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The Unconsoled
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Hi Judy and welcome to the group!
It's in my original list here of ten irrealist masterworks. I totally agree - once read, never forgotten. For me, it's Ishiguro's masterpiece. It's undoubtedly influenced by Kafka but so are countless subsequent experimental works. I wouldn't go for any of those literal interpretations. They're as limiting as the literal, allegorical readings of 'The Metamorphosis', for example. I'm pretty sure the author intended the piece to be open to multiple readings.
It's in my original list here of ten irrealist masterworks. I totally agree - once read, never forgotten. For me, it's Ishiguro's masterpiece. It's undoubtedly influenced by Kafka but so are countless subsequent experimental works. I wouldn't go for any of those literal interpretations. They're as limiting as the literal, allegorical readings of 'The Metamorphosis', for example. I'm pretty sure the author intended the piece to be open to multiple readings.

I'm probably too busy with research between now and the start of September for a re-read at this point.


Judy mentioned being an amateur pianist. There certainly were a lot of musical issues going on in the novel. Was there anything in particular that you found important?
It was the atmospherics, more than anything, Steve - the creation of a city as though perceived in a dream, somewhere half-remembered, half-unseen. And those dream-like, larger-than-life characters and the events with their dreamworld illogic. And so many echoes of Central European authors - Kafka, of course, but Zweig too and Márai. And my own half-forgotten travels in Central Europe. It just chimed with me on so many levels. I can see how it might not resonate, lacking emotional depth, just as dreams lack that commodity.
For a detailed exploration, I'd need a re-read. I'd up for that in the autumn.
For a detailed exploration, I'd need a re-read. I'd up for that in the autumn.

The dream logic and especially the dream geography, I found very like my own dreams. So it felt very familiar to me in that respect. Perhaps that blunted the Central European setting. Or perhaps universalized the experience a bit. I don't know if I agree that dreams lack emotional depth. At least, not all of them.
The music aspect is interesting. Music is usually a big part of a group's identity. I felt the Central European setting strongest when the characters were struggling with the musical aesthetics of that tradition. The performance aspect was interesting, too, though I don't know much about that.
Yes, Steve, the pianist as protagonist added another enjoyable dimension. The only other novel I can remember reading with that set-up is Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time (my favourite of his books). There's a memorable scene with a soldier playing the grand piano among the ruins of occipied Europe in Roy Jacobsen's Borders, by contrast, otherwise the weakest of his that I've read. The role of music in the novel - now there's an interesting discussion...

Hey Steve. I loved Stephan's backstory about his parents' disappointment in him as a pianist, which is really Ryder's story, and which you suspect contributed to Ryder's 'breakdown'. Stephan's parents walk out of his performance and Ryder's never turn up for his. You can tell it absolutely torments him.
Like Stephan, Bronsky, the former musical genius who destroyed his career through alcoholism, is another "Ryder" as is the despised Christoff.
I think telling Ryder's backstory via other characters is a very clever device and helps you piece together what led him to the strange place the reader finds him in, at least as a pianist. Of course there's other stuff going on like a broken relationship with the mother of his child.
Both Stephan and Bronsky reflect the self-doubt and neuroses and pyschological struggles that plague many artists.
Bronsky crashes and burns and Stephan pulls off an amazing performance but Ryder never actually plays, except for that weird nightmarish practice session in the 'farmhouse'.
Apart from that, the decriptions of being on stage, trying to find an instrument to practice on and the whole thing of ostensibly being on a concert tour resonated. Fabulous, fabulous book.


Yeah there are a number of composers referred to in the book, I haven't heard of them and presumably they are made up. I imagine them to be based on someone like Bartok - recognised as one of the great 20th composers but impossible to listen to for any length of time (in my opinion at least!) You get the sense that Ryder is a great pianist but also a great musical snob.

I'm also a big fan of Kafka. The Unconsoled is one of my longtime favorite books (though I'm way overdue to read it again since my memory of it isn't great). My take on the book is much like Paul's—it felt to me much like an anxiety dream, and yes totally, Steve, possibly the best example of dream geography I've encountered.
I used to play music long ago and I still have dreams that I'm supposed to get to a show where people are waiting and expecting a performance from me (and I'm always horribly unprepared, of course). I would say the book, like a dream, is very representational, a description of inner experience, not reality as it is, but as it's felt. The entire world of the novel, like Kafka, seems designed for Ryder specifically, whether it's celebrating him or persecuting him or throwing irresolvable complications at him. The emotional effect is often the result of the tight-lipped imagery, which is evocative more than explicit.
I remember, too, being fascinated by the point of view in the book, how the narrative lens would sometimes stray from Ryder, narrating things he couldn't possibly be seeing. I still don't know what to make of that, but I enjoyed the strangeness.
Nathanimal wrote: "I used to play music long ago and I still have dreams that I'm supposed to get to a show where people are waiting and expecting a performance from me (and I'm always horribly unprepared, of course)."
I have a very similar dream, Nathanimal, except that I'm an actor about to go on stage. Fifteen minutes to go and I've learned none of my lines... The horror! Also a musician retired from stage, nocturnal me finds himself in the best band that ever existed but unable to remember anything of those sublime songs upon waking...
I have a very similar dream, Nathanimal, except that I'm an actor about to go on stage. Fifteen minutes to go and I've learned none of my lines... The horror! Also a musician retired from stage, nocturnal me finds himself in the best band that ever existed but unable to remember anything of those sublime songs upon waking...

Ha, yes! My nocturnal me has regularly found strange old multi-track recording devices with the most beautiful music on them that I had totally forgotten I'd recorded. Of course the device is so odd-fangled there's no way to get the music off of it so it has to stay there in the dream.


Well I have never played this particular suite but I think it would help to get into the vibe of this novel! You'd have to get into an un-real space, ie, for example Ryder's head. So you'd play it straight I guess but you'd have to maintain a sense of detachment to take take it to another sort of disorientating level of reality that is recognisable but foreign at the same time. Hard to pull off!


I just finished it. It did not have an emotional impact for me. I can see some Kafka-esque qualities and I did like the unreal, dream-type aspect to the geography.
I don't have to like the characters of a book to like a book, but in this one I didn't like any of the characters and by the end I gave up caring about them.
I am curious how people felt about the long monologues that went uninterrupted. As an OCD control freak with boundary issues, I cringed through most of this book with Ryder not only not asserting himself (and I understand that was part of the point) but also with others easily invading his personal space.
Comments?
Does anyone have thoughts on The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro? I've just finished it. As a big fan of Kafka and also an amateur pianist I was totally blown away by it. I cannot get it out of my head. Still trying to decide if the story is being narrated from inside some sort of institution, which makes sense, but at the same time reading it that way is a bit too "neat" and kind of denies the book's inherent surrealist absurdity. What do you reckon?