An Enjoyable Discussion.

I watched an online event tonight. It was organised by The Guardian and introduced by the literary journalist Alex Clark who was in discussion with the writer and Nobel Prize laureate Kazuo Ishiguro whose new novel Klara and the Sun was published today. There were also questions from guest celebrities such as writers Daisy Johnson, Bernardine Evaristo, and David Mitchell, and actress Emma Thompson who starred in the film adaption of The Remains Of The Day. I thought she asked a particularly good question when she asked if Kazuo thought that films can ever do the original book justice. He replied that writing books and making films are completely different art forms, so film makers should not try and replicate the book exactly but create something entirely new.

Music is obviously especially important to Kazuo Ishiguro and he revealed that in his youth he hoped to be a singer-songwriter and wrote about a hundred songs. The song writing helped when he started writing short stories in showing him the discipline of what words to leave out. He is a fan of Bob Dylan and said that after the success of Remains Of The Day he felt he had to move on like Dylan did and do something completely different, such as when Dylan went electric and got booed by the audience. He also mentioned Stanley Kubrick as another example of someone who always did something different.

There was one awkward moment when Alex Clark described his book The Unconsoled as ‘bonkers’. He was not offended though and took it as praise, with his usual good humour. He talked very seriously about the effect of the pandemic, also the world situation in the last year with people needing scientific truth to find a way out and develop vaccines whilst at the same time half the voters in America believing that the election was stolen from Trump. He questioned what writers like himself are contributing by putting forward emotional truths when scientific truth seems more important. He also talked about the amnesia of history where painful truths about our past are conveniently forgotten. This was brought to the fore last year by such things as the killing of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement and the pulling down of statues of slave traders.

The way he spoke so intelligently made me think that he would have made a great politician, but on reflection I think he is making a much better contribution to society as a writer. If you look back in history, it is writers and artists who have changed the world in a much more beneficial way than politicians. Take the Renaissance for instance. The pen is definitely mightier than the sword. After this most enjoyable discussion I am eagerly looking forward to reading Klara And The Sun in the very near future.