I make this confident prediction because I’ve already seen the film selected to open the LFF. Never Let Me Go is a perfect example of British film at its very best; it’s a sombre piece of work, yet its sheer quality will lift the gloomiest of spirits.I so loved the book, and this trailer has really whetted my appetite for the movie version :
... this is a wonderful move on the part of the organisers, giving much-needed publicity to many, many books not published by mainstream publishers but by small presses without teams of publicists ... . What is also wonderful is that "big" names are alongside newer writers, showcasing that the short story is not just the province of those who have yet to "graduate" to novels!(Thanks Steven of Horizon Books for sending me the news and the links!)
ISHIGURO
Yes. I went to the local state primary school where they were experimenting with modern teaching methods. It was the mid-sixties, and my school rather complacently had no defined lessons. You could muck about with manual calculating machines, or you could make a cow out of clay, or you could write stories. This was a favorite activity because it was sociable. You wrote a bit, then you read each other’s things, and you read out loud. I created a character called Mr. Senior, which was the name of my friend’s scoutmaster. I thought this was a really cool name for a spy. I got into Sherlock Holmes around then in a big way. I’d do a pastiche of a Victorian detective story that began with a client arriving and telling a long story. But a lot of the energy went into decorating our books to look exactly like the paperbacks we saw in the shops—drawing bullet holes on the front and putting quotations from newspapers on the back. “Brilliant, chilling tension.” —Daily Mirror.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think the experience affected you as a writer?
ISHIGURO
It was good fun, and it made me think of stories as effortless things. I think that stayed with me. I’ve never been intimidated by the idea of having to make up a story. It’s always been a relatively easy thing that people did in a relaxed environment.
"This is the saddest story I have ever heard." What could be more simple and declaratory, a statement of such high plangency and enormous claim that the reader assumes it must be not just an impression, or even a powerful opinion, but a "fact"? Yet it is one of the most misleading first sentences in all fiction. ... And if the second verb of the first sentence cannot be trusted, we must be prepared to treat every sentence with the same care and suspicion. We must prowl soft-footed through this text, alive for every board's moan and plaint.Julian Barnes in The Guardian reminds me that it's high time to revisit Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier, surely one of the best ... and most underrated novels in the English language and very much ahead of its time.
... fellow-writers who have been vocal in his cause, from Graham Greene to William Carlos Williams to Anthony Burgess.My money is on the unnamed author being Ishiguro! (If I'd been lucky enough to interview him, I'd have asked him just that question! Honest I would.)
And among the living? Well, here are two examples. About 10 years ago, while writing about Ford, I ran into one of our better-known literary novelists, whose use of indirection and the bumbling narrator seemed to me to derive absolutely from Ford. I mentioned this (a little more tactfully than I have stated it here), and asked if he had read Ford. Yes, indeed he had. Would he mind if I mentioned this fact in my piece? There was a pause (actually of a couple of days) before the reply: "Please pretend I haven't read The Good Soldier. I'd prefer it that way."
More recently, I was talking to Ian McEwan, who told me that a few years ago he'd been staying in a house with a well-stocked library. There he found a copy of The Good Soldier, which he read and admired greatly. A while later, he wrote On Chesil Beach, that brilliant novella in which passion, and Englishness, and misunderstanding, lead to emotional catastrophe. Only after publishing the book did he realise that he had unconsciously given his two main characters the names Edward (as in Ashburnham) and Florence (as in Dowell). He is quite happy for me to pass this on.
... a proper reader's writer. The Good Soldier needs The Good Reader.Am I recommending this book to you? No. Not unless you are a fan of the other British authors listed above and ready for the challenge. But I reckon it's essential reading for the novelist - established or budding!
... assesses with 80 percent accuracy whether the authors of fiction and non-fiction books are male or female, reports Phillip Ball in Nature. Patterns detected by the program include the use of pronouns, such as I, you, he, she, them (female) and words that identify and quantify nouns, like a, the, that, one, two (male). The software, developed by Moshe Koppel of Bar Ilan University in Israel, was designed to "identify the most prevalent fingerprints of gender and of fiction and non-fiction." These fingerprints were applied to 566 English-language works published after 1975. Two titles misidentified by gender were Possession, by A.S. Byatt and Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day. "Strikingly, the distinctions between male and female writers are much the same as those that, even more clearly, differentiate non-fiction and fiction," identifying the genres themselves with 98 percent accuracy, Mr. Ball writes.80% accuracy, my foot! According to the results posted on the website, the programme is right only 58% of the time - not a great deal better than simple guesswork. And it can't be up to much if it thinks Sharanya is a bloke! I ran a couple of paragraphs of an Annie Proulx story by it, figuring if any writer has a gender ambiguous writing style it's her. The programme told me that the first paragraph I enterered was written by a female and the second by a male!
In the dimly lit, smoky lounge, 2 women clinked their margarita glasses as jazz music played softly in the background.*Hot Babe to be played in the film version by Ms. Fishlips Jolie, no doubt.
"Cheers,darling!" said Sharon.
"To another successful mission accomplished," said Sham, her petite companion.
"Can't wait to hear what they thought of the book."
"Must be ripping it to shreds by now."
"And ripping into me, I shouldn't wonder. Told Krishna I have a do at the British Council. Wonder if he bought it."
"Oh! I'm sure he did. He thinks I'm in Kuantan. A bit gullible that one."
"What is taking that woman so long?" said Sharon with mild irritation.
"Relax. You know.We could have just gone for the book meet and spared ourselves all this suspense."
"Don't you start! Whose brilliant idea was this in the first place? 'Oh Sharon! Let's recommend a book we're sure everyone will hate then not show up but send a spy who reports back everything that was said!' Whose devious brain did this spring from?You started it with the Bee book and I thought I'd get into the act for fun."
"Guilty!" admitted Sham with a sheepish grin.
"Oh! There she is!" said Sharon as Sham turned to see the attractive woman with a traffic-stopping figure* enter the bar, scan the room and then head straight for their table.
"Must have got them fixed," thought Sham glancing at her breasts which were just a tad big in relation to the rest of her.
Hot Babe kissed Sharon and Sham, pulled up a chair and fixed the 2 women with a mega wattage grin. The wattage did not dim when she turned to the waiter and ordered her drink,ensuring its arrival in half the time it would normally take getting to the other patrons.
"Ok girl spill it! We've waited long enough!" said Sharon.
"Aww! Can't I have my drink first?" said Hot Babe who had a voice made to induce erections, but for obvious reasons, had no effect on the impatient women.
"No! You can bloody well start while the waiter with a partial hard-on brings your bloody drink and hope he doesn't drool into it!" said Sharon, visibly annoyed now.
"Chill,sweetie. Ok, here goes. For starters, as you suspected, most of them thought the book sucked."
"HaHa!As expected!" said Sharon triumphantly as she and Sham toasted for the second time joined by Hot Babe a second later, her glass of Long Island Drool clinking the margaritas pleasantly.
"How close were you?"asked Sham.
"At the next table enough to hear most everything," said the babe and then proceeded to pull a notebook from her handbag and started reading:
"Well,Sandra did a good job leading although it was a bit of a chore getting this group to pipe down. Very loud and boisterous with frequent interruptions,especially from the guy."
"Oh, Krishna?" asked Sharon.
"Yeah,pompous windbag who's obviously got an ongoing love affair with the sound of his voice. Sandra had to tell him to shut up at one point."
"Told you we should have kicked him out,Sharon," said Sham.
"He's the only guy we have, darling. And the only one who shows up regularly."
"Well, you may have an alternative. Joanne showed up with her husband.Pleasant, erudite and well spoken chap."
"You're digressing darling, get on with it," said Sharon.
"Sorry,well anyway, Sandra gave some background on Kazuo Ishiguro, his previous books, how they've all been nominated or won some prize or the other but having finished the book she wonders what the fuss is all about. She made an interesting point: There's a seed for a very gripping tale in this book which never comes to fruition. Windbag added that in the hands of a better writer,this tale of students in a boarding school who find out they are clones bred for the purpose of harvesting their organs could have been so much more riveting.Both Muntaj and Sandra agreed that the pace was excruciatingly slow. A major gripe for a lot of people especially
Sandra, Jessica, Uma and Krishna was the passivity of these people. Why doesn't anyone rebel against their fate? Why are they so accepting of the fact that their very purpose of existence was to donate their organs and then die?There followed some comparisons then to the movie "The Island" where a group clones bred in isolation discover their true purpose and 2 of them rebel against the system and how that was a more natural thing given the strong survival instinct inherent in most people."
"The Island huh? That must have come from Krishna.Typical of him to compare a literary work to a brainless Hollywood Blockbuster!" scoffed Sharon.
"Anyway, an interesting insight was given by Joanne and husband,both of whom loved the book: It's a type of Post Modern fiction that doesn't confirm to the linear style of storytelling with a beginning, middle and end.It's a mood piece meant to evoke a feeling, a feeling of helplessness on the part of the reader which could then prompt said reader to question the unsavoury things in his or her own lives which they accept: Bad jobs,relationships,traffic jams, corruption, police brutality, things we know are implicitly wrong but still accept with a passive air of resignation."
"Interesting! Must ask him to come for future meets".
"And then Jessica and Krishna argued that we WILL rebel if there is a direct threat to our own existence, we would fight if we knew our lives or the lives of our loved ones were at stake. As long as things like corruption and bad jobs don't threaten our lives,we'll put up with it. Animah then countered with a point that there ARE people who put up with threats to their lives like illegal immigrants who are frequently harassed and extorted but don't fight back out of fear that they will be deported or killed in a foreign land whose laws they know little about."
"What else?" asked Sham.
"Let's see," said Hot babe turning her pages and scanning them," The characters left most of them cold except Fiona who identified with the narrator and Joanne's husband who could relate to the boarding school environment,having been in one himself ... Animah made a point that she assumed the writing was simplistic, almost childlike as Ishiguro wanted to show the naivety of the narrator, her innocence but expected the writing to mature as the protagonists discover their true fate but somehow the prose never rises above its basic simplicity. Joanne countered the argument that the writing was simplistic by saying that it was a deliberate attempt by Ishiguro to write about something that was truly appalling in a matter-of-fact way, thereby making it even more chilling. Alina was still half way through but likes it so far."
"This lot may put her off finishing it" mused Sharon.
"Sarab and Uma didn't like it as well, wondering what the fuss was about. But Uma said this was still better than the Secret Life Of Bees."
A visible sigh from Sham at this point.
"Oh! One last thing, everyone unanimously agrees you owe a round of margaritas to all, Sharon, as the book didn't walk away with the Booker as you predicted. And Sandra reckons the margaritas better come in jugs on account of the book itself and its failure to engage her in any way," Hot Babe said, getting up.
"Thanks darling, fancy coming to our next reading?" asked Sharon.
Turning on the mega watt smile yet again, Hot Babe replied,"Sorry darling too busy to sit around yakking about books," blew both the ladies a kiss and sailed out of the bar. "Yes, being a tart is a full time occupation," retorted Sharon to the retreating form.
Sham, with a wicked gleam in her eye asked, "So,what do you think girl? Should we pull this stunt again?"
"Let's discuss this over another round of margaritas darling."
