Kazuo Ishiguro: On Writing and Literature

throughout his career Kazuo Ishiguro has won numerous awards published numerous novels and screenplays and seen two of his books made into films he's now back with his first novel in a decade and so joining us now to reflect on his work is author Kazuo Ishiguro most recently the author of the book the Buried giant hi again hello again ok let's pick up a little bit where we left off last night and still talking about your latest novel the first in a decade so the book the bird giant is set in pre-medieval Britain the remains of the day you're another one of your books well no one was set in the years leading up to the Second World War and I'm wondering how do you find how do you match up the right historical period with the sort of emotional situation that you need in order to say what you want to say well I find that process very difficult part of the reason it takes me a long time sometimes a writer book is because I don't have the setting it was that sounds like a crazy problem I mean I know some writers that's the first thing they choose if they wanted they want to you know write something said in the second world war or whatever in it in Vietnam or something I often don't have the setting I mean this is you know this is an honest problem for me I often have the story worked out because I work out almost like a I work at the relationships I work at the emotions you know that will bring out that the theme the questions that I want in my book and then I have to kind of put it down somewhere I have to kind of I go location hunting for some some setting and that's what often takes me a long long time so a book like never let me go I tried it twice before I actually eventually wrote it in the 90s I tried it twice the third time I attempted it around 2001 I I put it down in this kind of sci-fi dystopian world and that's what enabled me to do it until I thought of this kind of cloning organ-donation idea I couldn't get the story to work and so there's often some kind of final piece of the jigsaw which has to do with often not just the historical setting but if you'd like the literary setting the genre if you like until I I can find that I often can't actually get my my books did to fly right and that was the case with this one too part of the reason it took me a long time was that you know as I said to you yesterday I mean at the beginning I was drawn towards real historical situations in recent history of you know of communities in conflict and it took me a while to try and find a someplace that was neutral I did actually entertain the idea of a galaxy far away there's always that solution you know but I guess that the problem for me is you know there's often something I need something I need slightly odd to happen to get my story to work in this particular case I needed some situation where everybody in the country was suffering from some kind of selective amnesia so how do i how do I bring that about you know so a dystopian setting is one kind of solution you know there's some sort of weird power that dictatorship and then that's doing this through scientific means but uh I thought actually it'll be quite fun to go way way back into the past and use myth and fantasy you know use a kind of a slightly magical mist well it's interesting that you bring up the genres because never let me go was classified a science fiction this book that the berry giant is being I guess if I went to store be set sold under fantasy and do you do you like those labels or did you find them limiting how where do you come in on this I don't particularly like labels I don't like labels as a reader and I don't like labels as a writer and when I when I'm writing I don't try to think of these labels at all and in fact perhaps naively I didn't think of the fantasy label at all well not because I'm when I was writing the berry giant to me because I'm like somebody I'm just trying to make something you know I'm like one of those guys before airplanes were invented you know properly who trying to make a flying machine in my backyard and I'm just kind of doing my best I have no prototype you know and it might look really strange I don't quite know what it what it would look like at the end I just needed to fly you know and at the end I make something I think in more or less flies and someone looking at it will say oh that yeah that looks really strange that looks like a flying dinosaur that looks like a yeah that looks like that was that looks like a boat with wings or something but I don't really see it as that you know I've been kind of desperately trying to get this machine to fly and it's only after the fact that people say oh is this a sci-fi book is this a fantasy book I mean yes I've got those elements in it but I I like the idea that you know writers should be able to use anything they want to know without prejudice from from from readers or all kind of or on wrists yeah genre this yet I don't I don't like any kind of imagination police looking over my shoulder when I'm writing and I don't like imagination police when I'm reading you know I want to I don't like kind of snobbery and about genres you know I don't I don't like people trying to create a hierarchy about genre sing-song genre sir are more worthy or more literary than the others in fact I think we're at the moment I I sense we're at are quite an interesting and exciting time in in our reading culture because I think all these things are breaking down now I think the barrier between what used to be called popular fiction and serious fiction is breaking down I think the walls between so-called genres are breaking down you know fantasy science fiction literary fiction everything your detective fiction everything is merging particularly younger generation of writers and readers yeah are quite free and unprejudiced about mixing these things and I think in the end genre is something that that's not that it's not that profound in a literary sense I think it's basically a marketing tool that was that's put on by the book industry and the movie industry whoever it is need to help market certain products in a simple way that you get get it to a particular demographic it's not something entering to to the creative process or to the imaginative reading process you know so I think we've got to loosen up about genres and I think that's where we are at the moment I think is an exciting time I think the parameters are what is thought to be literary fiction I think are shifting now you know people who are supposed to under nyeh bleah you know great literary writers people like Margaret Atwood or you know David Mitchell from from Britain they delve into everything and fix everything whatever they need to create you know great stories okay let me let me take your great flying machine that you you put on in print on pages and then this is going to be your third book third novel that's going to be adapted into a film so never let me go and the remains of the day how effective it your great flying machines there how effective do you think someone who takes over your great flying machine and puts it on the screen how effective do you think the adaptations have been to carry on what to get at the heart of what you're really trying to say in your books well I don't know yet whether there's you know whether we'll have a film with a very giant and I'm very optimistic because because one of the most extraordinary movie producers working now Scott Rudin has had the option for about a year and he has a very imaginative approach and so if anyone can do it well I think Scott will be able to do it well so I'm optimistic but but the ruled in movies is you never count on anything you know even when the film is made you know nobody may see it so you never sit back and say yes it's happened until it's until it opens at the Toronto Film Festival attraction the movies the two movies that have been made from my for my books I think I've been I've been fantastically lucky they've been more or less hundred percent positive experiences for me you get really involved in them no I think this is I was about to say this I think it's partly because I don't get to him you know I think I I know some authors like to get quite involved in the creative process yeah I I've worked as a screenwriters well I I kind of think buying knives that's not a good idea yeah I think it's a mistake to think of a film version of a novel as a translation you know in the way that you might think of the French version of a novel or whatever mean I don't think that the role of the filmmakers is to translate the novel now there I can t see their role I think they're taking your novel as raw material to create a very different piece of work it has to be a very different piece of work because cinema you know tell such stories in such a different way yeah and if you've worked in it in the two mediums I mean you know that becomes blindingly obvious yeah and so I think it I think I always feel I'm the worst person in a way to bring that kind of dispassionate cold quite ruthless I to this raw material you know I'm just too involved the rahmatu I'm not going to be able to say you know let's just change that it's cut cut yeah also I'm not a very good screenwriter that's the other reason not true you think that of yourself you're not very good I think I'm a much better novelist and screenwriter it's only because but because of my reputation is a novelist that people keep asking me do you want to have a good writing this okay we're looking at come on in a movie okay but Pete you know TV now sort of seeing as a new novel with all its prestige television the the wire black mirror what you're familiar with am in Britain I mean you feel no temptation to write for the for the smaller screen the problem no I I do I do I think what's happening in television is really exciting you know I think that the idea of a long-form film medium is one of the really exciting things that's happened at the moment I know you know I'm 60 years old now you know I've been a movie fan all my life you know I've been trying to write in a movie screen place alongside my novels for most of my career so those two things I'm kind of familiar with I don't if I can learn this long form TV TV for me I think it is something quite different to tell a story in that way in over many many hours in different episodes I think it is something quite different again yeah I think it's very exciting I think one of the big challenges that faces any writer that's writing in that long form is is apart from the obvious loss of your cohesion and so on it's like I think is to resist the temptation to to just make the earlier episodes so gripping you know when you don't even know how you're going to resolve the issues because I think when it would I think that that's the that's the recurring problem that all of these things the priority is so much to grip the audience in the earlier episodes that the the latter episodes are a real letdown there's no proper and payoff and that and I think that's bad for storytelling when people feel cheated and manipulated and that's something you can't get away with in movies because you know people watch those movies in one sitting you can get away with it almost in television because you've got an audience hooked for for weeks and weeks and weeks your success it doesn't matter if the resolution is rubbish and that's the danger you know but I think in terms of if we want to keep up a serious storytelling tradition I think it's very important as a culture that we do in whatever form whatever medium that we choose I mean the stories have to be genuine they're not just audience manipulation vehicles you know they have to actually reveal proper truth in some kind of way for people to really value them as something more than just entertainment that passes the time okay so you brought up your agent I'm not trying to be aegis here but I hope but I just want to bring up a picture because this is a from 30 years ago I think just over 30 years so granted named you one of Britain's most 20 most promising young writers of time along with uh there you are down the bottom out that's me sitting on the floor next to the stripy back here you are very fashionable that a little mustache so part name is summit list Ian McEwan others on that do you remember what it felt like at the time being on that list with with so many other greats well you have to remember that most of us was unknown at the time I think the two writers who are known at that point were Martin a miss and Ian McEwan not in anything you know not they weren't like mega Fame yes no networ they ran out yet people who knew about literature you know that they were they were exciting young writers you know I think I think it's yeah and Salman Rushdie who's not in that photograph cuz he was on tour somewhere I mean he had come from nowhere with this book Midnight's Children one of the great modern novels so those three were heard all the rest of us weren't and nobody thought at the time that this was a that this was some sort of generation as such there's just a bunch of young writers you know it's only after the fact that people's people look back and said oh yeah so many you know very good writers come from that generation I don't if we think of ourselves as a generation or not I mean I don't know if we have that much in common then I'm very proud of him in that photograph you know oh I was the youngest this one very yeah yeah baby of that group yeah I guess hindsight you know it all seems different but you know whoever designed to pull you guys all together was that's a pretty good well one thing I say about that - I mean you described them as the most promising writers but the cutoff age was 40 and this is something I come back to over and over again I think is that there's a great danger in having a kind of a literary climate that suggests that novelists who are you know 38 39 are still at the kind of apprentice stage because of that by virtue of their age because the truth is for novelists I think you have to remember that you know war and peace Yuda sees all these great books order Franz Kafka's books most of the books written by the you know the great American writers of the early part of the 20th century they're all written by writers in their in their 30s and their and their early 40s you know I mean people like Faulkner or Fitzgerald you know Hemingway I mean nobody really pays much attention to what they wrote after after their mid-forties sure the danger about thinking about writers in their 30s as promising is that the writers become a little complacent about time they think they've got plenty of time they're going to write their masterpiece yeah in 20 30 years time that's a very dangerous way to think because the reality is you're most likely to write your masterpiece in your mid-30s and so that's what I don't like about you think that that kind of way of thinking and having young writers prizes with a young writers prizes are okay if you make the cutoff age near maybe 27 or something I don't like to encourage you if I see young writers or writers in their 30s I want to say to them yeah go for it now right yeah yeah if you're going to starve in a garret to write your masterpiece doing now yeah all right I guess I'm whatever could argue you know that that with age comes experience and so I ask you this question I mention it you have an idea or a theory as to what role age plays in terms of shaping the qualities of someone's writing well this this is something I'm obliged to think about now that I've turned 60 and I've been actually kind of I can't help but look at you know writers were slightly older than me just to see what what they're doing well and what they're doing less well you know and not just writers I've been looking at you know musicians filmmakers and this whole question of late style is really interesting and there seems to me a number of kind of models I've spotted you know what one is what since been in Canada you know let's just stick with Canadian artists okay you can think about say say somebody like Neil Young on the one hand and then a Cohen on the other right now Neil Young right with a few little exceptions I mean he basically does what he always did you know he just carries on doing what he did I would say he does what I would call the John McEnroe model yeah he you're that good at your peak even if you declined a little bit you're still pretty good you know so you might as well just carry on doing the same thing sure all right so that that's one model but there are dangerous Thach Luu there are dangers of that then you have the kind of the person who kinds of road like let's just think about to say Cormac McCarthy's the road or Hemingway's the old man in the sea or Philip Roth nemesis you these kind of short very concise pared down simple distillation of stuff that you're working through earlier in your career the they're kind of late statements or Garcia Marquez's chronicle of a Death Foretold unit that there's something appealing about that you've wrestled with all this stuff and towards the end of your career you've pared it down to what you want to say a distillation that's another model for foot foot but but I rather like looking at people like Leonard Cohen you know there's another I think there's a third way of looking at late style where you actually embrace the aging experience you know I think then occurrence latest album it's probably his greatest album since I'm you're many agree with you yes and and what's interesting is that he absolutely it's about having got old it's about you know it is - it has some of the sadnesses but the happiness is it has a nostalgia the regrets it's it's rich with the perspective of of age old age you know I think Dylan did it a number of years ago that magnificent L before time out of mind you know it's a way of kind of actually embracing the aging process and saying actually there's something really rich there is something new to to work with here this is an essential part of the human experience I'm going to work with it and that often results in something that's not necessarily concise it's not a summary of the work that's been done thus far it's something new your your new territory it's often tends to be quite loose it often involves wanting to merge into a continuity in your culture that you come in a long line of of kind of ancient artists and you know you can blend in with them you're part of a tradition but you know it's all about you know longing and regret and and acceptance and and bitterness and and all the confusion of getting older but it's a really rich and important part of the human experience let's let's go there and look at it fully and as you think about your future I mean are are you that do you see yourself being the Cohen or the Dylan or the John McEnroe do you look to sort of where you may be headed that way as I said I I like to I like the Leonard Cohen model yeah if you're going to an interesting place right like I said never if I'm lucky I'll go there to old age and I hope I make it to old age I want to write about it you know it's an it it will be an interesting and profound planet you know childhood is endlessly fascinating I think old age should be endlessly fascinating why not why not have asked report from it and write about it and make try and make you know good art out of it right I want to go to a young writer again so we'll kind of skip around on the age spectrum at least so last summer we did an interview with Ben Tarnoff who wrote a book called the Bohemians at looking at Twain and another 19th century American literature we'll play a little tape this has been torn off discussing the state of literature in the 21st century there are still a lot of people writing really great literary fiction and literary nonfiction and I think it's important to keep in mind that the culture has grown I mean the media landscape has become much more crowded but print in the written word has an important place in it I think the point is and I think a lot of writers want to dispute this is just that that place isn't as central as it once was you know it exists a little bit more at the margins today but people still write great novels and people still read them and I think that experience will be just as true 50 years from now you might be on a list somewhere as one of the young writers who we should keep an eye out for but do you agree with med Tarnoff there Kazuo if it is print in the written word as central as it once was we hear this debate all the time sort of being thrown out there I think you're still is no obviously been has has a very good point there there are many other things competing for our attention but I think the written word I'll qualify that when I say yeah I did but when I say I slightly disagree with Ben he is right probably but but but I'd say the written word is still central as long as it's allied to the cinema at the moment and to some extent television now as long as that Alliance let's just call it a cinema including the big you know sharing big TV yet so is that that Alliance I think is very powerful and remains very powerful today you know it's just even in terms of marketing clout the amount of attention it gets me every week there is there is a story that is unleashed with Oddie or the razzmatazz and power of the Hollywood marketing engine behind it and it's based on a novel yes sometimes it's based on the contemporary novel that sometimes is based on a classic novel but I mean you know it you don't go for very long without something like that happening so and then and then everyone's reading the novel everyone's reading that everyone's watching the movie that everyone's talking about that story that you know whatever that story is that originated in somebody study on the computer or on a piece of paper is out there in an almighty kind of way it's become part of the furniture of how we think and imagine you know and sometimes it's the thriller sometimes it's a literary book you know but it but it seems to me it's still pretty central you know I'm not quite sure what else is more central one of the great sadnesses of me is that I think I think music culture has fragmented I mean it's it when I was growing up I mean music culture was absolutely central to people of my generation it's to me it seems it's the music culture that's fragmented and gone to the margins you know and but it seems to me storytelling based on based on often on books sometimes non-fiction books that that with that very powerful with with cinema I I think is still dominant like under and whenever we think of you know what are the dominant things culturally that we've had I mean often it's that is to do with that alliance of the novel that's turned into a movie and everyone's reading the novel as well hmm I have to let you go just a minute but I don't want to do so without seeing you know fans of yours waited a decade for the Senate and you you made the case why or I took you longer finding the right setting and all that we have to wait another ten years to get another novel from you well no no but yeah it depends I mean you know I I don't see that there's a problem about quantity of books out there yes I don't want it I don't want to just you know produce a book because there's some sort of problem about not that not enough I don't think I make try to make people want to read what you have to say yeah so I only I can only produce something if I think it's gonna even in a very humble way it's going to change the landscape slightly so I changed the skyline of of the world of books and in a tiny little way that it's worth producing a book but I mean there's enough books out there it depends on other factors like what you know like my wife you know the part of the reason that it's been so long between novels is that my wife made me abandon an earlier draft of the berry giant she said it just you know I just had to start again from from scratch so I have this very strict wife who has been my first editor ever since before I started to write you know when I first started to attempt fiction as a young man she was the person who kind of looking at it saying so you think you can be a writer to you in that case why have you written this yeah and she still looks at my work in that kind of way in her in her mind I'm still this young upstart who is having a go at writing okay so it depends to some extent on what she allows me to - fair enough I didn't like like a great editor maybe she's just saying it's not ready yet yeah well I think I think I think we all need good editors but then we're married to them or whether professionally tied to them and I'm lucky to have her and a number of very good professional people agents and editors who who aren't afraid to be frank when they need to be Congrats on this book it's an interesting read it pulls out lots of different thoughts and themes and I thank you for joining us for the last couple nights well thank you very much indeed me great pleasure thank you helped Evo create a better world through the power of learning visit support TV org and make a tax-deductible donation today

Channel: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Views: 128,574

Rating: 4.9372869 out of 5

Keywords: TVO, TVOntario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, england, history, united kingdom

Id: DoGtQPks3qs

Length: 27min 15sec (1635 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2015