The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro

Author(s): Gregory Mason and Kazuo Ishiguro
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 335-347
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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AN INTERVIEW WITH KAZUO ISHIGURO

Conducted by Gregory Mason

In January 1987, Kazuo Ishiguro confirmed his position as Britain's

leading young novelist. He was awarded the Whitbread Book of the
Year Prize, the largest such cash prize in Britain, for his second novel,
An Artist of the Floating World. Born in Nagasaki in 1954, Ishiguro
left Japan at the age of five and has not returnedsince. In most respects
he has become thoroughly English, but as a writer he still draws con-
siderablyon his early childhood memories of Japan, his family upbring-
ing, and the great Japanese films of the fifties.
Soon after publishing a few short stories, Ishiguro jumped to
prominence in 1982 with his first novel, A Pale View ofHills. A Pale
View of Hills was awarded the Royal Society of Literature'sWinifred
Holtby Prize and has since been translatedinto eleven languages. With
great subtlety, Ishiguro presents a first-person narrator, Etsuko, a
middle-aged Japanese woman, now exiled in England some thirty years
after World War II. Traumatized by the recent suicide of her elder
daughter, she tells her own story and that of a wayward friend in
postwar Nagasaki before she left. Her enigmatic recall, tantalizingly
hamstrung by gaps and internal inconsistencies, works toward a dis-
quieting and haunting revelation, masterfully embedded in the point
of view itself.
Ishiguro's second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, is set
in the Japan of the late forties. Ono, an aging painter, gropes in his
diary entries toward a realization of the ironies of Japan's recent his-
tory, in which his own earlier, sincere convictions have enmeshed him.
The gently ironic conclusion leaves Ono both humiliated and digni-
fied, a kind of comic Everyman figure, wistfully trapped within his
own horizons. Once more, the first-person perspective allows Ishiguro

Contemporary Literature XXX, 3 0010-7484/89/0003-0335 $1.50/0

?1989 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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Kazuo Ishiguro. Photo credit: Jerry Bauer

to finessethe confines of a linearplot, and againthe authorevinces
an extraordinarycontrol of voice, an uncannily Japanese quality
emanatingfrom his perfectlypitched English prose.
Thisinterviewtook placeon December8, 1986,in Mr. Ishiguro's
SouthLondonhome. Throughoutthe courseof his remarks,Ishiguro
emergesas his own most discriminatinginterpreterand sternestcritic.
His meticulousinterestin the craft of fiction and lucid grasp of his
own aims and methodsmakethis conversationan unusuallyvaluable
introductionand companionto the author'sworks.

Q. How did your family'smove in 1960 from Japanto England

affect your upbringingand education?
A. My parentshave remainedfairlyJapanesein the way they go
about things, and being broughtup in a family you tend to operate
the way that familyoperates.I still speakto my parentsin Japanese.
I'll switchbackinto Japaneseas soon as I walkthroughthe door. But
my Japaneseisn'tverygood. It'slike a five-year-old'sJapanese,mixed
in withEnglishvocabulary,and I use all the wrongforms.Apartfrom
that, I've had a typicalEnglisheducation.I grew up in the south of
Englandand went to a typical Britishschool. At Kent University,I
studiedphilosophyand English, and at East Anglia I did an M.A.
in creativewriting.

Q. Do you feel you're writingin any particulartradition?

A. I feel that I'm very much of the Westerntradition.And I'm
quite often amusedwhenreviewersmake a lot of my being Japanese
and try to mentionthe two or threeauthorsthey'vevaguelyheardof,
comparingme to Mishimaor something.It seemshighlyinappropriate.
I'vegrownup readingWesternfiction:Dostoevsky,Chekhov,Charlotte
Bronte, Dickens.
Q. Are there any influences from the Japaneseside as well?
A. Tanizaki,Kawabata,Ibuse, and a little Soseki, perhaps.But
I'mprobablymoreinfluencedby Japanesemovies. I see a lot of Japa-
nese films. The visual images of Japan have a great poignancyfor
me, particularlyin domesticfilms like those of Ozu and Naruse, set
in the postwarera, the Japan I actuallyremember.

Q. Yourfirstnovel,A Pale Viewof Hills, also dealswithmemories

of Japan,but they arerepressedmemorieswithellipsesthatthe reader
has to work to fill in.

336 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

A. Yes. In that book, I was tryingsomethingratherodd with the
narrative.The main strategywas to leavea big gap. It'sabout a Japa-
nesewoman,Etsuko,who is exiledin Britainin middleage, andthere's
a certainarea of her life that'svery painful to her. It has something
to do with her coming over to the Westand the effect it has on her
daughter,who subsequentlycommitssuicide.She talks all aroundit,
but she leavesthat as a gap. Instead,shetells anotherstoryaltogether,
going back yearsand talkingabout somebodyshe once knew. So the
whole narrativestrategyof the book was about how someone ends
up talkingaboutthingstheycannotfacedirectlythroughotherpeople's
stories. I was tryingto explorethat type of language,how peopleuse
the languageof self-deceptionand self-protection.

Q. Thereare certainthings, a bit like in HenryJames'sThe Turn

of theScrew,thatarejust unresolved.Forinstance,in the pivotalscene
on the bridgewhenEtsukois talkingto her friendSachiko'sdaughter
Mariko, she switcheswithout warningto addressingthe child as if
she herselfwereactuallythe child'smother.At the most extreme,that
leads the readerto ponderwhetherthe two womenwerenot one and
the same person.
A. What I intendedwas this: because it's really Etsuko talking
about herself, and possiblythat somebodyelse, Sachiko, existedor
did not exist, the meaningsthat Etsukoimputesto the life of Sachiko
are obviously the meaningsthat are relevantto her (Etsuko's)own
life. Whateverthe facts were about what happenedto Sachiko and
her daughter,they are of interestto Etsuko now becauseshe can use
themto talk about herself.So you havethis highlyEtsuko-edversion
of this other person'sstory; and at the most intensepoint, I wanted
to suggestthat Etsukohad droppedthis cover. It just slips out: she's
now talking about herself. She'sno longer botheringto put it in the
third person.
Q. I thought that the effect of this scene was quite stunning.
A. Yes, that scene itself works all right, if the rest of the book
hadbuiltup to that kindof ambiguity.Butthe troubleis thatthe flash-
backsaretoo clear,in a way. Theyseemto be relatedwiththe authority
of some kind of realisticfiction. It doesn'thave the same murkiness
of someonetryingto wadethroughtheirmemories,tryingto manipu-
late memories,as I would have wanted. The mode is wrongin those
scenes of the past. They don't have the texture of memory. And for
that reason the ending doesn't quite come off. It's just too sudden.

ISHIGURO I 337
I intendedwiththat scenefor the readerfinallyto realize,witha sense
of inevitability,"Of course, yes, she's finally said it." Instead,it's a
shock. I didn'tquite have the technicalsophisticationto pull it off,
and the resultis that it's a bit baffling. Fortunately,a lot of people
quiteenjoy beingbaffled. As you say, you'reknockedover sideways.
You feel you have to read the book again, which is a differentsort
of effect.

Q. Thereis a dissonancebetweenthe picturethat Etsuko paints

of herselfwhen back in Japanas a very timid, conventionalperson
and the ratherbold, unconventionalthings she emergesas actually
havingdone: leavingher husband,leavingher homeland,and so on.
That's anothergap the readerhas to wrestlewith.
A. Yes, that's the gap in A Pale View of Hills. We can assume
that the realEtsukoof the past is somewhatnearerthe mousyEtsuko
she talks about in the fortiesthan she is to the Sachikofigure. After
all, that is her account,the emotionalstoryof how she cameto leave
Japan,althoughthatdoesn'ttell you the actualfacts.But I'mnot inter-
estedin the solid facts. The focus of the book is elsewhere,in the emo-
tional upheaval.

Q. In some ways, especiallyin the dreamsections, it seems as if

Etsuko is tryingto punish herself. She lashes herselfwith grief and
guilt at the suicideof her daughterKeiko. Yetin otherways, it seems
as if she's tryingto rearrangethe past so that she doesn'tcome out
of it too badly. Am I right in seeing these two things?
A. Yes,the book is largelybasedaroundherguilt.She feelsa great
guilt, that out of her own emotionallongingsfor a differentsort of
life, she sacrificedher first daughter'shappiness.There is that side
to her that feels resistantto her youngerdaughterNikki, who tells
her, "You'vegot nothing to worry about,"and that she did exactly
the right thing. She feels that this isn't quite a true account. But on
the otherhand, she does need to arrangeher memoriesin a way that
allows her to salvage some dignity.

Q. Thereweresomepartlydevelopedcomicthemesin A Pale View

of Hills, but they didn't quite take hold.
A. Yes, whateverechoes I wantedto start betweenEtsuko and
Ogata,the father-in-law,verymuchfadedaway. Let'ssay I was a less
experiencedwriterat that point, and I think that one of the things
that happensto less experiencedwritersis that you cannotcontrolthe

338 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

book, as moreexperiencedwriterscan. Youbringin an elementwith-
out realizingwhat the implicationof this is on the rest of the book.
A lot of the things I was initiallymost interestedin got completely
upstagedby things I almost inadvertentlyset in motion. But you get
very excited when you'rewritingyour first novel. And once having
figured out these clever little narrativestrategies,then you bring in
this and you bringin that, and suddenlyyou find that two-thirdsof
the book is concernedwith somethingelse altogether.The Etusko-
Sachikostory about exile and parentalresponsibilitywas essentially
somethingwhichI waylaidmyselfinto. I often would bringin things
simplybecausethey workedrathernicely on that particularpage in
that particularchapter.And suddenly,I'dfind myselfwith a daughter
who'dhung herself, or whatever,on my handsand I'dhave to figure
out how to deal with that. If you reallywantto writesomething,you
shouldn'tbringthings into your book lightly. It's a bit like takingin
lodgers. They'regoing to be with you a long time. I think the most
importantthing I learnedbetweenwritingthe first and secondnovels
is the element of thematicdiscipline.
Q. What drewyou to your subjectand to the theme of the older
artist in your second novel, An Artist of the Floating World?Were
you thinkingof anyone in particular,or of any groups?
A. Not really,no. I supposeI wasthinkingof myselfandmy peers,
the generationthat cameto universityin the sixtiesand the seventies.
I writeout of a kind of projectedfear of reachinga certainage and
lookingback. I am interestedin that particularform of wastingone's
talents,not becauseyou spentyour wholelife lyingon your back, not
doing anything.I'm interestedin people who, in all sincerity,work
very hard and perhapscourageouslyin their lifetimestowardsome-
thing, fullybelievingthatthey'recontributingto somethinggood, only
to find that the social climatehas done a topsy-turvyon them by the
timethey'vereachedthe endsof theirlives.Theverythingstheythought
they could be proud of have now become things they have to be
ashamedof. I'mdrawnto thatperiodin Japanesehistorybecausethat's
whathappenedto a wholegenerationof people. Theylivedin a moral
climatethat rightup untilthe end of the warsaidthatthe most praise-
worthy thing they could do was to use their talents to furtherthe
nationalistcause in Japan, only to find after the war that this had
been a terriblemistake.An Artist of theFloating Worldis an explora-
tion of somebodytryingto come to termswith the fact that he has
somehowmisusedhis talentsunknowingly,simplybecausehe didn't
have any extraordinarypower of insight into the world he lived in.

ISHIGURO 339
Q. Where is An Artist of the Floating World set?
A. It's just an imaginarycity, for variousreasons. Once I set it
in an actualcity,thenthe obligationto actuallycheckup wouldbecome
boringlyrelevant,andthereseemedto be no point. It was of no value
to me if I could claim that it's authenticallyset in Tokyo or not. In
fact, in many ways it would play into the hands of a certainkind of
misreader,who wishedthe book to be simplysome kindof realisttext
tellingyou what Tokyowas like afterthe war. By settingit in an un-
specifiedvenue, I could suggestthat I'mofferingthis as a novel about
people and their lives, and that this isn't some piece of documentary
writingabout a real city. And it just gave me a lot more freedom.
If I wanteda pavilionwithlanternsaroundits eaves,I couldjust invent
one. I could invent as many districtsas I could think of names. All
thesethingswouldhave been technicallyratherirksome,if I had had
to keep referringto a map, and to the actual history of Tokyo.
The other temptationwas to set it in Nagasaki, the only Japa-
nese city I have some familiaritywith, and which I could have got
some people to tell me about. But of course, overwhelminglyfor
Westernreaders,whenyou bringin Nagasakitheythinkof the atomic
bomb, and I had no place for the atomic bomb in this novel. And
so, although possibly I might have been able to refer more or less
authenticallyto Nagasakilandmarksand districts,I didn't want to
do it simply becauseit would have been anotherbomb book.

Q. Wasthereanyparticularreasonwhyyou hadyourcentralchar-
acter be a painter, ratherthan a writer, or even an actor?
A. No greatreason,no. I was not intrinsicallyinterestedin paint-
ing or painters.It just seemedto me that a painterservedmy pur-
poses betterthan some of the other careers.I think it's alwaysdan-
gerous to have a writerin a novel. That leads you into all kinds of
areas,unlessyou'respecificallyinterestedin talkingaboutthe nature
of fiction.ButI tryto avoidthatverypostmodernelementin my books.
Q. Did you do any researchinto how painters'groupsat the time
behaved?What props did you have in imaginingthese scenes?
A. I did verylittle research,primarilybecauseresearchis only of
any interestto me in orderto checkup after I've done something,to
makesureI'mnot gettinganythingwildlywrong.I needcertainthings
to be the way they are in my books for the purposesof my themes.
In An Artist of the Floating World, I needed to portray this world
where a leader figure held this incredible psychological sway over his

340 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

subordinates.And for subordinatesto break free, they had to dis-
play a remarkableamount of determination.That'swhat I needed,
andas far as I wasconcerned,thingsin my Japanweregoingto operate
like that. I am not essentiallyconcernedwith a realistpurposein writ-
ing. I just inventa Japanwhichservesmy needs.And I put that Japan
togetherout of little scraps,out of memories,out of speculation,out
of imagination.

Q. In some respects,you have a narrativesetup in An Artist of

the Floating Worldsimilar to that in A Pale View of Hills. The whole
narrativeis recountedby a personwho is somewhatunreliable,so the
readerhas to attendto otherthingsto gaugethe extentof the unreli-
ability.Ono, the narrator,addressesthe readerdirectlywiththe book's
openingsentence:"If on a sunnyday you climbthe steep path. .. ."
This strikesan almost intimatetone, as if he is talkingto a friendor
acquaintance.Elsewhere,his accountsounds more like an apologia,
a public explanationfor what he did. Who is the "reader"here, and
what exactly is the narrativesituation?
A. The readerthat I intendedobviouslyisn'tthe "you"that Ono
refersto. Ono in his narrativeassumesthat anybodyreadingit must
live in the city and mustbe awareof its landmarks.I usedthat device
mainlyto createa world. I thought it helpedstrengthenthis mental
landscapemapped out entirelyby what Ono was conscious of, and
nothing else. And whetherthe readerregistersit consciouslyor not,
it cannothelp but createthe effect of actuallyeavesdroppingon Ono
beingintimatewith somebodyin his own town. To a largeextent,the
reason for Ono's downfall was that he lacked a perspectiveto see
beyond his own environmentand to stand outside the actualvalues
of his time. So the question of this parochialperspectivewas quite
centralto the book, and I triedto buildthat into the whole narrative.
At the same time, I'm suggestingthat Ono is fairly normal;most of
us have similarparochialvisions. So the book is largely about the
inabilityof normalhumanbeingsto see beyondtheirimmediatesur-
roundings,and becauseof this, one is at the mercyof whatthis world
immediatelyaround one proclaimsitself to be.

Q. With the somewhatdodderynarrator'sconstant digressions,

the plot linekeepsfanningout all the time. Does thissuggestthatyou're
trying to escape from the tyrannyof a linear plot?
A. Yes, yes it does! I don't like the idea that A has to come before
B and that B has to come before C becausethe plot dictatesit. I want

ISHIGURO 341
certainthings to happenin a certainorder, accordingto how I feel
the thing should be arrangedtonally or whatever.I can have Ono in
a certainkind of emotionalmood or emotionalway of talkingabout
things when I want him to be, and it looks like he'sjust drifted, but
frommy point of view, it's quitecontrived.I'vefiguredout littletran-
sitory connectingparagraphswherebyhe appearsto drift from one
sectionto the next. This mightgive the senseof his beingold and vul-
nerable,but people do tend to talk like this anyway.And more cru-
cially, people tend to think like this. So I'm not dictatedto by the
chronologyof events, and I can revealthings just when I want to.
Q. And again, there are unresolvedpoints of fact in the narra-
tive, open to varyingconstructionsby the reader.
A. Yes.As usual,I'mnot overwhelmingly interestedin whatreally
did happen.What'simportantis the emotionalaspect,the actualposi-
tions the characterstake up at differentpoints in the story, and why
they need to take up these positions.
Q. At the same time, you draw a very explicitthematicparallel
betweenthe way Ono'smentortreatedhim, confiscatinghis pictures
and expellinghim from his villa, and the way that Ono subsequently
treats his own pupil, Kuroda.
A. I'mpointingto the master-pupilthingrecurringoverand over
againin the world. In a way, I'musing Japanas a sort of metaphor.
I'm tryingto suggestthat this isn't somethingpeculiarto Japan, the
need to follow leadersand the need to exercisepower over subordi-
nates,as a sortof motorby whichsocietyoperates.I'minvitingWestern
readersto look at this not as a Japanesephenomenonbut as a human
phenomenon.
Q. In the floating world of urban TokugawaJapan, with its
pleasurequartersand puppetplays, or at least in the art that came
out of the floating world, irreconcilableconflicts are often resolved
by melodramaticsuicides. The title of your book, An Artist of the
Floating World,necessarilyconjuresresonancesof this whole tradi-
tion. Yetyou offer a gentlyironic, comic solutionto your tale, some-
what at variancewith the moremelodramatic,conventionalexpecta-
tionsof the genre.Life-affirmingvaluesprevail,ratherthaneverything
descendinginto a welterof despairor clich%
the of suicide.The narra-
tive does hint, at certainpoints, that Ono'sfamilyare worriedabout
sucha possibility.Instead,Onoownsup to his errors,makeshis accom-

342 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

modation with the changingtimes, and still managesto cling to a
measureof self-vindication.Wereyou in any senseofferingan untra-
ditional or even un-Japaneseresolutionto his conflict?
A. Well,you see, I don't feel that it is un-Japanese.A while ago,
I publisheda short story entitled"A FamilySupper."The story was
basicallyjust a bigtrick,playingon Westernreaders'expectationsabout
Japanesepeople who kill themselves.It's never stated, but Western
readersare supposedto think that these people are going to commit
mass suicide, and of course they do nothing of the sort.
Thisbusinessaboutcommittingseppukuor whatever.It'sas alien
to me as it is to you. And it's as alien to most modernJapaneseas
it is to Westernpeople. The Japaneseare in love with these melo-
dramaticstories where heroes commit suicide, but people in Japan
don't go around killing themselvesas easily as people in the West
assume.And so my book may not have a traditionalJapanesestory
ending in that sense, but a lot of the great Japanesemovies of the
fifties wouldnot dreamof havingan endinglikethat. And if I borrow
from anytradition,it'sprobablyfromthattraditionthattriesto avoid
anythingthat is overtly melodramaticor plotty, that tries basically
to remainwithin the realms of everydayexperience.
I'mverykeenthatwheneverI portraybooksthatareset in Japan,
even if it's not very accuratelyJapan, that people are seen to be just
people. I ask myself the same questionsabout my Japanesecharac-
ters that I would about Englishcharacters,when I'm askingthe big
questions,what'sreallyimportantto them. My experienceof Japa-
nese people in this realmis that they'relike everybodyelse. They're
like me, my parents.I don'tsee them as peoplewho go aroundslash-
ing their stomachs.

Q. What sort of mood did you wish to portrayin the narrator,

Ono, by the end of the book?
A. I wantedthat slightlypainful and bittersweetfeeling of him
thinking:"Japanmade a mess of it, but how marvelousthat in a few
years it's all set to have a completelyfresh go. But a man'slife isn't
likethat. In a man'slife, there'sonlyroom for this one go."And Ono's
done it, he made a go of it, and it didn'tturn out well. His world is
over, and all he can do is wish the youngergenerationwell, but he
is no partof that world.And I was interestedin the variousstrategies
somebodywouldemployto try to salvagesome sort of dignity,to get
into a position wherehe could say, "Well,at least X, Y, and Z." In

ISHIGURo IO 343
a way, Ono is continuallybeing cornered.He keepshavingto admit
this and admitthat, and in the end he even acceptshis own smallness
in the world. I suppose I wantedto suggestthat a person'sdignity
isn't necessarilydependenton what he achievesin his life or in his
career;that there is somethingdignifiedabout Ono in the end that
arises simply out of his being human.

Q. And throughthe course of his narrative,the readercan see

Ono, preservehis self-esteem,graduallymakingconcessionsand
to
accommodationsthat he himself cannot see?
A. Yes,thatcertainlywasthe intention.It usesverymuchthe diary
method.Technically,the advantageof the diarynarrativeis that each
entry can be writtenfrom a differentemotionalposition. What he
writes in October 1948 is actuallywrittenout of a different set of
assumptionsthan the piecesthat arewrittenlateron. That reallywas
the sole reasonfor dividingthe book up into four chunks,each osten-
siblywrittenin a sittingor whateverat the pointwhenthe dateis given:
just so we can actuallywatchhis progress,and so that the language
itself changes slightly.

Q. And this in turn underscoresthe largertheme of the ironies

and vicissitudesof the floatingworld.Havingrejectedthe demimonde
"floatingworld"subjectsof his mentor, Ono receivedthe patriotic
awardfor his propagandistposterartandexperienceda shortmoment
of triumph.But this too was fleeting.
A. Yes, that's why he is the artist of the floating world, just as
the floating worldcelebratedtransitorypleasures.Even if they were
gone by the morning, and they were built on nothing, at least you
enjoyedthem at the time. The idea is that thereare no solid things.
And the irony is that Ono had rejectedthat whole approachto life.
Butin the end, he too is left celebratingthosepleasuresthatevaporated
whenthe morninglightdawned.So the floatingworldcomesto refer,
in the largermetaphoricalsense, to the fact that the valuesof society
are always in flux.

Q. Your first-personnarrators,a late middle-agedwoman in A

Pale Viewof Hills and an older man in An Artist of the Floating World,
are far removedfrom you in your personalsituation. How did you
manageto inhabitthese people?Throughsome kind of imaginative
migration?

344 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

A. It neveroccurredto me that it wouldbe a technicaldifficulty.
It'sratherlikethe questionaboutrealismand Japanesedetails.I didn't
start from the point of view of saying, "Whatdoes a middle-aged
womanthinklike?"Thatwayyou cangetveryintimidatedby the whole
project.I neededa certainconsciousness,a certainstateof mind, and
it just naturallyfollowed that this would be a middle-agedwoman
or an older man. Ono couldn'tbe anythingelse.

Q. It is remarkable,for someone writingin English, how much

of a Japanesetextureyour writingachieves.How, for instance,did
you set aboutthe problemof projectingdifferentiatedJapanesevoices
through the medium of the English language?
A. Therearetwo things. BecauseI am writingin the firstperson,
eventhe prosehas to conformto the characterization of the narrator.
Etsuko, in A Pale View of Hills, speaks in a kind of Japaneseway
becauseshe'sa Japanesewoman. Whenshe sometimesspeaksabout
Japanesethings, explainingwhat a kujibikistand is, for instance,it
becomesclearthat she's speakingEnglishand that it's a second lan-
guage for her. So it has to have that kind of carefulness,and, par-
ticularlywhen she'sreproducingJapanesedialoguein English,it has
to have a certain foreignnessabout it.
The thing about Ono in An Artist of the Floating World is that
he's supposedto be narratingin Japanese;it's just that the readeris
getting it in English. In a way the languagehas to be almost like a
pseudotranslation,whichmeansthat I can'tbe too fluent and I can't
use too many Westerncolloquialisms.It has to be almost like sub-
titles, to suggest that behind the English languagethere'sa foreign
languagegoingon. I'mquiteconsciousof actuallyfiguringthesethings
out when I'm writing, using a certainkind of translationese.Some-
times my ear will say: "Thatdoesn'tquite ringtrue, that kind of lan-
guage. Fine if this were just English people, but not here."

Q. Whenyou write,do you haveanyonewho helpsyou to revise?

A. I tendto workentirelyalone. I havean editorat Faber,Robert
McCrumb,who often sees the penultimatedraft. In both novels, he
made suggestionsthat were very helpful, but they tend to be pretty
minor. Normally he'll point to that part of the book that seems to
be weak and ask me to look at it again. But I'll only show him my
manuscript when I think it's more or less finished. And I certainly

ISHIGURO 345
don'tdo this businessof goingthroughthe prosewith somebodyelse,
page by page.
Q. Do you feel any pressureto experimentformally?
A. I did at a certaintime. Whenliterarypeopletalk about"young
writers,"they almostimplythat this is synonymouswith writerswho
are experimenting.You often readphraseslike, "They'resmashingup
this, or subvertingthat." So I think that it's verynaturalto feel that
the older generationhas somehow alreadydone that, and that now
you'vegot to. But I try not to let it become too centralto what I'm
writing.The kindof book I findverytediousis the kindof book whose
raisond'etreis to say somethingabout literaryform. I'm only inter-
estedin literaryexperimentinsofaras it servesa purposeof exploring
certainthemeswith an emotionaldimension.I alwaystry to disguise
those elementsof my writingthat I feel perhapsare experimental.

Q. What are you workingon now?

A. I'mwritinganothernovel. Thisone is set in England.It'sabout
a butlerwho wants to get close to a great man, close to the center
of history. I also writetelevisionfilms. I've writtentwo of these and
we'retryingto get a third off the ground, this time a cinema film.
So I'vealwaysgot at leasttwo thingsgoing, a screenplayand a novel.
Filmmakingis very, very differentfrom writing.You shoot to a set
schedule, and the crew knocks off at a certaintime; otherwiseyou
pay a fortune in overtime.You just haven'tgot the opportunityto
keep doing scenes over and over till they'reperfect. It's almost like
a concertperformanceor something,whereyou'vegot to get it right,
then and there. It's somewherebetweena performanceart and the
moremeditative,deliberateproductionthatwritingis. In writing,you
can rewriteand rewriteand rewriteat no cost, otherthanwhatit costs
for the paper, and you can spend a long, long time.

Q. How do you see your work developing,and what do you see

as your abidingpreoccupations?
A. Well,it's very difficultto say if I'll have the same preoccupa-
tions in ten years'time that I have today. Thereare certainthings in
my books that I'm not particularlyinterestedin, althoughthey have
takenup a fairlyimportantchunkof my writing.I'mnot particularly
interestedin themesaboutparentalresponsibility,or evenaboutexile,
although these seem to be very much to the fore in the first book.

346 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

I'mnot at all interestedin the questionof suicide,althoughI'maware
that that has been in both books in some form or another.But things
like memory, how one uses memoryfor one's own purposes, one's
own ends, those thingsinterestme moredeeply.And so, for the time
being, I'mgoing to stick withthe first person, and developthe whole
businessabout followingsomebody'sthoughtsaround,as they try to
trip themselvesup or to hide from themselves.

ISHIGURO I 347