Oppositional Narratives of Nocturnes

Abstract

The five short stories collected in Nocturnes (2009) by no means represent the first time that Kazuo Ishiguro tried his hand at the shorter form. Ishiguro’s first published works were short fiction that preceded his first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982), and Granta named him as among the best of young British novelists on the literary promise shown in those early works. Brian Shaffer calls the novels ‘more finely chiselled’ (11) than the short stories but argues that the debut short fiction and ‘later works are far more organically connected, in particular in their exploration of trauma, than is generally recognized’ (9). Only one other short story, ‘A Village After Dark’ appeared in The New Yorker in 2001, years before the appearance of Nocturnes, a collection that Ishiguro refers to as a ‘story book’ or one grouped like a music album in which there are five seemingly ‘separate pieces of music but they go together’ (Aitkenhead). In making sense of ways to describe or anoint the collection, Levi Stahl observes that Ishiguro’s writing here ‘feels not so much transitional [from realism to fantastical rendering] as oppositional, a working out of [his] two narrative approaches in shorter form.’ Like Shaffer’s point that Ishiguro’s writing represents an evolution of both content and form, Stahl’s remark encourages an exploration of stylistic tensions found throughout the Nocturnes stories that express a continuity of Ishiguro’s innovative narrative style: expressing inner and outer states of being, or directly and especially indirectly conveying their surfaces or depths; focusing on the contrasts between realism and fantasy, or actual and imagined situations; and oscillating between poignant and comical notes are among the host of such oppositions that compel temporal and spatial progression within each story and across this collection. The oppositions indicate rich contrasts between Ishiguro’s realist mode with one that is usually described as ‘Kafka-esque’ (Jarvis 157), an aspect characterizing the short stories and The Unconsoled, and together, these modes complement Ishiguro’s fiction to date.