The Unconsoled, byKazuo Ishiguro
The renowned concert pianist Ryder has arrived into a central European town in crisis. On realising who he is, the hotel attendant snaps to attention. In the elevator, the hotel porter, Gustav, enters into a peculiarly long monologue about his efforts to sustain the dignity of his profession. Ryder, our sole narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, appears oddly oblivious to why he’s here, almost as if has amnesia and is piecing together who he is from those around him. Prompted by a comment from Gustav, Ryder turns with a start and realises there’s a third person in the elevator. Hilde Stratmaan, a young woman in a neat business suit, is squeezed into the corner. Through her sycophantic yet somewhat passive aggressive commentary, she appears to be his handler.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Ryder,’ the young woman said. ‘I haven’t yet introduced myself. I’m Hilde Stratmann. I’ve been given the task of ensuring everything goes smoothly while you’re here with us. I’m so glad you’ve managed to get here at last. We were all starting to get a little concerned. Everyone waited this morning for as long as they could, but many had important appointments and had to go off one by one. So it falls to me, a humble employee of the Civic Arts Institute, to tell you how greatly honoured we all feel by your visit.’
‘I’m very pleased to be here. But concerning this morning. Did you just say…’
‘Oh, please don’t worry at all about this morning, Mr Ryder. No one was put out in the least. The important thing is that you’re here. You know, Mr Ryder, something on which I can certainly agree with Gustav is the Old Town. It really is most attractive and I always advise visitors to go there. It has a marvellous atmosphere, full of pavement cafés, craft shops, restaurants. It’s only a short walk from here, so you should take the opportunity as soon as your schedule allows.’
‘I’ll certainly try and do that. Incidentally, Miss Stratmann, speaking of my schedule…’
It seems everyone in the town is aware that it is in a deep cultural crisis.
I read The Unconsoled as a student when I was 20. I’d never read anything like it. The strange motion of the character through room after room filled me with vivid dreams. At the time, I was passionately discovering many of the masterworks of contemporary classical music, and I found comfort in its irreverent satire of the status games surrounding high culture. I decided then it was my favourite book.
In the 17 years since, I’m concerned that I’m yet to have a conversation about the book with someone who has read it. I have plenty of bookish friends and Ishiguro won both the Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. While The Unconsoled both makes some critics’ lists of top novels from the late 20th century, and is slammed by others. The critic James Woods described it as having ‘invented its own category of badness.’ Most reviewers seem just to find it confusing.
Having raved about it for 15 years, I decided two years ago, with some trepidation, that I really ought to re-read it.
Ishiguro’s honed style is the first person narrator who reveals their inner struggle in the negative space of the story they tell. In The Remains of the Day, the early work that made Ishiguro famous, Stevens, an English butler in a post-war, destaffed manor, recounts the more glorious pre-war days, while delicately treading around the fact that the lord to whom he devoted his life was a Fascist sympathiser. Most regrettable. But within the cracks, we witness a deeper tragedy of a life wasted as Stevens sheltered in the frigid comfort of duty while allowing the woman he might have loved and married to pass by. Never Let Me Go is a story of teenage friendship and adventure told by a clone who is being raised solely to be an organ donor for the person she’s cloned from. In Klara and the Sun, an obsolete robotic playfriend seemingly incapable of gloomy thinking recounts the brief period of love, joy and care she felt for the child that’s now outgrown her.
Each of Ishiguro’s unreliable narrators tells their story as best as they can make sense of it. It’s in their over-explained decisions, exaggerated twists-of-fate, their appropriation of others’ stories, a picture emerges of that which they find too painful to confront in themselves.
The Unconsoled is different. Reality itself has become unreliable. Our narrator appears not to notice. Incidental characters turn out to be family members. He sits next to two journalists who notice him, then continue unabashed discussing their plans to manipulate him into being photographed in front of ‘the Sattler monument’. (Ryder haplessly obliges them.) Chancing upon an abandoned car, Ryder implausibly realises it to be the wreck of the family car of his childhood. When reality impedes him, he gets frustrated. He blames himself and those around him, but at no point does he question that reality. Who does? He tries to save face, fabricating details, all while absorbing and adopting the pompous persona assumed of him.
It’s all very well your coming here like this. Standing in front of the Sattler monument! Smiling like that! Then you’ll move on. It’s not that simple for those of us who have to live here. The Sattler monument!’
The round-faced young man did not look like someone accustomed to making bold utterances and there seemed no doubting the sincerity of his emotions. I felt a little taken aback and for a moment found myself unable to respond. Then, as the round-faced young man began another volley of accusations, I felt something inside me give way. It occurred to me that I had somehow, unaccountably, made a miscalculation the previous day in choosing to be photographed in front of the Sattler monument. At the time, certainly, it had seemed the most telling way of sending out an appropriate signal to the citizens of this city. I had, of course, been all too aware of the pros and cons involved—I could recall how at breakfast that morning I had sat carefully weighing these up—but I now saw the possibility that there was even more to the business of the Sattler monument than I had supposed.
Ishiguro traces the origins of The Unconsoled to a conversation with his wife about the universality of dreaming as a language. It does not occur to the dreamer to question how odd things are. Interviewed Ishiguro in The Paris Review in 2008, Ishiguro said
What is the grammar of dreams? ... The dreaming mind is very impatient with this kind of thing. Typically what happens is we’ll be sitting here alone in this room, and suddenly we’ll become aware that a third person has been here all the time at my elbow. There might be a sense of mild surprise that we hadn’t been aware of this person up until this point, but we would just go straight into whatever point the person is raising.
The grammar of dreams is surely surreal, but it’s not what I think of when I hear ‘surreal’. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice is reasonable. As our protagonist, she is our eyes and her squareness is an anchor against which we can see the strangeness of Wonderland. But in The Unconsoled, Ryder is ever rationalising what is going on - after all, he is the one telling the story and he certainly does not think himself mad. He is the bullshitter in all of us, unable to see any fault in ourselves, inventing details as needed to fill in inconsistencies in our story, and resorting to anger when the world does not comply. He is my friend’s infuriating combination of moodiness, over-intelligence and complete lack of self-awareness by which he can always give a dense intellectual justification of why he and his feelings are completely justified. Ishiguro’s skill is to make such self-serving pomposity not only both tragic and funny, but believable and relatable. In the words of the Nobel Prize committee, he uncovers ‘the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.’
People keep asking favours of Ryder. The hotel manager wants him to look at his wife’s albums of newspaper clippings about Ryder. The manager’s son, an amateur pianist hoping to impress his father, asks Ryder to listen and give him tips. The porter asks Ryder to talk to his daughter from whom he’s gradually become estranged in recent years. It seems Ryder is not the only one appropriating the struggles of others to mask his own. He agrees to each, finding himself in some kind of saviour role. But he has still not received his schedule.
I found myself troubled once more by a sense that much was expected of me here, and yet that things were at present on a far from satisfactory footing. In fact, there seemed nothing for it but to seek out Miss Stratmann and clear up certain points once and for all. I resolved to go and find her as soon as I came to the end of my current cup of coffee. There was no reason for this to be an awkward encounter, and it would be simple enough to explain what had happened at our last meeting. ‘Miss Stratmann,’ I might say, ‘I was very tired earlier and so when you asked about my schedule I misunderstood you. I thought you were asking me if I would have time to look at it straight away if you were to produce a copy then and there.’ Or else I could go on the offensive, even adopting a tone of reproach. ‘Miss Stratmann, I have to say I’m a little concerned and, yes, somewhat disappointed. Given the level of responsibility you and your fellow citizens seem content to place on my shoulders, I think I have a right to expect a certain standard of administrative back-up.’
I am an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, I’m fairly sure, but with enough luck to find myself recently opening an exhibition of my work at a sizable public museum in Europe. There is a press conference. I receive emails saying ‘can you make an interview at Xpm with Y?’ which seem to suggest I may be busy with other things in this city they’ve flown me out to and are paying me to be in. And yet, the fixed nature of the details and time suggest the question mark to be rhetorical, an act of politeness to avoid bossing around the esteemed guest. It’s not a role I feel natural or comfortable in, but, like Ryder, I am a people-pleaser, and so I find myself trying to maintain the persona. In a photocall, a photographer positions me in front of the artwork. We don’t share a language, so he demonstrates his desired pose: an earnest face, arms folded, like some kind of no-nonsense podcast host. The minister of culture arrives. He is clearly the real deal: mere rumours of his location seem to determine the movements of the circus. We are to be photographed together standing inside the artwork. As we are manoeuvred into place, the minister glances me in the eyes. In that moment, I see consciousness, a full awareness of the absurdity of this whole dance. Everyone else, myself included, is in full RPG mode. I can feel the absurdity, but I’m far too caught up in it to be able to really stop and take it in. But I do have dear Ryder joining me throughout, reminding me that none of this has anything to do with me. I am a token temporarily played in a board game that began before I was born and will continue after I die. I find that thought reassuring.
The Unconsoled was published in 1995, a midpoint between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 launching democracy’s eastward spread, and the PATRIOT Act of 2001 its western retreat. Perhaps 1995 was a peak of confidence in Western Europe, where the establishment could trouble itself with whether or not its cultural programme was suitable daring. Ishiguro satirises the influential class who desperately want the cultural capital of contemporary classical music but don’t seem to have much of an ear for it. I’m reminded of Östlund’s 2017 film The Square. In its defining scene of a performance artist at a gala dinner assaulting a stunned and muted attendee, it captures a mutual dependency of mutual loathing between the arts and the elites. The Unconsoled, on the other hand, paints a much more pathetic picture.
Mr Ryder, please tell us,’ she said. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of it. Is Henri right in believing we can’t at any cost abandon the circular dynamic in Kazan?’
She had not spoken loudly, but her voice had a penetrating quality. The whole room heard her question and immediately became quiet. ... Realising I would have to choose my next words carefully, I paused a moment. Then I said:
‘My own view is that Kazan never benefits from formalised restraints. Neither from the circular dynamic, nor even a double-bar structure. There are simply too many layers, too many emotions, especially in the later works.’
I could feel, almost physically, the tide of respect sweeping towards me. The pudgy-faced man was looking at me with something close to awe. A woman in a scarlet anorak was muttering: ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ as though I had just articulated something she had been struggling to formulate for years. The man named Claude had risen to his feet and now took a few steps towards me, nodding vigorously. Dr Lubanski was also nodding, but slowly and with his eyes closed as if to say: ‘Yes, yes, here at last is someone who really knows.’
We never do find out quite what country our dear pianist has arrived in, but it’s the kind of neat city I associate with northern Europe: clean streets free of potholes, punctual trams, little patches of well trimmed grass at the edge of streets.
In 2019, in the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design in Stockholm, I saw Cruising Pavilion, a walk-in installation recreating a club for gay cruising from, I assume, the late 20th century. There were glory holes, hanging BDSM gear, condom wrappers on the floor and pounding dance music. “Cruising is at once revealed as a resistance, an avant-garde and a vernacular.” It was an enjoyable work, a chance to encounter a scene to which I don’t belong. And, of course, central is the comedy of the kind of debauchery the establishment fears so much outside its walls being celebrated within them. I imagined the opening, artists and officials standing around talking about liberalism and tolerance, posing for photos with their arms folded, with not so much as a smirk on their face. Presumably, they avoided posing either side of the glory hole.
High culture has a capacity to tame the powerful. It is one of the many reasons I believe art to be so essential. It is the jester in a court with the exclusive right to mock the king. Yet, the taming goes both ways. A jester who truly insults the king does not last long, and so by tolerating the jester, the king can own even his own mockery. Here in Stockholm, the sound and the materials of the cruising club are here, but not the risky sex. If I were to use this glory hole for its true purpose, I suspect I’d quickly find out that the permissive attitudes embodied in the architecture did not follow it into the gallery. Like the good townspeople of The Unconsoled, the establishment wants to celebrate this culture, but are they really living it?
Re-reading in the 2020s, Ishiguro’s satire of high culture cuts more deeply. In Europe, there is an anxious decline of confidence in our culture. Public arts funding has been decimated, the right to protest curtailed, public intellectuals with controversial opinions turned away at the border. That the cultural hero could hold so much power seems rather quaint, a nostalgic relic from a fantasy world before the current squeeze of populism, where academics decided where to allocate research funding, artists and curators decided where to allocate arts funding, and geopolitical decisions were made by people who spent their days thinking about geopolitics rather than how many likes their last tweet received.
And yet, are our contemporary battles really so different?
Local busybodies spend their time panicked about a cultural crisis which they recognise to be profound, yet they lack both an intellectual and a subjective relationship with the matter on which to base their opinions. Doing their best to look authoritative, all they can really do is absorb opinions through anxious peer pressure, and either idolise or cancel the few real experts in this field. And having been photographed in front of a monument, Ryder later decides he might have misjudged the signal that sent. But he may not admit to himself ignorance or indifference. To belittle or ignore the crisis is received as a political act in itself. Nobody can escape. The Unconsoled consoles me in the age of culture wars.
Amongst the humour, the weirdness and the mystery of Ryder, it’s the carefully observed vividness of the world that keeps me moving through this book. Places, objects and people are brought alive through the our narrator’s earnest and ever outwards attention. Characters move through space like figures in a renaissance painting. The ageing hotel porters who meet at the bar and dance on the tables, suitcases in hand in a display of machismo. The Russian maestro, whose emotional volatility is an institutional worry. And with that, it really does bring to me a nostalgic sense for a Europe of the last century.
‘Ah yes, yes, Mr Ryder. Of course, of course. I very much understand. So… you’re requiring to practise before the meeting. Yes, yes, I understand perfectly. That will be no problem, these people will be more than happy to wait a little. Well, no matter, this way please.’
...
I entered a long narrow room with a grey stone floor. The walls were covered to the ceiling with white tiles. I had the impression there was a row of sinks to my left, but I was by this point so anxious to get to the piano I paid little attention to such details. My gaze, in any case, had been immediately drawn to the wooden cubicles on my right. There were three of these, painted an unpleasant frog-green colour, standing side by side. The doors to the two outer cubicles were closed, but the central cubicle—which looked to have slightly broader dimensions—had its door ajar and I could see inside it a piano, the lid left open to display the keys. Without further ado I attempted to make my way inside, only to find this a frustratingly difficult task. The door—which swung inwards into the cubicle—was prevented from opening fully by the piano itself, and in order to get inside and close the door again I was obliged to squeeze myself tightly into a corner and to tug the edge of the door slowly past my chest. Eventually I succeeded in closing and locking the door, then managed—again with some difficulty in the cramped conditions—to pull the stool out from under the piano. Once I had seated myself, however, I felt reasonably comfortable, and when I ran my fingers up and down the keys I discovered that for all its discoloured notes and scratched outer body, the piano possessed a mellow sensitive tone and had been perfectly tuned. The acoustics within the cubicle, moreover, were not nearly as claustrophobic as one might have supposed.
It’s still my favourite book. Its combination of stress, confusion and absurdity has anchored me in the many absurdities of life. I don’t want to give you my take on what the story’s really about. To do so would be to deny you the pleasure of a untarnished first take of your own. So what I’ve offered you here is perhaps less a critical review, and more a gushing attempt to seduce those others who would enjoy it into reading it themselves.