Timothy Bewes ENGL 0710L: ISHIGURO, AMONGST OTHERS Fall 2013 M-W-F 9:00-9:50 am, Salomon 203 Office hours: Friday 11.00 am-1.00 pm, 70 Brown St., room 404 Description Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most distinctive and enigmatic voices in contemporary fiction. He has few obvious precursors, and there is little consensus among literary critics about the meanings of his works. If there is a critical register that professional readers of Ishiguro seem to inhabit by default, it is the discourse of ethics. A recent anthology of criticism, for example, takes it as axiomatic that “the power of Ishiguro’s fiction lies in its ability to make us care about the world, about other people, about ourselves,” and that this “ethical imperative” is “Ishiguro’s signature” (Groes and Lewis 2). Such claims tend to find support in Ishiguro’s own statements. This course will begin with a different axiom: that Ishiguro’s own utterances about the meanings of his books are as unreliable and enigmatic as the first person perspectives explored in his works. We will try to establish principles for reading Ishiguro by seeking alliances and interlocutors for his writing in works of philosophy, literature and cinema. Such interlocutors include the filmmakers Yasujiro Ozu, Abbas Kiarostami, Lucile Hadžihalilovič and Pier Paolo Pasolini, the writers Frank Wedekind and Alain Robbe-Grillet; and philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Requirements: Regular class participation, including one class presentation (10%); 5-7 page midterm paper (40%); 6-8 page final paper (50%). Required texts (available at Brown bookstore, except for Coursepacket) Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills (1982) Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World (1986) Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989) Kazuo Ishiguro, The Unconsoled (1995) Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans (2000) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005) Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes (2009) Frank Wedekind, Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls (London: Hesperus, 2010) Coursepacket, available at Allegra Print and Imaging, corner of Waterman and Thayer streets (above Sovereign Bank) Further Reading Lisa Fluet, ed., Ishiguro’s Unknown Communities, A special issue of Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Summer 2007) (Entire issue available on Canvas website) Barry Lewis, Kazuo Ishiguro, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000 Brian Shaffer, Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998 Wai-Chew Sim, Kazuo Ishiguro, London: Routledge, 2010 2 Cynthia Wong, Kazuo Ishiguro, Tavistock, Devon: Northcote House, 2000 Other resources Canvas course website: http://canvas.brown.edu A dedicated iTunes course site where you can find three songs with lyrics written by Ishiguro, and a fourth song apparently inspired by his novel Never Let Me Go, all from Stacey Kent’s 2007 Blue Note CD Breakfast on the Morning Tram (accessible via Canvas) Syllabus September Wed 4: Introduction/1 Fri 6: Introduction/2 Kazuo Ishiguro, “Waiting for J.” (1981) Mon 9: A Pale View of Hills/1 Wed 11: A Pale View of Hills/2 Further reading: Sebastian Groes and Barry Lewis, “Introduction: ‘It’s good manners, really’ – Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy,” Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels (2011), pp. 1-10 Fri 13: A Pale View of Hills/3 Mon 16: An Artist of the Floating World/1 Wed 18: An Artist of the Floating World/2 Further reading: Kazuo Ishiguro and Kenzaburo Oe, “The Novelist in Today’s World: A Conversation,” Boundary 2, Vol. 18, No 3 (Fall 1991), pp. 109-122 Fri 20: An Artist of the Floating World/3 Mon 23: Ozu, Late Spring and Tokyo Story/1 Wed 25: Ozu, Late Spring and Tokyo Story /2 Further reading: Adam Mars-Jones, from Noriko Smiling (2011), pp. 3-15 Gregory Mason, “Inspiring Images: The Influence of the Japanese Cinema on the Writings of Kazuo Ishiguro” (1989), pp. 39-52 Gilles Deleuze, from “Beyond the Movement Image” Fri 27: Ozu, Late Spring and Tokyo Story/3 Mon 30: The Remains of the Day/1 3 October Wed 2: The Remains of the Day/2 Further reading: Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” Edward T. Jones, “On The Remains of the Day: Harold Pinter Remaindered” Fri 4: The Remains of the Day/3 Mon 7: The Unconsoled/1 (chapters 1-20, pp. 1-290) Wed 9: The Unconsoled/2 Further reading: Alain Robbe-Grillet, “Time and Description in the Novel” Pier Paolo Pasolini, “The Cinema of Poetry” Fri 11: The Unconsoled/3 Midterm paper due, 5 pm Mon 14: Fall Weekend Holiday. No University exercises Wed 16: The Unconsoled/4 (chapters 21-38, pp. 293-535) Fri 18: Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy /1 Instructor away: film screened during class time Mon 21: Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy /2 Further reading: Aaron Cutler, “Certifying the Copy: An Interview with Abbas Kiarostami, Cineaste, Spring 2011, pp. 12-15 Wed 23: The Unconsoled/5 Further reading: Susannah Hunnewell, “Kazuo Ishiguro, The Art of Fiction No. 196” (interview), The Paris Review 184 (Spring 2008) Fri 25: The Unconsoled/6 Mon 28: When We Were Orphans/1 Wed 30: When We Were Orphans/2 Further reading: Christopher Ringrose, “‘In the End it Has to Shatter’: The Ironic Doubleness of Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans” November Fri 1: When We Were Orphans/3 4 Mon 4: Never Let Me Go/1 Wed 6: Never Let Me Go/2 Further reading: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “How Do You Make Yourself a Body without Organs?” Fri 8: Never Let Me Go/3 Mon 11: Never Let Me Go/4 Wed 13 Never Let Me Go/5 Further reading: Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 143-49 Catherine Gallagher, “The Rise of Fictionality” Robert Newsome, “Introduction,” A Likely Story: Probability and Play in Fiction James Wood “The Human Difference,” The New Republic, May 12, 2005 Natalie Reitano, “The Good Wound: Memory and Community in The Unconsoled” Fri 15: Never Let Me Go/6 Mon 18: Frank Wedekind, Mine-Haha/1 Wed 20: Frank Wedekind, Mine-Haha/2 Fri 22: Lucile Hadžihalilovič (dir.), Innocence (2004) Instructor away: film screening during class time Mon 25: Lucile Hadžihalilovič (dir.), Innocence/2 Thanksgiving Recess: November 27 – December 1 December Mon: 2 Nocturnes/1 Wed 4: Nocturnes/2 Further reading: Gerry Smyth, “‘Waiting for the Performance to Begin’: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Musical Imagination in The Unconsoled and Nocturnes” Stacey Kent, Breakfast on the Morning Tram (Blue Note CD, 2007; selected tracks available on iTunes through Canvas site) Fri 6: Nocturnes/3 Fri 13: Final paper due .