Goodreads | The Remains of the Day

Lorraine rated it:

(review of isbn 0582424623)

05/31/08

bookshelves: essentialformymentalhealth

Read in May, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Some novels are ostensibly intelligent, but highly unenjoyable. On the other hand, some novels are highly enjoyable but ostensibly unintelligent.

Most "post-modern" (and I use this term with some degree of trepidation, of course) novels are guilty of being too intelligent without providing a modicum of readerly enjoyment. The result is usually something resembling a rather bizzare and esoteric porn movie, which turns no one on but the author himself and/or critics who applaud such i...more Some novels are ostensibly intelligent, but highly unenjoyable. On the other hand, some novels are highly enjoyable but ostensibly unintelligent.

Most "post-modern" (and I use this term with some degree of trepidation, of course) novels are guilty of being too intelligent without providing a modicum of readerly enjoyment. The result is usually something resembling a rather bizzare and esoteric porn movie, which turns no one on but the author himself and/or critics who applaud such intellectual wankery.

The problem with criticism is that its very existence relies on the "hidden depths" of a novel or poem. As such, as the industry gets more divorced from the texts it is reading and more entangled with the actual novelty of the ideas that the critic is pulling out of the book, texts become increasingly difficult and complex. Given that critics have the institutional authority to "correctly" judge a book it is no wonder that the writer who wants artistic recognition often gets too obtuse and narcisstic in producing something completely absurd. The critic, however, is not in the best of positions either. The dialectical nature of the relationship between the two industries ensures that critics, regardless of whether they like the intellectual wankery or think it's successful, can never get away with plain slagging off one of these pieces. The best a critic can hope to do with one of these books is to recognise the complicated strategies of the author in achieving X and Y aims, and argue that s/he ultimately fails because s/he is too annoying for his/her readership: this entails of course an admittance that the author has put X and Y strategies to produce Z, and one is never given the full satisfaction of saying "it's just shit".

The long-winded point of all this is, this book is one of the rare books I've read that seems to be as enjoyable as it is intelligent. It is readable in a way even the best modernist texts (which to me, ARE enjoyable, but often more intelligent than enjoyable, I have to say, eg Joyce) are not. I can easily say this is one of the cleverest books I've read, and one of the most enjoyable... there is no need for me to try to defend its obtuseness while explicating on its textual strategies, or something ridiculous like that.

SPOILER:
I am not sure, however, that the ending is wholly optimistic, as this guy: http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch....
might suggest. It seems to me that this text, perhaps because of the narrator's historical position, has much of the tone of "these fragments shored against my ruins". But the irony (let us recall this was written in 1989) prevents me from wholly seeing it that way.

The last part of the novel talks about the willingness to learn "bantering". The irony of the tale seems to be that Stevens has failed in this precisely because the restraint peculiar to his (extremely English) character prevents him from ever doing so. He envies the warmth in the modern generation, but he cannot achieve this unless he opens himself up emotionally. To banter, then, requires this, and not an almost studious "committment" (in his words) to learn the skills of bantering. As long as Stevens retains his emotional distance from everyone in his life, under the strict rubric of professionalism he so religiously adheres to, he'd never be able to achieve the end-result of bantering. Even if he learns the appropriate things to say, that critical distance (of wanting to have the right "propriety" towards others) ensures that he would always be emotionally distanced from others, forever looking in on the crowd from a distance, and scrutinising them in order to give the right response to make them feel at ease. The warmth might very well be genuine on the other side, but as long as Stevens retains this academic attitude towards bantering, the best he can feel is a professional satisfaction akin to the kind he felt when he proved his ability to go on working while his father was dying in the very same house.

As such, it seems to me that the novel might be saying something about human character in general. Stevens is an unfortunate product of his time and class -- it seems to imply we can never quite escape these constraints. His mini-epiphany is coloured, or disturbed, by the irony at the end of the novel. His whole narrative is only too aware of the fictionality of his own narration, and the narrator's power to censor or bias the narrative, not only to the reader but to himself. The habit of restraint is, then, too strong... Stevens cannot seem to break out of it.

It is also a harsh critique of old-skool Englishness at the most fundamental level, and a harsher critique of modernity at another. While the text allows us to feel enough distance between Stevens and ourselves, in that we feel he's too unemotional, too restrained, there is enough in Stevens that is like us today which allows us to sympathise, or even empathise with him to a certain extent (this creates a rather Joycean effect as far as irony is concerned). How many times have we heard the advice -- well intentioned no doubt -- to carry on in spite or despite of our feelings, because we have to? This particularly applies to jobs... the world is no longer tiny, but rather, industrialism and connectivity has made us have a sense of proportion, and distanced as much as it connects. One's sorrows become insignificant in the face of the vastness of the world, one's private trials are precisely just that, and the machine rumbles on without stopping for you no matter how you feel. You can either continue or take a day off, but what is certain is that the machine does go on working without you, that all your trials are very insularly your own. Stevens takes this to the extreme, where all his natural feeling is sacrificed to his professionalism. Of course we are not like him in that we have family and friends, and some of us have lovers, all of whom care, and whom we are close to, but it is silly to deny we do not face the same pressures that he puts on himself (one might say his pride is the kind of pride one would feel if we could carry on working if struck by some traumatic event... professional pride.)

But it is this peculiar mix of the empathetic and the alien that Stevens represents that makes him the ideal mirror for ourselves. We find that which is admirable doubly so, and that which is pitable similarly intensified. As such Stevens serves as the warning to us not to become too extreme in rushing at the breakneck pace that society asks us to do. It is tempting, but the human cost is, perhaps, a bit too much....less

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