The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0571171273 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0571171273 Global Overview for this book
1 journaler for this copy...
Re-reading for my Mold/Flintshire book group ...
(9/03/23) I have read this before, but can’t find anything on my Book crossing virtual shelf or reading blogs - this was published in 1989, so predates me joining BC by a good 20 years. Of course, even then, set in 1956, it was ‘dated’, deliberately so. I read An Artist of the Floating World - which I didn’t give a great review at the time, but there are some interesting comments from others comparing it to ‘Remains’. My copy has the film cover, so to me Anthony Hopkins is Stevens, the butler, but I’m not sure about Emma Thomson as Miss Kenton, formerly his housekeeper and very very subtle love interest. The narrator is so incredibly reserved, fussy, arrogant, and lacking in self-awareness that it’s quite hard to like him and interpret the story/-ies behind the story. He annoyed me, a lot, although I did appreciate the author’s subtle nuanced style and English country-house sophistication.
This book isn’t just about an ageing butler travelling to meet and reconnect with a significant person from his past. He cuts a rather sad, lonely, unfulfilled figure, at some unacknowledged level regretting some of his life choices. Another layer is the prevailing politics in the inter-war years, and his employer Lord Darlington’s naive role in trying to reduce the burden of WW1 reparations on Germany, and then later his involvement with the British Fascist Party and anti-semitism. Yet another layer is the changing nature of service; Stevens obsessively dissects the nature of a butler’s role and what it means to be a ‘great’ butler. He focusses on the snobbery of great houses, moral imperatives, but mostly dignity, but the real point is the self-sacrifice and deprecation of the self in performing his vocation, effectively as an indentured slave. There is a discussion about the nature of dignity in the ‘common’ man later in his travels, which he is confused about. He has a very set worldview, almost like a long-term prisoner being released into a society that he doesn’t understand. It’s not so much nostalgia for a lost time - in my opinion - but for lost opportunities.
As Stevens travels from Oxford to Cornwall in his new nouveau riche American owner’s car he gets mistaken for a gentleman, but mostly shows himself as being somewhat out-of-touch and uncomfortable with ‘real’ life outside his domain. There is a sad final scene, after the confrontation with Miss Kenton, now the unhappily but securely married Mrs.Benn, with a chance encounter with a fellow retired butler. They reminisce on their careers and look at people enjoying the dusk lights coming on in Weymouth and the metaphorical notion that, to some, ‘… the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day.’ Perhaps thinking about how his father died in service and his own lack of a family or life outside, he reflects, ‘[I] should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of the day.’
(9/03/23) I have read this before, but can’t find anything on my Book crossing virtual shelf or reading blogs - this was published in 1989, so predates me joining BC by a good 20 years. Of course, even then, set in 1956, it was ‘dated’, deliberately so. I read An Artist of the Floating World - which I didn’t give a great review at the time, but there are some interesting comments from others comparing it to ‘Remains’. My copy has the film cover, so to me Anthony Hopkins is Stevens, the butler, but I’m not sure about Emma Thomson as Miss Kenton, formerly his housekeeper and very very subtle love interest. The narrator is so incredibly reserved, fussy, arrogant, and lacking in self-awareness that it’s quite hard to like him and interpret the story/-ies behind the story. He annoyed me, a lot, although I did appreciate the author’s subtle nuanced style and English country-house sophistication.
This book isn’t just about an ageing butler travelling to meet and reconnect with a significant person from his past. He cuts a rather sad, lonely, unfulfilled figure, at some unacknowledged level regretting some of his life choices. Another layer is the prevailing politics in the inter-war years, and his employer Lord Darlington’s naive role in trying to reduce the burden of WW1 reparations on Germany, and then later his involvement with the British Fascist Party and anti-semitism. Yet another layer is the changing nature of service; Stevens obsessively dissects the nature of a butler’s role and what it means to be a ‘great’ butler. He focusses on the snobbery of great houses, moral imperatives, but mostly dignity, but the real point is the self-sacrifice and deprecation of the self in performing his vocation, effectively as an indentured slave. There is a discussion about the nature of dignity in the ‘common’ man later in his travels, which he is confused about. He has a very set worldview, almost like a long-term prisoner being released into a society that he doesn’t understand. It’s not so much nostalgia for a lost time - in my opinion - but for lost opportunities.
As Stevens travels from Oxford to Cornwall in his new nouveau riche American owner’s car he gets mistaken for a gentleman, but mostly shows himself as being somewhat out-of-touch and uncomfortable with ‘real’ life outside his domain. There is a sad final scene, after the confrontation with Miss Kenton, now the unhappily but securely married Mrs.Benn, with a chance encounter with a fellow retired butler. They reminisce on their careers and look at people enjoying the dusk lights coming on in Weymouth and the metaphorical notion that, to some, ‘… the evening is the most enjoyable part of the day.’ Perhaps thinking about how his father died in service and his own lack of a family or life outside, he reflects, ‘[I] should adopt a more positive outlook and try to make the best of what remains of the day.’
