A 3-Day Ride with Ryder: Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled Is an Achievement of the First Order

“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

What happens when a world-famous pianist who comes to town to perform an important concert is forced to come to terms with who he really is? Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled has the feel of a cross between Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and the magical realism of Jorge Luis Borges. Like each of these authors, he has created a work that defies categorization.

The Unconsoled is the story of Ryder, a man who has achieved international fame. It opens with the pianist checking into a hotel whereupon he encounters character after character in scene after stretched-out scene in a manner not unlike Alice’s encounters after dropping through the rabbit hole. By means of their behavior toward him, and his internal attitude and responses, we get to know Ryder’s character in ways that at times become both hilarious and excruciating.

As I noted in my recent blog post The Identity Question, about how our identity is not fixed but varies based on context, we get to know Ryder—among other things--as deferential, modest, self-centered, selfless, anxious, overbearing, over-confident, and sensitive.

As we walk with him through this three-day ordeal, the events serve to reveal his entire life, especially his strained relationships with parents, family and fame itself.

The manner in which the story is told is surreal. The critics panned it when it came out, but near 25 years later it is hailed as one of the great novels of the last part of the century.

Readers will be cognizant that the storyline is becoming increasingly muddled, time stretched, situations absurd. But is that not what life can be like for one who is on the road, traveling, mushing through time from scene to scene to scene through setting after setting? I can't help but think here of the author himself perhaps, or of the Grateful Dead's traveling road show that inspired Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour. What is this kind of life really like?

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My guess is that if the critics didn't like the book it's because they may have tried to read just enough to pin it down, much like pinning a butterfly into a display case and labeling it. The book defies such easy categorization. If you strap yourself in and go along for the ride, you'll experience all the drama of a roller coaster, emotional highs and lows, along with the tension of an overwound watchspring about to explode, a rope about to snap, or overstretched rubber bands. The tension mounts, is released a bit and mounts again.

What's exhilarating is how deftly the author paints all these characters and the scenes within this bizarre adventure.

In the story you will meet, in this order initially, Ryder, the hotel manager Hoffman, the bellhop Gustav, Gustav's daughter Sophie and her son Boris, a washed up conductor named Brodsky, the hotel manager's son Stephan, and an assortment of incidental characters who serve as foils in various ways.

One of the striking features of the story, for me at least, had to do with the porters. The manner in which servants and porters appear so prominently in both this and his heartbreaking Remains of the Day is quite interesting. The contrast between classes in both these books--which brings to mind another powerful story, Vatel--makes me curious if this theme is a recurring one in other Ishiguro novels.

The deference of Gustav to the powerful or more important people he serves, is all the more so because it is a very different culture from what many of us were used to growing up. If you grew up black in the Jim Crow south, however, this deference to whites was an unwritten and harshly enforced code. To a greater or lesser degree this same deference is ingrained and expected of busboys and bellhops in premier hotels, restaurants and country clubs to this day. I believe middle class Americans are surprised the elite still require this kind of stroking.

The story elements which cause much of the tension for readers are Ryder's constantly striving to remember where he is supposed to be and missing appointments because he is continuously allowing himself to get "off task." That is, when he is supposed to be here, he is asked to go take care of this other matter there, which leads to yet another diversion and another. Why does he not assert himself? It becomes an unbelievably frustrating experience for both the reader and himself and he repeatedly gives in to the expectations of others. Is his self-importance and the significance of this concert real or imagined?

The hotel manager's son Stephen is a developed character who resembles a young version of Ryder, exceptionally talented but unable to please his parents, somehow stifled by the context of his life. Ryder recognizes Stephen's frustration and through the lens of experience strives to help him. This theme strikes me as an echo of a Borges story in which Borges sits on a park bench and discovers, through a warp in time, that he himself as a young man is seated at the other end of the bench. He avoids making eye contact but strives to help this younger Borges.

For the reader who accepts the absurd features of Ishiguro's story, there will be many rewards. I saw myself in both of these characters, Ryder and Stephen. Perhaps you will find a little of yourself, too, in your own way.

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Related Links
Ishiguro on how he wrote Remains of the Day
Ishiguro on Dylan
Remains of the Day, A Review
The Identity Question: Who Am I?

Flashback Friday: Everything Is Broken, A Dylan Lament

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY

"It's nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough. You have to deliver the goods." ~ Bob Dylan, Chronicles

Maybe one reason some people like Dylan is simply because of the durability of his career. Like the Energizer Bunny he just keeps going. Like the Cinderella Man he keeps coming back.

Yesterday I noted that John Hinchey called John Wesley Harding "the comeback of comeback albums." Others have hailed Blood on the Tracks as Dylan's great comeback, and it certainly was an exceptional album after the early Seventies period that produced the critically dissed Self-Portrait, Dylan and Planet Waves. When Dylan released Time Out of Mind in 1997 it was yet another comeback level achievement, winning a Grammy and receiving flurries of critical acclaim. His Never Ending Tour had been on the road nearly ten years, but now people were beginning to notice.

I don't recall many people calling his Gospel Period a comeback, though Slow Train Coming is a superfine album for its production values, cohesiveness and earnestness. Songs like "Serve Somebody" and "Precious Angel" are written in the old Dylanesque style but with a new born-again sensibility. You don't fake the emotion he conveys in "I Believe In You."

The comeback I wanted to talk about this morning, though, occurred in 1989 with the release of Oh Mercy. Rolling Stone gave the album high marks and I remember wondering if that was only because they're so predisposed to liking Dylan. Still, I bought the vinyl and continue to listen to it to this day.

Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, not just because it had songs noticeably more meaningful than anything Bob Dylan had recently released, but because Daniel Lanois' production gave it cohesion. There was cohesion on Empire Burlesque, of course, but that cohesion was a little too slick, a little too commercial, whereas this record was filled with atmospheric, hazy production -- a sound as arty as most assumed the songs to be. And Dylan followed suit, giving Lanois significant songs -- palpably social works, love songs, and poems -- that seemed to connect with his past. And, at the time, this production made it seem like the equivalent of his '60s records, meaning that its artiness was cutting edge, not portentous. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine

In Dylan's Chronicle: Volume One, he devotes an entire chapter to this period of new fertility when Oh Mercy was birthed. Keep in mind that the book is only five chapters, so that's 20% of the book. The events of this time were important enough to dive into at length. 1987 was a difficult year because he's injured his hand in a freak accident that winter, and was scheduled to do 100 concerts beginning in the spring. It was also a difficult time because Dylan himself was not sure who he was. "There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him."

Dylan states that he had not been writing songs for a while, but then the muse returned. He'd be sitting at a table and twenty-some verses for "Political World" flowed out from his pen. He placed these in a drawer, and they were soon joined by verses for a song called "What Good Am I?" More songs followed and he would see what their relationship would be to one another.

The reason I found Oh Mercy to be such a meaningful album is that it became clear that his "Gospel Phase" had not just been a phase. The heart of his spiritual experiences now seemed integrated naturally into a world view that was less about preaching, but true to a vision of how things are.

Another feature of Oh Mercy is that it is primarily slow songs, reflective and thoughtful songs. It's a nice album to put on at the end of the day when you want to unwind. The only two fast-paced pieces here are the kickoff opener, "Political World" and "Everything Is Broken". "Political World" just lays it out there, an indictment of how things work in our modern age. "Everything Is Broken" gets more specific. It's a "list song" on a theme. It's a broken world, "you'd better get that in your head." Perhaps formulaic stylistically, it makes a point.

This is not a new theme. It hearkens back to Hard Rain. It hearkens back to the Fall and humanity's exile from Paradise. And it implores us to be realistic about what we expect next.

Several songs give direction on this point. Don't catch the disease of conceit. Don't neglect the needy, forgotten and disenfranchised among us. And keep ringing them bells.

Everything Is Broken

Broken lines, broken strings
Broken threads, broken springs
Broken idols, broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken

Broken bottles, broken plates
Broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground

Broken cutters, broken saws
Broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin'
Everything is broken

Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face

Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken

Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music

I love the summation in those last two lines: "Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking, Everything is broken." Meantime, life goes on... Maybe we'll see you around the bend. 

Achievement

Achievement, in its most basic essence, is a series of small successes strung end to end.

Achievement is the inevitable result of a persistent series of small achievements.
Two definitions of achievement from my journal, 1994

Examples are legion. Assembling a jigsaw puzzle is the most obvious illustration. We usually begin with the straight edged border pieces, then work our way into areas of the puzzle with pieces of color that interlock. It is one "success" at a time, searching and finding the next pair of pieces that go together.

What is interesting is that one can achieve this ultimate success in a variety of ways. There are no instructions that say one must begin at the top or bottom or the edges at all. The goal is always in sight, but it does not direct our steps.

In this same manner, writers assemble stories or write books with no instructions other than a picture in their heads. The best writers work each sentence to be a good sentence that fits with the next, and the next. We write our words one at a time, with no really correct answer, though in the case of bad writing the words and sentences may fail to convey the writer's vision.

Nobel prize winner Andre Gide wrote, "I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts." Like the definition of achievement from my journal, it seems so small in the moment, but all adds up.

Gide, in another place, notes, "One should only become aware of the difficulties of a subject progressively and in the course of working at it; if one realizes them all at the outset, one loses heart." This applies to any larger venture, from building a business to building a masterpiece. Do the little things well, and the big picture will ultimately come together.