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Reading Ishiguro in Chicago

by BRITTANY JULIOUS

As an English major, I more or less epically fail. Whereas my peers find themselves drawn to literature from a variety of genres, I tend to stick to a few particular authors from a few particular time periods.

Growing up, I never understood The Boxcar Children series. My parents purchased a red cardboard “boxcar” filled with books from the series. I read them, of course, but hated each and everyone, preferring the wisdom of Judy Blume instead.

Even now I still enjoy the act of reading and deciphering a text, but generally not the text that I am assigned. My biggest problem during those years in school, unfortunately, was the balancing act between the literature meant for my downtime (though inevitably creeping into my “homework time”), and my school work.

Upon moving back to the city after having spent well over a decade in Oak Park (famous for Ernest Hemingway, who I hate and love simultaneously), my intense connection to certain authors only increased.

Attending school and living in the city provides you with immense downtime. With three or four hour breaks during classes, I began taking the CTA downtown to the Borders on State and Randolph. I eventually became acquainted with the security guards and cashiers who worked in the store.

Every couple of days I came into the store with a tea in my hand, grabbing five or six books to “check out” in one of the abandoned aisles on the third floor near the CDs. On one occasion my sophomore year, I picked up Never Let Me Go.

The book, a flimsy paperback, was wedged underneath another David Sedaris book or something by Augusten Burroughs on the “3 for 2” sales table. I can’t really remember now and it really doesn’t matter, either. The cover, a closeup of a young girl’s face – pale white skin, light blue eyes looking off into the distance – intrigued me.

I sat down and read the first page. I hated it. I was already bored and already tossing it into a pile of “no’s”. Later that day, I went to check out and realized I only chose two books.

Scrambling at the same sales table, I found another copy of the book and made my purchases.

On the train ride back north, I started reading the book for a second time. I finished the book in two days. Later that week, I went to my school’s library and checked out The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled and An Artist of the Floating World.

To say the prose struck a chord would be an understatement. There was a striking similarity between each of the main characters in the novels, even if their stories were categorically different. My favorite, of course, was Kathy, the rigid protagonist of Never Let Me Go. She was a female character written brilliantly, perhaps frighteningly so. I like to think that my experiences are strictly my own, but all of a sudden, I found myself immersed in the world of this strong yet fragile woman/clone/being and I couldn’t relate more.

I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I’d ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I’d see it was Tommy and he’d wave, maybe even call. The fantasy never got beyond that – I didn’t let it – and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.

A month later, I revisited the book, looking to experience the piece beyond my initial impressions. At the end, I closed the book in a huff and threw it on the ground.

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.

My supposed heroine was a cheat, a coward, and the complete opposite of what one should look up to. She let her best friend Ruth stomp all over her as a young girl. She merely accepted her fate as a clone, despite fantasizing about working in an office of all places. She easily fell into a sexual relationship with her best friend’s boyfriend when the friend died.

And yet, I found her completely fascinating. In many ways, it wasn’t so much that Kathy was someone not to look up to, as she was a copy of everything I hated about my life. She accepted her role in society. She often fantasized about other worlds, better worlds, richer worlds, but then she came down from those clouds and fulfilled her role as a “carer” and as a clone. In the middle of my sophomore year, I too accepted my role in society.

I questioned things, as best as I could, but gosh, it was too damn easy to fall into stereotypes: the angry black woman, the jaded twentysomething, the narcissist millennial. Although Kathy, like many of Ishiguro’s characters, seems to lack a desire for free will, her apathy was something I could hate, and comprehend, and learn from.

I caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight, caked in mud and distorted with fury, then I reached for his flailing arms and held on tight. He tried to shake me off, but I kept holding on, until he stopped shouting and I felt the fight go out of him. Then I realized he too had his arms around me. And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field, for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night.

I can’t say a change in attitude was immediate. As I continue to go back to Never Let Me Go, and The Remains of the Day, and every other book by Ishiguro that I own, I continue to feel small pangs of disdain for the characters. I know them so well, and so it’s become easy to feel frustrated with their actions, even if I know why they make them and even if I’ve read the story five or ten or twenty times before.

Like a good record, Ishiguro’s work resonates constantly. I don’t need to read The Unconsoled persistently or constantly re-hash the frustration that is Never Let Me Go. As in the real world, my world of school responsibilities and bills and plagued friendships seem to keep me on a plateau, it’s reassuring knowing I keep at least one of Ishiguro’s works by my nightstand. Sometimes, even a couple of pages of “I don’t understand why she just won’t change,” gives me the boost to do something, do anything to feel joy and live life in my own means. It’s the sort of thing only a favorite author could manifest.

Brittany Julious is the senior contributor to This Recording. She blogs at Glamabella, and she tumbles here.

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