duty, which
leads to profound sadness. From there came his novel “The Remains of the Day.”
His Booker Prize winning novel and often considered his breakthrough novel.
While
in Tokyo, Ishiguro mentions a unique question proposed by a member of the audience:
the audience member had presented Ishiguro with the question of what will he
work on next, but mentioned that all his work to date (at the time) had been
concerned with the individuals who lived through great social and political
upheaval, but it was mainly concerned with the individuals response to the
external climate of the time. Ishiguro has slowly begun to move away from the
individual perspective of the world, and instead transitioned towards
relationships, such as his novel: “Never Let Me Go,” which traces the fleeting
and brief lives of three people who are genetically designed to have their
organs harvested. The relationships and how they interact with each other made
the novel heartbreaking and devastating as it asks serious questions about the
future of humanity.
Ishiguro
closes his lecture by standing by the importance of literature, welcoming the
younger generation of writers, their thoughts, their ideas, their formats, and
their styles of writing; before thanking the Swedish Academy and the Nobel
Prize for retaining itself as being a beacon of hope for humanity, which
continues to shine and inspire scientists, peace activists and politicians, as
well as writers.
Though
no tone of the greatest Nobel lectures ever presented to the Swedish Academy;
Ishiguro’s lecture follows the path of his novels, moving from memory to
memory, in which he attempts to displays his perspective of the world, and at
the same time give thanks to the Swedish Academy, as well as maintain the
importance of literature in a world with increasing impatience and little
attention span to spare. It was not one of the worst Nobel lectures viewed—as Elfriede
Jelinek’s is often perplexing and confusing, as it is a long monologue in some Beckettian
tradition; and it was not riddled with the vitriol of Harold Pinter who
attacked with nihilistic anger the politics of the era; but it lacked the
concise and precise language of Herta Müller, as she discusses tragedy, oppression,
and resilience in the face of political upheaval. Then again it was not dry
long and rambling as Kenzaburō Ōe’s lecture, which could bore one to tears. Yet
it missed the wit and lightness of touch of Wisława Szymborska who evaded the
subject of poetry with a sly dance, and not once ever dipped into something too
revealing or confessional, always keeping a safe distance between personal
allegory and intellectual conversation.
In
three days, Kazuo Ishiguro will finally receive his Nobel Medal and Diploma
from the hands of the King of Sweden himself, afterwards with his fellow
Laureates, he will be enjoy the banquet and festivities as the Nobel week.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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