
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 – Kazuo Ishiguro [pdf] - kgthegreat
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2017/press.pdf
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danso
I submitted this 2014 essay from Ishiguro, but no point in having 2 separate
threads for the same Nobel Prize news/discussion.

Thought some folks here would be interested in how a famous novelist does
"crunch" weeks". In this 2014 op-ed for the Guardian, he describes how it took
4 weeks for him to create his most famous novel, "The Remains of the Day":

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo-
ishiguro...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo-ishiguro-the-
remains-of-the-day-guardian-book-club)

tl;dr

\- Had the first chapter written the previous summer, but made no progress on
it for about a year.

\- Even though he couldn't write that year, he did a "substantial amount of
'research'" about British life/politics/servitude of that time period. This is
what led to his 4-week "Crash" session being productive:

> _he decision when to start the actual writing of a novel – to begin
> composing the story itself – always seems to me a crucial one. How much
> should one know before starting on the prose? It’s damaging to start too
> early, equally so to start too late. I think with Remains I got lucky: the
> Crash came just at the right point, when I knew just enough._

During the 4-week "crash", he had a dedicated study in a house he recently
moved in; his previous 2 novels were written at his dining table.

His process during the 4-weeks was not at all structured (in the traditional
sense):

> _Throughout the Crash, I wrote free-hand, not caring about the style or if
> something I wrote in the afternoon contradicted something I’d established in
> the story that morning. The priority was simply to get the ideas surfacing
> and growing. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I
> let them remain and ploughed on._

Note that he didn't _finish_ the novel in 4 weeks. But he did reach the
critical mass to make it a complete idea and story:

> _I kept it up for the four weeks, and at the end of it I had more or less
> the entire novel down: though of course a lot more time would be required to
> write it all up properly, the vital imaginative breakthroughs had all come
> during the Crash._

~~~
e15ctr0n
For anyone who hasn't seen the movie based on the novel, I would highly
recommending watching it[0]. Superb, nuanced performances by Sir Anthony
Hopkins and Emma Thompson. The movie would also serve as an introduction to
the Merchant-Ivory oeuvre[1].

[0] The Remains of the Day (1993)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107943/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107943/)

[1] Merchant Ivory Productions
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Ivory_Productions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Ivory_Productions)

~~~
aws_ls
Yesterday, after I heard this news, I searched for this movie as an entry
point to his works, with the hope of later reading a book by him.

Unfortunately could not find the movie anywhere (YouTube has some bad
versions). If anyone has any pointers, to where we can find it online, would
be good.

~~~
twoodfin
For free? Amazon and iTunes both have it available for rent / purchase.

Well-worth the money. It’s stunningly produced, faithful to the novel, and
both Hopkins and Thompson are outstanding.

~~~
aws_ls
No not for free, of course. But streaming which I can purchase. Don't have
iTunes, but have 3 services (Netflix, Amazon Prime and HotStar) in India. None
of them seem to have it.

Ideally, I want to be able to just buy a movie from somewhere, without needing
to subscribe to the entire service.

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evtothedev
Pro tip: "Never Let Me Go" is best read if you know absolutely nothing about
its plot.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Oh good. Now I won't read it, since I've already seen MST3K really speak to
this issue
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WspeHC7eoOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WspeHC7eoOI)

~~~
twoodfin
I hope you’re being sarcastic! I was “spoiled” going in, but if anything it
strengthens the novel’s undercurrent of dread & enhances the contrast between
the importance imbued by the children into their prosaic struggles and the
unfathomable horror of their ultimate fate.

The premise is really just the launching point for what the book is about.
It’s not explored in at all the manner you’d expect from a typical “dystopian
sci-fi” novel.

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the_af
Great! Not that the Nobel prize means anything to me, but I simply love Kazuo
Ishiguro. His surreal novels are always moving to me. I absolutely love how he
plays with unreliable narrators, like in "The Remains of the Day", "A Pale
View of Hills" and "When We Were Orphans". He shows how they are flawed,
sometimes self-sabotaging, but we (or rather, I) still empathize with them.

The ending of "The Remains of the Day" always moves me, almost to tears. How
the butler, having realized he threw his life away for people who were not
worth it, is at it again, repeating the same mistakes and having learned
(almost) nothing. And still, I root for him.

~~~
projectramo
Here is my question (as someone who also loves Ishiguro and has mixed but
generally positive feelings about the prize):

if the committee picks an author you adore, doesn't that increase your respect
for the prize?

And make you want to check out other authors who won it?

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archagon
I have a Goodreads tag[1] where I've tried to gather as many "definitive" or
"best" books by Literature Nobel winners as I could find. (Subjective, of
course: based on Goodreads scores, thegreatestbooks.org ranking, etc.) I've
never even heard of a lot of the winners over the years, so I thought it might
help vary up my reading a bit. Will look forward to adding a new name!

[1]:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2196584-archagon?shelf...](https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2196584-archagon?shelf=nobel-
laureates)

~~~
mercer
Oh, that's very nice! I added your list to one of my lists.

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pavlov
I'm very happy about this, what a good choice.

To me, Ishiguro's most distinguishing characteristic is the tremendous empathy
for the people he portrays. Even his weaker novels manage to take you deep
into these characters that seem to carry decades within every thought and
expression, even though it may ultimately come at the expense of world-
building for the plot at hand (I'm thinking of "Buried Giant"). And of course
his best novels are something else, like crystals.

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Gaussian
Never Let Me Go is relevant and chilling. Most books fade in my memory; this
isn't one of them.

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zwieback
I can get behind this one. Never Let Me Go haunts me to this day. Buried Giant
was disappointing but everything else he wrote is fabulous.

~~~
andyjohnson0
+1 for _Never Let Me Go_. I read it last week and found it very moving. Mark
Romanek's film version is excellent too.

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robin_reala
If you’re willing to give it the space needed I’d definitely recommend The
Unconsoled[1]. It’s by quite a long way the best description of dream state
that I’ve ever read.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unconsoled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unconsoled)

~~~
archagon
Is it audiobook-able, or does he play with the structure of the text?

~~~
robin_reala
It suspect it would be OK, albeit confusing. On the other hand, it doesn’t
exist on Audible so maybe not?

~~~
archagon
Google tells me there's an audiobook version out there, probably. (Audiobooks
seem to be the only way I can get myself to read these days!)

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rurban
I am the sole not happy one on this selection. There must have been a reason
why he was not in any short list. I'm only a movie expert but the 5 movies
based on his books are all overly simplistic, cheasy and just terrible. Still
better than Jelinek though.

