So we’ve somehow stealthily entered into the realm of September, and have started stepping further and deeper into its quiet, sluggish, gel-like embrace. Ok despite this depressing sounding comment, I am actually slightly excited as September is the month of SuperAwesomeAudioSounds.
Anyways, I finally managed to finish Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled yesterday, after like, a month (and racking up library fines and notifications along the way). I’m glad I persevered, really. It took so long to complete because I got frustrated at the very absence of commonsense logic that drives the book, and lost the usual drive and desire I usually have to complete a book that I started on. Think of the disconnect in terms of time/space continuum wraps (non-supernatural of course) that are absorbed and taken as reality (e.g. a seven page dialogue between characters can take place in an elevator that was going a mere two floors up, and random doors conveniently located to bring the protagonist from one place to another in a timely manner).
Just looked up reviews of the book on google and people are comparing the book to something like surrealist art. And although I ain’t no big art enthusiast nor am very knowledgeable about it, I completely agree with that link. And suddenly this makes sense. At the end of the story, my initial sense of frustration, aggression and antagonistic feelings toward the type of disjointed story structure (and ridiculous lack of logical sequences and behaviour), gradually dissipated and turned into something like compassion and perhaps, of finished business.
Towards the end, I started to enjoy trying to piece together dialogue and events with whatever slight information I perceived I gleaned throughout the story, to guess and fathom what could everything all really mean. I understood finally that one had to absolutely throw away and let go of what you think you know; in order to realise how beautiful the story is. But of course no one does that at the first reading. And perhaps Ishiguro intended for this disjointedness when we read, so as to, when self-reflexivity which would likely commence towards at the latter half of the book, allow us to belatedly, but poetically, better appreciate how beautiful the themes and story itself actually is, at the end.
Although the feeling is like surrealist art, (where I think its something like how each individual’s unique reaction towards an artwork that helps to produce tailored respective unique meanings), I’d say that the best thing and most important thing about The Unconsoled is the surprise, after a bout of self-reflexivity, at just how we readers react to the story, its meanings and its messages. It’s shit amazing. Thank you.
From papertissue.
Going by books alone, The Unconsoled is way better than Murakami’s bloody Kafka On The bloody Shore, where it was an entire confounded maze of harsh, bitter, self-imposed torture because of its self-destroying hedges that led absolutely nowhere. Self-reflexivity kicked in when I completed the book and instead of feeling like there was something to think and ponder about, I felt empty and drained. I secretly suspect that he paid too much attention to the creation of a surrealist story structure (which I must agree that he did a good job of) but lagged in the creation of a decent plot (at least one that did not revolve so much around sex) and characters that the reader could empathise with.
Ok enough of amateur noob reader bashing a literary genius (I did think that Murakami’s Hardboiled Wonderland and some of his other short stories, were something close to amazing). Ugh I disgust myself sometimes. What a long rambly post about something that others probably have more authority to write and opine about!
Nonetheless.
Today’s lengthy tirade is brought to you by the letter S. S for September, Surrealist art, Story, Structure, Sequence, Surprise, and of course, Sondre Lerche.
Taken from Pixdaus.
Taken from Papertissue.
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