21st Century Literature discussion
2/22 Buried Giant
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THE BURIED GIANT Genl Discussion, No Spoilers
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I read this having only read Never Let Me Go by Ishiguru previously. I had always had this on my radar though, particularly because it caused a bit of "genre controversy" when published. As I quite like fantasy elements, but often don't like fantasy prose or tropes, I thought this might work for me (and it mostly did). I remember finding the first chapter or two quite mysterious and confusing, literally coming out of the mist a bit, but this was less of an issue as the story developed.
Emily wrote: As I quite like fantasy elements, but often don't like fantasy prose or tropes, I thought this might work for me (and it mostly did).". . . it caused a bit of "genre controversy" when published. . ."I see that many readers here on Goodreads speak of this novel as a work of fantasy, and that it has won an award of some kind in that genre. I know what you mean about the genre qua genre. Often, in a fantasy genre identified book (I've read some, not a lot), the details are simply taken from our ordinary life, and then you have a few monsters or supernatural acts thrown in. Obviously, KI is no ordinary genre writer. In his legendary setting, he seems to do a good job of limiting his details plausibly and of staying focused on the psychology of the quest, and on his characters, who remain pretty convincing within the somewhat narrow confines of their story. I’m impressed that this is such an entirely different project than Remains of the Day, and yet each book has that very careful, brick-by-brick build up of the fictional scaffolding. Ultimately, this is more important than genre classification, in my view.
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For those who have read a lot of Arthurian legends, I assume this helps? I’ve read some of the legends, Chretien de Troyes, Song of Roland, Gawain & Green Knight, et al, but not all of Malory, none of the original French cycles, and none of the modernizations, like White and Bradley. Or maybe it doesn’t help. I don’t think KI is following the legends too closely, but it’s been so long since I read any that I wouldn’t remember. Please point out any such patterns you see. I will save my pattern-perception for a later post.
Interestingly, this was the first Ishiguro book that I read, which led me to read more even though they are all quite different. I was captivated right away by the setting, the mist, and Axl and Beatrice's journey.
I haven't read many other Arthurian legends, but my brother keeps telling me I should read John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights.
Looking forward to following along with the discussion - hopefully it'll jog my memory of the book.
Clarke wrote: "Prior to TBG, I had read only Remains of the Day. Wanting to read more..."Same. I read Remains of the Day last year and was immediately hooked. I was planning to read Never Let Me Go this year, but put TBG in my fast queue when I saw this group was reading.
With a late start, I'm only a couple chapters in right now. I'm loving it. Like others in this thread, I wouldn't say that I'm drawn to the fantasy genre. I recognize why the book might be categorized as such, but it doesn't feel "typical" for the genre -- not like, say, Tolkien.
I haven't yet read any of the Arthurian legend cycles that Clarke mentioned, but this sounds like an interesting angle. I've had Le Morte d'Arthur on my to-read list. Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces had influenced me a lot, and I'm looking for variants of the quest myth in almost everything I read lately.
I am loving this. I have read An Artist of the Floating World which is also about memory in the aftermath of war, a totally different approach but such an interesting dialogue between the two works so far. In Artist, there is what seems to be deliberate selective memory in order to reconcile during-war behavior with post-war ethics, which has a lot of negative effects on relationships. This seems so far the opposite exploration and I'm really looking forward to seeing how striving to clear the mists from memory will impact what is set up as a sweet central bond between Axl and Beatrice.
Interesting, Jenna, that's been on my shelf for a while. Maybe a good time to finally pick it up!
Mod
There was an excellent interview with Ishiguro on Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. He discussed some of his inspiration for this book. It was the idea of the role of memory and forgetting, and the question of whether a relationship (and a country) can thrive if their past trauma is forgotten rather than faced. Certainly something relevant to the current debates and racial reckoning happening in the United States.
He also said he originally was thinking of using a science fiction framework, but was inspired to use the Arthurian era when he saw a line from The Green Knight about the woods containing bears, boars and ogres. A place where ogres were mentioned as a threat as causally as boars and bears appealed to him. Other than this passage from The Green Knight, he said he had no special interest in Arthurian legend.
The best part of the interview may have been after it had officially ended. Ishiguro, who admitted to having little knowledge of fantasy, starts asking the host about who the best writers are and what sort of debates there are in the fantasy community. I highly recommend checking it out, available wherever fine podcasts are streamed.
The previous comment from Whitney is very helpful. I begin to change my mind from what I was going to say, but since I've already written it, I'll go ahead and post it: When I finished the novel, I thought, Whoa! What have I just read? It seems that all my early assumptions misled me, and that I have been reading a kind of prose poem all along. Could that be true? A prose poem. Meaning that what I’m to look for are not the typical signposts of narrative—incident, plot, character, story—but rather images, allusions, suggestions, symbols. I am to try to fit these puzzle pieces together into some kind of feeling or purpose or reaction out of which I structure my own significance. It is not to be as I thought it might be during the early and middle sections of the book, that there will be a moment of enlightening detail toward the end. I do not mean a clever plot twist, because that would not be in keeping with the “literary” quality of a Nobel winner, but a revelation of how the images of ancient or medieval literature assemble themselves into some kind of coherence: ogre, journey, giant, dragon, magic spell (the mist), etc. We must pay attention to who is narrating, too, because it changes here and there, from Axl to Gawain, back to Axl, and finally to the ferryman. The ferryman! Talk about an allusion! We can hardly miss that one.So. I’ll reserve my ideas of symbolic resolution for the spoiler section, not that there is so very much to spoil. For now, I wonder what others think of this approach to the work, reading it more like a poem. Does it make sense? Or how do you approach it?
Another book with memory / lost memory as theme is Modiano's Rue des Boutiques Obscures.
Jenna wrote: "I am loving this. I have read An Artist of the Floating World which is also about memory in the aftermath of war, a totally different approach but such an interesting dialogue between ..."I hadn't read his earlier work but this did immediately jump out at me as being about historical memory. I live in Spain where the treatment of the memory of the dictatorship is a recurring conversation, so the "buried giant" was very ominous right from the beginning. I may have to add Artist of the Floating World to my list.
Oh man, thank you all for these insights - collective historical memory is blowing my mind.Whitney, I'd love to listen to the interview, so found it if others are interested also:
https://geeksguideshow.com/2015/04/06...
I have read Ishiguro's first 4 books but that was some time ago. Read each of them twice over actually. I've also been meaning to read his later works so this is a welcome return to his writing. I'm two-thirds of the way into the book. His earlier novels seemed to deal with memory and trauma (both personal and historical) in various ways so this novel is another variation. It's fascinating how he is exploring guilt and accountability, one's role in history, whether as active participant or passive observer. The latter seemed to be the more burdensome since what one is unable to prevent or do makes one feel just as accountable and guilty as the ones who perpetrated historical wrongs. I am not very particular in the use of fantasy/legend genre as long as the built world of the story is convincing. Yet the novelist is famous for employing unreliable narrators so what convinces me is the believability of unreliability. That sounds paradoxical. Hehe.
21st Century Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
An Artist of the Floating World (other topics)An Artist of the Floating World (other topics)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (other topics)
So this book appears to be a conflation of images drawn from Arthurian legend, Greek myth, and a dash of Dante. It is not a book to be quickly understood, but to be read very carefully. The tale is set in Arthurian England, in the period before the Saxon takeover from the Britons, about whom (Britons) little is known, apparently. Our heroes are the elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, on a journey to visit their son. They find themselves affected by a strange mist that causes forgetfulness, so they can’t even remember their own past together very well. They learn that a giant is buried beneath them. On the way, they meet Wistan, a warrior-knight, and none other than Sir Gawain, among others, as they come to learn of the dragon whose breath constitutes the anti-mnemosynic mist. We appear to inhabit a folk-legend tradition, except that our narration reads like a modern novel, albeit with some formulaic repetition (“Princess”) more characteristic of tale, legend or myth. How do you react to this type of structure? Does the mood work for you? One has to be very patient with it, I think.