Nocturnes Five stories of music and nightfall

Review by New York Times Review

"THE owl of Minerva," wrote Hegel, "spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." By this he meant to say that an epoch or an era cannot really be judged or estimated until it has entered its closing phase. For those of us fated to lead smaller and less portentous existences, it is still the gathering shade of evening that very often gives rise to our most intense, and sometimes necessarily our most melancholy, moments of reflection and retrospect. A whole musical repertoire has been consecrated to (one of my favorite words) the crepuscular. Many of these compositions, too, are marked by a certain mournfulness, though some of Debussy's nocturnes can strike the ear as relatively affirmative. It has been proposed that Debussy was influenced by the nightfall paintings of James McNeill Whistler, and it would certainly be apt for the purposes of this article if that turned out to be true. The best-loved of Whistler's "moonlights," as he called them, is the hauntingly lit "Nocturne" that gives us Battersea Bridge as a long London day fades to black. Critics seem to agree that Whistler's main influence at that time was the Japanese wood-block master Hiroshige, whose marvelous work, along with other Japanese aesthetic achievements, was just then being made known to the West. So Kazuo Ishiguro has quite a tradition on which to draw in these five tales of human emotion in the waning hours of light. It's the time of day that isn't quite day when some people - such as myself - start to feel truly awake. It's also pre-eminently the moment, especially if moonrise chances to be involved, when life may seem rather stale without music. This is all well known to the cafe proprietors of Venice - the location of the first and last of these stories - who make sure to employ bands or orchestras that never cease to perform. Indeed, the narrator of "Crooner" tells us that as a freelance guitarist on the Piazza San Marco he can remember "once last summer, going from band to band and playing 'The Godfather' nine times in one afternoon." Ishiguro likes this flat "Godfather" note well enough to strike it again twice in the last story, "Cellists," and it is only fair to warn you that he relies for much of his effect not on the slow metamorphosis of blue into gray but on bathos and sometimes on pure farce. In "Malvern Hills," another guitarist, believing himself underappreciated in the metropolis, seeks a more tranquil life in the west of England and plays a nasty practical joke that has unintended consequences. The fact that he plays it on two holiday-making Swiss musicians is almost irrelevant: music itself has little to do with the narrative, and the three characters might as well have juggling or animal-training in common. The only other story set in England, "Come Rain or Come Shine," descends from farce almost into slapstick. An unambitious young man comes to stay with a more go-ahead couple who had been his friends at university. The purpose of the invitation soon discloses itself: Ray is supposed to act as an emollient on the evidently fraying marriage of Charlie and Emily. The crucial thing Ray and Emily have in common is that, as the slightly unexciting opening sentence informs us: "Like me, Emily loved old American popular songs." But he is sternly instructed by Charlie to discard this, his only ace, and indeed if Emily even mentions "that croony nostalgia music" to pretend that he knows nothing of the subject. So that's the end of music as the food of love or indeed the fuel of narrative, and the action downshifts into Ray's accidentally disfiguring Emily's private diary and then trying to make enough of a mess to convince her that the apartment has been invaded by a dog. The "croony nostalgia" theme is back in the story "Nocturne," where we meet again a character from the opening tale, "Crooner." She is now a hysterical and fading star, recovering from plastic surgery in a private wing of a Beverly Hills hotel. Meeting a face-lifted saxophonist from an adjoining room, she forms an apparently spontaneous love-hate attachment and in the course of the "love" part incites him to help steal a music-award statuette that she abruptly decides should be rightfully his. All you have to believe is that two still-heavily-bandaged middle-aged people would escape arrest as they roamed a hotel ballroom and crammed the statuette up the rear end of a turkey. Oh, you would also have to believe that the star, Lindy Gardner, has taken the same surname as her crooner ex-husband, Tony. ISHIGURO doesn't put himself to very much trouble with his names. The cop who fails to see what's in front of his nose in the above story produces his ID and says, unmemorably, "L.A.P.D. . . . Name's Morgan." Charlie and Ray were at school with someone named Tony Barton. In "Malvern Hills" the young man's former schoolteachers are identified as having been just plain Mrs. Fraser and Mr. Travis. One of them is awarded an unsurprising nickname. The prospective lover of the mystery woman in "Cellists" is a certain Peter Henderson. In the same story there appears a relatively exotic Hungarian. His name is Tibor. As if in recompense for this banality, Ishiguro does like to afflict his characters with something like Tourette's syndrome. Whether it's Venice or Malvern, it is perfect strangers who are told, without any appreciable loss of time, that the longstanding marriage of the person who is doing all the talking is coming to an end. In one instance this disclosure is made in the glare of full morning sunlight, in the other it does take place during an attempted nocturnal serenade, but there's no evocation of the lengthening shadows, (In any case, people surely tend to make these tragically abrupt confessions to strangers somewhat nearer to the end of the night.) The story that most justifies its inclusion under the book's title is "Cellists," where it is only by means of a slowly developed series of "movements" and after a long sequence of late après-midis that we are led to appreciate the world of mania and deception that can underlie, as with the world of chess, the universe inhabited by the fanatically musical. This time I shouldn't say anything about the plot or rather its absence, except that it, too, has its jokey element: the old joke about the person who doesn't know whether or not he can play the violin, because he's never tried. It's set at the end of the season as well, as if to emphasize the evanescence of everything, but it's somehow a slight waste of Venice, and if Ishiguro's narrator - all five stories are first person - had omitted to mention "the evening passeggiatta," the setting could have been anywhere. Understatement is one thing, but in aiming for it Ishiguro generally achieves the merely ordinary. Here, for instance, is Ray's no-doubt eagle eye as it surveys the apartment of his two old friends: "Maybe Emily had done the tidying herself; in any case, the large living room was looking pretty immaculate. Tidiness aside, it had been stylishly done up, with modern designer furniture and arty objects - though someone being unkind might have said it was all too obviously for effect." Of course it could all have been done not for effect, or "done up" somehow unstylishly or accoutred with "designer furniture" that cleverly contrived not to be modern. An objet that was deliberately not d'art would also, in this context, be something of an innovation. And how, in case you should ask, did the narrator of "Nocturne" wake up after his silly Beverly Hills adventure? "With a jerk." How did Miss McCormack nod when her potential cello-playing genius had stilled his bow? Why, she nodded "approvingly." What kind of glance did Emily give to her diary? "No more than a cursory" one. I became dispirited as I noticed that lshiguro almost never chose a formulation or phrase that could be called his own when a stock expression would do. He seemed to me, in "A Pale View of Hills" and "The Remains of the Day," to have intuited something subtle and miniature and layered, in what I read as a latent analogy between English and Japanese society. In "The Unconsoled," which was heavier going, he at least showed how musical commitments could be, as one might say, a cause of "discord." "Never Let Me Go" was so orchestrated as to slowly gather pace and rhythm from its varied sections. But these five too-easy pieces are neither absorbingly serious nor engagingly frivolous: a real problem with a musical set, and a disaster, if only in a minor key, when it's a question of prose. The gathering shade of evening very often gives rise to our most intense moments of reflection and retrospect. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* A once-famous crooner believes he must destroy the very core of his life to achieve a comeback. A young songwriter excels at selfishness rather than creativity. A gifted yet unheralded saxophone player is persuaded to undergo plastic surgery to enhance his visual appeal in a world that values image over talent. As a recipient of the Booker Prize and the Order of the British Empire, Ishiguro is no stranger to the vagaries of fame, nor, as a Japanese British writer, is he unfamiliar with the misapprehensions one's appearance can arouse. Questions of identity, artistic integrity, and success shape each of the five meshed stories in this droll and enrapturing collection. Each tale of musicians, muses, and users is funny and incisive; each is a fable about the dream of mastery and the nightmare of pragmatism; and each dramatic story line delivers arresting psychological transformations. Encompassing a palatial hotel in the insomniac dead of night and sun-kissed hills, an immigrant journeyman guitar player weathering prejudice in Venice and a young cellist enthralled by an unlikely mentor, dissonant marriages and shattering recognitions, Ishiguro's stories are at once exquisite and ravaging. Much like the haunting music of down-and-out jazz great Chet Baker, whom Ishiguro names to strike just the right crepuscular note.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This suite of five stories hits all of Ishiguro's signature notes, but the shorter form mutes their impact. In "Crooner," Tony Gardner, a washed-up American singer, goes sloshing through the canals of Venice to serenade his trophy wife, Lindy. The narrator, Jan, is a hired guitar player whose mother was a huge fan of Tony, but Jan's experience playing for Tony fractures his romantic ideals. Lindy returns in the title story, which finds her in a luxury hotel reserved for celebrity patients recovering from cosmetic surgery. The narrator this time is Steve, a saxophonist who could never get a break because of his "loser ugly" looks. Lindy idly strikes up a friendship with Steve as they wait for their bandages to come off and their new lives to begin. In the final story, "Cellists," an unnamed saxophonist narrator who, like Jan, plays in Venice's San Marco square, observes the evolving relationship of a Hungarian cello prodigy after he meets an American woman. The stories are superbly crafted, though they lack the gravity of Ishiguro's longer works (Never Let Me Go; Remains of the Day), which may leave readers anticipating a crescendo that never hits. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In Venice, an old-time singer drafts a guitar player from one of the piazza's bands to accompany him as he serenades the wife he is about to leave. She later turns up in the tale of a sax player whose own wife, having left him, offers to pay for plastic surgery that could help his career. A man who once shared a love for show tunes with an old friend is asked by her husband to act the fool to help save their marriage. A self-centered songwriter breeds disruption while working at his sister's inn, and an inspiring cellist encounters a most unusual teacher. Despite what one might expect from the title, these aren't stories about music, which is simply enfolded in the characters' lives; the music doesn't so much inspire the action as frame it. The writing is lighter and more loose-limbed than one might expect of the author of Never Let Me Go, but it delivers the same scary insights into human misbehavior. Verdict Once again Ishiguro does something different; recommended for anyone who loves thoughtful writing. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/09.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A collection of five stylish stories from Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go, 2005, etc.). As indicated by both the title and subtitle, all the stories in this fictional equivalent of a concept album concern musicians and the evening. But even more holds them together. All are first-person narratives (four of them by musicians) and most have a recurring motif of exchanging early promise for somethinga marriage, a career, maybe boththat one settles for, once the daylight of youth has given way to the twilight of middle age. When one underachiever remarks "I'm only forty-seven," the woman on whom he had a college crush, now married to his best friend, replies, "Only forty-seven. This 'only,' this is what's destroying your life. Only, only, only. Only doing my best." That story, "Come Rain or Come Shine," is the most audacious in terms of tone, a very funny narrative, almost emotionally slapstick, about a very sad marriage. The writing is so exquisite throughout that the reader forgives the fact that at least two of these stories don't make much literal sense. In "Malvern Hills," an otherwise subtle story about a young guitarist who believes he has a career in music, and two married couples who have become resigned to their fates, the narrator keeps auditioning for electric bands with an acoustic guitar. The title story, the longest and strangest, concerns a session saxophonist who has somehow been persuaded to have plastic surgery on his face as a big career move. (Who really cares what a session or jazz musician looks like?) But even though there are a few false notes, the tonal command sustains perfect pitch. Like sophisticated literary mood music, this book lingers in the memory, ringing true in theme and metaphor even when lacking plausibility. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Crooner Chapter 1 The morning i spotted Tony Gardner sitting among the tourists, spring was just arriving here in Venice. We'd completed our first full week outside in the piazza--a relief, let me tell you, after all those stuffy hours performing from the back of the cafe, getting in the way of customers wanting to use the staircase. There was quite a breeze that morning, and our brand-new marquee was flapping all around us, but we were all feeling a little bit brighter and fresher, and I guess it showed in our music. But here I am talking like I'm a regular band member. Actually, I'm one of the "gypsies," as the other musicians call us, one of the guys who move around the piazza, helping out whichever of the three cafe orchestras needs us. Mostly I play here at the Caffè Lavena, but on a busy afternoon, I might do a set with the Quadri boys, go over to the Florian, then back across the square to the Lavena. I get on fine with them all--and with the waiters too--and in any other city I'd have a regular position by now. But in this place, so obsessed with tradition and the past, everything's upside down. Anywhere else, being a guitar player would go in a guy's favour. But here? A guitar! The cafe managers get uneasy. It looks too modern, the tourists won't like it. Last autumn I got myself a vintage jazz model with an oval sound-hole, the kind of thing Django Reinhardt might have played, so there was no way anyone would mistake me for a rock-and-roller. That made things a little easier, but the cafe managers, they still don't like it. The truth is, if you're a guitarist, you can be Joe Pass, they still wouldn't give you a regular job in this square. There's also, of course, the small matter of my not being Italian, never mind Venetian. It's the same for that big Czech guy with the alto sax. We're well liked, we're needed by the other musicians, but we don't quite fit the official bill. Just play and keep your mouth shut, that's what the cafe managers always say. That way the tourists won't know you're not Italian. Wear your suit, sunglasses, keep the hair combed back, no one will know the difference, just don't start talking. But I don't do too bad. All three cafe orchestras, especially when they have to play at the same time from their rival tents, they need a guitar--something soft, solid, but amplified, thumping out the chords from the back. I guess you're thinking, three bands playing at the same time in the same square, that would sound like a real mess. But the Piazza San Marco's big enough to take it. A tourist strolling across the square will hear one tune fade out, another fade in, like he's shifting the dial on a radio. What tourists can't take too much of is the classical stuff, all these instrumental versions of famous arias. Okay, this is San Marco, they don't want the latest pop hits. But every few minutes they want something they recognise, maybe an old Julie Andrews number, or the theme from a famous movie. I remember once last summer, going from band to band and playing "The Godfather" nine times in one afternoon. Anyway there we were that spring morning, playing in front of a good crowd of tourists, when I saw Tony Gardner, sitting alone with his coffee, almost directly in front of us, maybe six metres back from our marquee. We get famous people in the square all the time, we never make a fuss. At the end of a number, maybe a quiet word will go around the band members. Look, there's Warren Beatty. Look, it's Kissinger. That woman, she's the one who was in the movie about the men who swap their faces. We're used to it. This is the Piazza San Marco after all. But when I realised it was Tony Gardner sitting there, that was different. I did get excited. Tony Gardner had been my mother's favourite. Back home, back in the communist days, it had been really hard to get records like that, but my mother had pretty much his whole collection. Once when I was a boy, I scratched one of those precious records. The apartment was so cramped, and a boy my age, you just had to move around sometimes, especially during those cold months when you couldn't go outside. So I was playing this game jumping from our little sofa to the armchair, and one time I misjudged it and hit the record player. The needle went across the record with a zip--this was long before CDs--and my mother came in from the kitchen and began shouting at me. I felt so bad, not just because she was shouting at me, but because I knew it was one of Tony Gardner's records, and I knew how much it meant to her. And I knew that this one too would now have those popping noises going through it while he crooned those American songs. Years later, when I was working in Warsaw and I got to know about black-market records, I gave my mother replacements of all her worn-out Tony Gardner albums, including that one I scratched. It took me over three years, but I kept getting them, one by one, and each time I went back to see her I'd bring her another. So you see why I got so excited when I recognised him, barely six metres away. At first I couldn't quite believe it, and I might have been a beat late with a chord change. Tony Gardner! What would my dear mother have said if she'd known! For her sake, for the sake of her memory, I had to go and say something to him, never mind if the other musicians laughed and said I was acting like a bell-boy. But of course I couldn't just rush over to him, pushing aside the tables and chairs. There was our set to finish. It was agony, I can tell you, another three, four numbers, and every second I thought he was about to get up and walk off. But he kept sitting there, by himself, staring into his coffee, stirring it like he was really puzzled by what the waiter had brought him. He looked like any other American tourist, dressed in a pale-blue polo shirt and loose grey trousers. His hair, very dark, very shiny on those record covers, was almost white now, but there was still plenty of it, and it was immaculately groomed in the same style he'd had back then. When I'd first spotted him, he'd had his dark glasses in his hand--I doubt if I'd have recognised him otherwise--but as our set went on and I kept watching him, he put them on his face, took them off again, then back on again. He looked preoccupied and it disappointed me to see he wasn't really listening to our music. Then our set was over. I hurried out of the tent without saying anything to the others, made my way to Tony Gardner's table, then had a moment's panic not knowing how to start the conversation. I was standing behind him, but some sixth sense made him turn and look up at me--I guess it was all those years of having fans come up to him-- and next thing I was introducing myself, explaining how much I admired him, how I was in the band he'd just been listening to, how my mother had been such a fan, all in one big rush. He listened with a grave expression, nodding every few seconds like he was my doctor. I kept talking and all he said every now and then was: "Is that so?" After a while I thought it was time to leave and I'd started to move away when he said: "So you come from one of those communist countries. That must have been tough." "That's all in the past." I did a cheerful shrug. "We're a free country now. A democracy." "That's good to hear. And that was your crew playing for us just now. Sit down. You want some coffee?" I told him I didn't want to impose, but there was now something gently insistent about Mr. Gardner. "No, no, sit down. Your mother liked my records, you were saying." So I sat down and told him some more. About my mother, our apartment, the black-market records. And though I couldn't remember what the albums were called, I started describing the pictures on their sleeves the way I remembered them, and each time I did this, he'd put his finger up in the air and say something like: "Oh, that would be Inimitable. The Inimitable Tony Gardner." I think we were both really enjoying this game, but then I noticed Mr. Gardner's gaze move off me, and I turned just in time to see a woman coming up to our table. She was one of those American ladies who are so classy, with great hair, clothes and figure, you don't realise they're not so young until you see them up close. Far away, I might have mistaken her for a model out of those glossy fashion magazines. But when she sat down next to Mr. Gardner and pushed her dark glasses onto her forehead, I realised she must be at least fifty, maybe more. Mr. Gardner said to me: "This is Lindy, my wife." Mrs. Gardner flashed me a smile that was kind of forced, then said to her husband: "So who's this? You've made yourself a friend." "That's right, honey. I was having a good time talking here with . . . I'm sorry, friend, I don't know your name." "Jan," I said quickly. "But friends call me Janeck." Lindy Gardner said: "You mean your nickname's longer than your real name? How does that work?" "Don't be rude to the man, honey." "I'm not being rude." "Don't make fun of the man's name, honey. That's a good girl." Lindy Gardner turned to me with a helpless sort of expression. "You know what he's talking about? Did I insult you?" "No, no," I said, "not at all, Mrs. Gardner." "He's always telling me I'm rude to the public. But I'm not rude. Was I rude to you just now?" Then to Mr. Gardner: "I speak to the public in a natural way, sweetie. It's my way. I'm never rude." "Okay, honey," Mr. Gardner said, "let's not make a big thing of it. Anyhow, this man here, he's not the public." "Oh, he's not? Then what is he? A long-lost nephew?" "Be nice, honey. This man, he's a colleague. A musician, a pro. He's just been entertaining us all." He gestured towards our marquee. "Oh right!" Lindy Gardner turned to me again. "You were playing up there just now? Well, that was pretty. You were on the accordion, right? Real pretty!" "Thank you very much. Actually, I'm the guitarist." "Guitarist? You're kidding me. I was watching you only a minute ago. Sitting right there, next to the double bass man, playing so beautifully on your accordion." "Pardon me, that was in fact Carlo on the accordion. The big bald guy . . ." "Are you sure? You're not kidding me?" "Honey, I've told you. Don't be rude to the man." He hadn't shouted exactly, but his voice was suddenly hard and angry, and now there was a strange silence. Then Mr. Gardner himself broke it, saying gently: "I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to snap at you." He reached out a hand and grasped one of hers. I'd kind of expected her to shake him off, but instead, she moved in her chair so she was closer to him, and put her free hand over their clasped pair. They sat there like that for a few seconds, Mr. Gardner, his head bowed, his wife gazing emptily past his shoulder, across the square towards the Basilica, though her eyes didn't seem to be seeing anything. For those few moments it was like they'd forgotten not just me sitting with them, but all the people in the piazza. Then she said, almost in a whisper: "That's okay, sweetie. It was my fault. Getting you all upset." They went on sitting like that a little longer, their hands locked. Then she sighed, let go of Mr. Gardner and looked at me. She'd looked at me before, but this time it was different. This time I could feel her charm. It was like she had this dial, going zero to ten, and with me, at that moment, she'd decided to turn it to six or seven, but I could feel it really strong, and if she'd asked some favour of me--if say she'd asked me to go across the square and buy her some flowers-- I'd have done it happily. "Janeck," she said. "That's your name, right? I'm sorry, Janeck. Tony's right. I'd no business speaking to you the way I did." "Mrs. Gardner, really, please don't worry . . ." "And I disturbed the two of you talking. Musicians' talk, I bet. You know what? I'm gonna leave the two of you to get on with it." "No reason to go, honey," Mr. Gardner said. "Oh yes there is, sweetie. I'm absolutely yearning to go look in that Prada store. I only came over just now to tell you I'd be longer than I said." "Okay, honey." Tony Gardner straightened for the first time and took a deep breath. "So long as you're sure you're happy doing that." "I'm gonna have a fantastic time in that store. So you two fellas, you have yourselves a good talk." She got to her feet and touched me on the shoulder. "You take care, Janeck." We watched her walk away, then Mr. Gardner asked me a few things about being a musician in Venice, and about the Quadri orchestra in particular, who'd started playing just at that moment. He didn't seem to listen so carefully to my answers and I was about to excuse myself and leave, when he said suddenly: "There's something I want to put to you, friend. Let me tell you what's on my mind and you can turn me down if that's what you want." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Can I tell you something? The first time Lindy and I came here to Venice, it was our honeymoon. Twenty-seven years ago. And for all our happy memories of this place, we'd never been back, not together anyway. So when we were planning this trip, this special trip of ours, we said to ourselves we've got to spend a few days in Venice." "It's your anniversary, Mr. Gardner?" "Anniversary?" He looked startled. "I'm sorry," I said. "I just thought, because you said this was your special trip." Excerpted from Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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