MAN BOOKER PRIZE 1989
Booker club: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Poignant, subtly plotted and with the perfect unreliable narrator, Kazuo Ishiguro's novel about a repressed servant deserved to rise above the clamour surrounding the shortlist in the year of his Booker triumphFriday 26 November 2010
In 1989, most of the press coverage of the Booker prize related to the fact that Martin Amis had yet again failed to win. A supposedly "furious" row had broken out among the judges, provoked by an "outraged feminist faction" and their dislike of his novel London Fields – and Amis missed his chance. That all seems beside the point now. Whatever you may think about Amis's exclusion (he didn't even make the shortlist), there's less arguing about the winner. The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, is a good one.
This is, after all, the book that gave us Stevens – the closest rival Jeeves has ever had in the single-named literary servant sweepstakes. Stevens is a terrifyingly effective and dedicated head servant, running the house of Lord Darlington with dedication and precision. He is the epitome of courtesy and quiet skill when it comes to fulfilling his master's needs. He is loyal to a fault. He barely even blanches when Darlington asks him to fire a couple of maids because they are Jewish, or when he entertains Nazis in his stately homes and allows himself to be used as a pawn in Hitler's political games.
Stevens comes to realise rather too late in life that perhaps he may have taken the wrong path. He still maintains that "dignity", and loyalty "intelligently bestowed", are the highest attainments someone in his profession can hope for. Yet he presents plenty of evidence that suggests otherwise as he muses on his years of dedicated service to the now-deceased Darlington during a road trip to see Miss Kenton, a former colleague with whom he was once in love (although he never admits as much).
As Stevens presents him, Darlington was a noble man who was so outraged by the injustice of the treaty of Versailles that he did everything in his power to help the Germans avoid another war with England. It's only the benefit of hindsight that enables Stevens to see Darlington was playing a dangerous and foolish game, and that his high ideals proved to be just as toxic as immorality.
This battle with history is moving and effective. More pathos still comes from his forlorn attempt to make amends for the mistakes of his past and to improve his future by striking up with Miss Kenton (actually Mrs Benn, although Stevens fearfully avoids using her married name). Once, he says, he assumed "one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding". Now, his dreams have been rendered "forever irredeemable". Ouch.
All of that works well, but probably the most interesting thing about the book is that Stevens's tragedy isn't as straightforward as he suggests. Hindsight has made the butler feel like one of history's victims, his life swept into crepuscular shadows by forces beyond his comprehension. But this is a novel as much about foresight as hindsight – or rather the protagonist's lack of it. Stevens is clearly more culpable than he suggests: he could and should have seen more. At the end he maintains it is "not possible to adopt ... a critical attitude towards an employer and provide good service", but there are moments in the book when he could have acted. Crucially, when Reginald, Darlington's nephew, tries to warn Stevens about Darlington's involvement with the Nazis and to get him to do something about it, Stevens refuses. Perhaps this is because he still sees Reginald as the innocent to whom, mortifyingly, Darlington once asked Stevens to "convey ... the facts of life". Perhaps it is because ... well, Ishiguro leaves it open.
The author also avoids closing the door on the possibility that we might be expecting too much of Stevens. When he sacks the two Jewish workers , for instance, the more sensible and principled Miss Kenton objects furiously – and yet steps back from resigning as she threatens. For her to have done so in the depression of the 30s would make no difference to Darlington, but it would have ruined her life. Where would Stevens have been if he'd have criticised his master? The head servant himself also provides another defence, late in the book: "While it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect ... "
Again, Ishiguro leaves things deliciously ambiguous. Should we believe Stevens's protestations? On top of everything else, he is a singularly unreliable narrator. He claims that he listens at the door as a "small precaution to avoid knocking at some inopportune moment". He tries to pretend that he reads "what might be described as 'sentimental romance novels'" in the name of duty, to develop his "command of language". Less amusingly, he invokes that idea of "duty" again and again when it is clearly a blind for his emotional constipation and moral failure.
Ishiguro beds these clues in the narrative so cleverly that by the end it's hard to believe anything Stevens says. Events are always proving him wrong, casting doubt on his original presentations and conspiring against him. As David Lodge, chairman of the judges in 1989, said, it's "a cunningly structured and beautifully paced performance". So cunning, in fact, that it sometimes feels as if we're being duped – that Ishiguro is leading us on an elegant but deliberately dizzying dance rather than a real emotional journey. But the fact that the book is cleverly put together is the strongest objection I can raise against it. Amis might have deserved more from the Booker prize – but that doesn't mean The Remains of the Day didn't deserve to win.
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