Kazuo Ishiguro, Unlocked: The Butler as Metaphor

In a recent interview with Susannah Hunnewell, Kazuo Ishiguro discusses the inspiration behind his novel The Remains of the Day. The story begins with a joke shared between Ishiguro and his wife. Their friend had suggested that the journalist interviewing Ishiguro for his first novel could arrive to ask him serious questions about the book, while Ishiguro pretended to be a butler. The couple found the idea amusing, and from that point on, Ishiguro became fascinated with the concept of the butler as a metaphor.

The first book Ishiguro attempted to read by Kazuo Ishiguro was The Remains of the Day. He was struck by how effectively Ishiguro adopts the voice of a midcentury English butler, with his polite demeanor and long descriptions of unremarkable days. Ishiguro's portrayal of Stevens made him feel like a mirage of a person, just a thinly veiled reflection of the author himself.

Years later, a friend lent Ishiguro a copy of The Unconsoled, a five-hundred-page novel about a pianist named Ryder. Ryder is tasked with mediating feuds between people he barely knows and finds himself lost every time he leaves his hotel. He struggles to rehearse for his recital as he navigates an elusive and shifting schedule of appointments.

Critics panned the book as one of the worst they had ever read, but Ishiguro found himself utterly captivated by its sense of refusal. He emphasizes that he never intended to be willfully obscure, stating that the novel was as clear as he could make it.

In the interview, the interviewer asks how the English setting came about for The Remains of the Day. Ishiguro reveals that it started with a joke made by his wife. After a journalist came to interview him for his first novel, his wife jokingly suggested that the interviewer would arrive to ask stern questions while Ishiguro pretended to be a butler. The couple found the idea amusing, and it ignited Ishiguro's obsession with the butler as a metaphor.