Book Note · Fiction
The Remains of the Day
Fiction · Dignity · Regret · Craft
Recommended alongside The Denial of Death, this too turned out to be a different book than I expected. Stevens, an aging butler, narrates with such restraint that the story lives as much in what he avoids saying as what he says. The audiobook is exceptionally cast, and Ishiguro's prose is the most I've enjoyed since Steinbeck.
I almost spoiled the ending for myself on Reddit… No spoilers here either.
Why it mattered
Everything comes through Stevens’s self-justification. The book lives in the gap between what he tells you and what he won’t let himself see.
His idea of dignity gives his life meaning, but also becomes a way of avoiding anything that doesn’t fit inside that role.
Connections
The shadow side of craftsmanship is that skill can become an end in itself. Service to a role is not the same thing as choosing a life.
Stevens’s dignity resembles one of Becker’s immortality projects: a structure so complete that it protects him from confronting other possibilities.
A reminder that fiction belongs beside manuals and histories.